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First WC Setup, Thoughts - Suggestions?

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Mehovoric

Member
Joined
Mar 24, 2011
Location
Somewhere in the US
So I bought most of my hardware last year and just now got into Liquid Cooling. I just swapped out the radiator with a new larger one so the setup is still fairly new and still counts as a first time :). Anyways, I'm proud of the fact that I had absolutely no leaks on my first and second fill! With the stock heatsink and fan I was getting about 100F while idling. With the WC loop, its 60F at idle and 65F while browsing the web, watching a movie and messaging. Decent improvement if I do say so myself.

So here's my WC setup:
Pump: Danger Den DD-CPX1 (Re-branded Jingway DP600P) Superbly quiet and moves a ton of coolant.
Radiator: Black ICE GT Stealth 360 (120mm x 3)
Tubing: PrimoChill PRO LRT 3/8"ID - 1/2"OD
Fluid: Feser One Non Conductive UV Acid Green (yeah yeah i know i used feser)
Block: EK Supreme LT AMD CPU - Plexi+Nickel (cooling an AMD Phenom II x6 at 3.2GHz)
Fittings: All my fittings are from Koolance using a mixture of compression and barb.

So for now my loop is only cooling the CPU, a bit of overkill for the RAD? Maybe. But I plan on adding one, possibly two video cards to the loop as well if not anything else on the motherboard (which I might also be upgrading as well). In the following pictures you'll also notice I'm using my version of a T-fill line and a drain line that actually proved quite useful. Now before you go off on me for using a T-line, it wasn't till after I installed it that I discovered that they are terrible for releasing air. So naturally my plans also include a reservoir.

The loop is pretty simple. Pump - CPU - RAD - Pump. You have the pictures attached as reference but any suggestions on how to route once I throw in the video card? I probably stick to EK for the block and keep it the same as my CPU. I have plenty of space for additional radiators so feel free to go wild on your suggestions and ideas :) One of my biggest concerns is, if I do put the GPU on the loop, should I increase the tubing size? And with that, should I upgrade the pump? And with that, haha, what fluid would you recommend?

Thanks for your help anyone. I'll post a list of my hardware if you want.
 

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Never had an issue with Tlines. Yes, they are hard to bleed, your Tline long, many make it so short it's really just a real pain. Your rad is an older less efficient model. Still a good first loop.
When you start adding more to the loop, you might want to read this first:

http://www.overclockers.com/guide-deltat-water-cooling/

Hopefully you won't have problems that I have seen with Feser and that block, you'll be tearing it down sooner than later.
 
You definitely need to read the sticky (specifically the link con already posted) and get some learnin in you. For what you should run in your loop, distilled water and a biocide...and nothing else. No dyes, no green goop, no dye bombs. If you want the colored look use colored tubing.
 
Yeah I did a lot of research (as in up till 2 am for 4 nights ... apparently still not enough) and I didn't come across the fact that Feser is a waste of time until after I filled it the first time. When I filled it the second time I knew I'd be tearing it apart soon yet again to possibly add GPU block or a RES and change tubing so I figured I'd just use up the rest of the coolant that I had. No reason to waste money.
 
It also will have severe adverse effects on performance if it clogs anything up...most guys spend more than a week reading stuff fwiw. There's only so much you can get out of googling around and if you don't hang out on a forum for a bit you really miss a lot...oh well, the money's gone now.
 
Thats alright. Its a pretty good first build, and everyone messes up something the first time they do it. Honestly, you'll probably still be messing a couple things up even after you've done plenty of research. Its a shame to let perfectly good money go to waste, but I've learned a lot from working on different builds and making mistakes on them. Nothing teaches a skill quite as well as mistakes :)
 
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