Another "Advise me please" topic. Would you please do it? :)

[Pedro Lima]

First of all, Hello!

A short intro (skip this paragraph if you want, but since is my first time here I think I should do it): I am a 24 yr old brazilian guy who really likes computers. I even work with softwares at SAP. I am a big fan of sports but lately duty has been calling me and I don´t have the same time anymore to practice, therefore I had to find alternative fun. Inside my home. So I just start to learn a lot about hardware and I bought my first "nice" computer. Now I want a silent and good water cooling system, so then I can start overcloking ( I will only start overclocking when I had a good WC system cause Brazil is damn warm and I paid more than the double of what I would have paid if I bought in USA or Europe because of taxes ( yes I know, its ridiculous), so I will be very careful with my pc). Now let´s go the point:

Here is my configuration:

Case: H2 NