Hello everyone!
This is my first post, but I have meandered these forums for a while now. The threads here have helped me a lot on my progress towards setting up a watercooled build, so thank you everyone (including the noobs like myself who took the risk to get yelled at, haha). I have always wanted to do a WC build, and now is the time for me to take the plunge.
So here we have it, my first idea for an interior contained watercooled build consisting of 140.2 (or 280 radiators). The purpose of this build is to be silent and still provide some juice for gaming and multimedia. I also wanted to perform minimal case modifications to maintain as close to the original design as possible.
Parts:
PC Components:
Case: Coolermaster Cosmos Pure
Motherboard: ASUS M5A99X EVO AM3+ AMD 990X
CPU: AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition Heka 2.8GHz Socket AM3 95W (Cheap CPU to start, not made of money
)
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 580 Hydro Copper 2 3072MB
PSU: CORSAIR Professional Series Gold AX850 (CMPSU-850AX) 850W ATX12V v2.31 / EPS12V v2.92 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular
RAM: CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAKX 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s
Optical Drive: ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner
Cooling Components
Radiator: Black Ice SR-1 280
Pump: Swiftech MCP-35X
CPU Waterblock: EK-Supreme HF - Full EN Nickel
CPU Thermal: Indigo Xtreme™ Engineered Thermal Interface (ETI)
GPU Waterblock: Built on
Resevoir: Bitspower 5.25 Bay Reservoir - Black
Fans: 4x AeroCool Shark 140mm Black Edition 140mm Case Fan, 1x 120mm stock fan
Tubing: Danger Den DreamFlex ( 1/2"ID x 3/4"OD ) - UV Blue
Fittings: 1/4 Thread 1/2" ID x 3/4" OD Compression
This is the basic setup I plan to start with. I wanted to mainly get the watercooling setup before I added more components, so I'm going with a low end CPU for now. I plan on adding another GPU, more powerful CPU, and radiator later on down the road.
I chose the SR1's for several reasons: FPI, decent flow rate, and performance with lower RPM fans. Since the FPI is only 9, they are optimized for fan speeds of <1500, which I plan on running them around 800-1000 max to hopefully maintain some silence. Which brings me to my next point: fan selection.
I have looked around for some solid information on 140mm format fans, and found the results to be somewhat lacking. However, one review I found at Overclockers.net helped me to decide to go with the Aerocool Sharks. It appears that the high amount of fins helps improve the pressure and airflow, and they also didn't rate to bad for noise level/quality. There may be better ones out there, but since I couldn't find much solid material I thought they seemed pretty decent for the price.
For the pump I decided to go with the Swiftech MCP35X because lets face it, it just seems that good, and hopefully it can help my future watercooling plans. It has lower LPH than the 655, but from what I gather it has more of a push and outperforms it at lower power (It also has PWM which I plan on using to help control the speed during idle and heavy loads.)
For the waterblocks I went with the EK-Supreme HF to help maintain low restriction and it just seemed to outperform the competitors. I am going to couple it with the Indigo Xtreme because according to Skinneelabs.com, it just beats everything as far as heat transfer goes. I wanted to do my own waterblock for the GPU, maybe a Dangerden (for moderate restriction), but I think I am just going to go with the EVGA pre-assembled one because of the 7 year warranty. I know it means I probably won't get to go through the hassle of deep cleaning it each year (unless I want to take it off an void the warranty), but I guess I will take my chances.
Now onto the flow charts. This is my basic plan for my rig.
I tried to make it almost to scale haha. I also removed the bottom 3 drives bays where the 2x 140mm fans are. Starting with the reservoir in the drive bay (decided to go with that drive bay type for room constraint reasons), the water will go straight down into the pump. Now here is the thing: the pump is going to be mounted on a fan grill that is parallel to the drive bays, its hard to tell from the picture. It was the only place I could see to place it to save room for future additions and I'm hoping it will benefit from the fans down below. Using the Swiftech top, I will most like need to use a 90 degree joint to make the inlet and outlet face directly up. From the Pump to the SR1 on the top with 2 fans in pull. From what I gather, pull works best when using only 2 fans, and I see no reason to go push/pull with a low FPI radiator. the rest is of the flow is evident so I'll just sum it up: Res > Pump > Rad > CPU > GPU > Res
It seems simple enough (and complex at the same time), but does anyone have any recommendations for how I can improve this loop? I'm pretty sure I did my calculations right an the single 280 should be able to cool the CPU and GPU decently for my starter setup (performs almost as well as a 360 in some reviews.)
Future Plans
Now this is the section where I step further out of my comfort zone. these are my future plans and I'm sure I have something messed up. I want to add another SR1 to the bottom, another GPU, and a higher end AMD processor (probably a Phenom II x6 1100T). With the SR1, I plan to place both fans in pull again, pulling the cool air from the bottom. This means the air will not be as cool as the single 280 in the top, but how much will this affect the temps? Am I screwing up the loop by doing this?
Also, I am having some trouble with the flow setup. My first thought (Plan A) is to keep the flow the same direction: counterclockwise. Res > Pump > Rad 1 > CPU > GPU > Rad 2 > Res. However, I think this means the top radiator will be getting warmer air than if I reverse the flow. In Plan B, if i reverse the flow to clockwise, the flow will make the bottom rad cooler because it is going through the other rad and res first. It will be passing through the GPU first before the CPU, but from I gather once the system reaches an equilibrium it does not matter much. Will this help my temps at all? And does the pump have to work harder because it is pulling almost all the way up through the loop? Please take a look and tell me which one is better, or if both are wrong.
Plan A
Plan B
I have read all the stickies multiple times, but hopefully I did not miss any glaring mistakes. I am hoping that I might be able to contribute to anyone looking to do a 140mm build by making my first build public (I'm a watercooling noob, please forgive me). Sorry for the long read, hopefully someone will find it interesting!
Sources
Conundrum's useful list of links: http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6489396&postcount=3
140mm Radiator reviews: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1476023
140mm Fan Reviews: http://www.overclock.net/t/881725/140mm-fan-testing-on-a-hwlabs-sr1-radiator-round-7
SR-1 280 Review: http://www.realredraider.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=5784
And many others I do not remember of the top of my head.
This is my first post, but I have meandered these forums for a while now. The threads here have helped me a lot on my progress towards setting up a watercooled build, so thank you everyone (including the noobs like myself who took the risk to get yelled at, haha). I have always wanted to do a WC build, and now is the time for me to take the plunge.
So here we have it, my first idea for an interior contained watercooled build consisting of 140.2 (or 280 radiators). The purpose of this build is to be silent and still provide some juice for gaming and multimedia. I also wanted to perform minimal case modifications to maintain as close to the original design as possible.
Parts:
PC Components:
Case: Coolermaster Cosmos Pure
Motherboard: ASUS M5A99X EVO AM3+ AMD 990X
CPU: AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition Heka 2.8GHz Socket AM3 95W (Cheap CPU to start, not made of money
)GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 580 Hydro Copper 2 3072MB
PSU: CORSAIR Professional Series Gold AX850 (CMPSU-850AX) 850W ATX12V v2.31 / EPS12V v2.92 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular
RAM: CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAKX 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s
Optical Drive: ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner
Cooling Components
Radiator: Black Ice SR-1 280
Pump: Swiftech MCP-35X
CPU Waterblock: EK-Supreme HF - Full EN Nickel
CPU Thermal: Indigo Xtreme™ Engineered Thermal Interface (ETI)
GPU Waterblock: Built on
Resevoir: Bitspower 5.25 Bay Reservoir - Black
Fans: 4x AeroCool Shark 140mm Black Edition 140mm Case Fan, 1x 120mm stock fan
Tubing: Danger Den DreamFlex ( 1/2"ID x 3/4"OD ) - UV Blue
Fittings: 1/4 Thread 1/2" ID x 3/4" OD Compression
This is the basic setup I plan to start with. I wanted to mainly get the watercooling setup before I added more components, so I'm going with a low end CPU for now. I plan on adding another GPU, more powerful CPU, and radiator later on down the road.
I chose the SR1's for several reasons: FPI, decent flow rate, and performance with lower RPM fans. Since the FPI is only 9, they are optimized for fan speeds of <1500, which I plan on running them around 800-1000 max to hopefully maintain some silence. Which brings me to my next point: fan selection.
I have looked around for some solid information on 140mm format fans, and found the results to be somewhat lacking. However, one review I found at Overclockers.net helped me to decide to go with the Aerocool Sharks. It appears that the high amount of fins helps improve the pressure and airflow, and they also didn't rate to bad for noise level/quality. There may be better ones out there, but since I couldn't find much solid material I thought they seemed pretty decent for the price.
For the pump I decided to go with the Swiftech MCP35X because lets face it, it just seems that good, and hopefully it can help my future watercooling plans. It has lower LPH than the 655, but from what I gather it has more of a push and outperforms it at lower power (It also has PWM which I plan on using to help control the speed during idle and heavy loads.)
For the waterblocks I went with the EK-Supreme HF to help maintain low restriction and it just seemed to outperform the competitors. I am going to couple it with the Indigo Xtreme because according to Skinneelabs.com, it just beats everything as far as heat transfer goes. I wanted to do my own waterblock for the GPU, maybe a Dangerden (for moderate restriction), but I think I am just going to go with the EVGA pre-assembled one because of the 7 year warranty. I know it means I probably won't get to go through the hassle of deep cleaning it each year (unless I want to take it off an void the warranty), but I guess I will take my chances.
Now onto the flow charts. This is my basic plan for my rig.
I tried to make it almost to scale haha. I also removed the bottom 3 drives bays where the 2x 140mm fans are. Starting with the reservoir in the drive bay (decided to go with that drive bay type for room constraint reasons), the water will go straight down into the pump. Now here is the thing: the pump is going to be mounted on a fan grill that is parallel to the drive bays, its hard to tell from the picture. It was the only place I could see to place it to save room for future additions and I'm hoping it will benefit from the fans down below. Using the Swiftech top, I will most like need to use a 90 degree joint to make the inlet and outlet face directly up. From the Pump to the SR1 on the top with 2 fans in pull. From what I gather, pull works best when using only 2 fans, and I see no reason to go push/pull with a low FPI radiator. the rest is of the flow is evident so I'll just sum it up: Res > Pump > Rad > CPU > GPU > Res
It seems simple enough (and complex at the same time), but does anyone have any recommendations for how I can improve this loop? I'm pretty sure I did my calculations right an the single 280 should be able to cool the CPU and GPU decently for my starter setup (performs almost as well as a 360 in some reviews.)
Future Plans
Now this is the section where I step further out of my comfort zone. these are my future plans and I'm sure I have something messed up. I want to add another SR1 to the bottom, another GPU, and a higher end AMD processor (probably a Phenom II x6 1100T). With the SR1, I plan to place both fans in pull again, pulling the cool air from the bottom. This means the air will not be as cool as the single 280 in the top, but how much will this affect the temps? Am I screwing up the loop by doing this?
Also, I am having some trouble with the flow setup. My first thought (Plan A) is to keep the flow the same direction: counterclockwise. Res > Pump > Rad 1 > CPU > GPU > Rad 2 > Res. However, I think this means the top radiator will be getting warmer air than if I reverse the flow. In Plan B, if i reverse the flow to clockwise, the flow will make the bottom rad cooler because it is going through the other rad and res first. It will be passing through the GPU first before the CPU, but from I gather once the system reaches an equilibrium it does not matter much. Will this help my temps at all? And does the pump have to work harder because it is pulling almost all the way up through the loop? Please take a look and tell me which one is better, or if both are wrong.
Plan A
Plan B
I have read all the stickies multiple times, but hopefully I did not miss any glaring mistakes. I am hoping that I might be able to contribute to anyone looking to do a 140mm build by making my first build public (I'm a watercooling noob, please forgive me). Sorry for the long read, hopefully someone will find it interesting!
Sources
Conundrum's useful list of links: http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6489396&postcount=3
140mm Radiator reviews: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1476023
140mm Fan Reviews: http://www.overclock.net/t/881725/140mm-fan-testing-on-a-hwlabs-sr1-radiator-round-7
SR-1 280 Review: http://www.realredraider.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=5784
And many others I do not remember of the top of my head.
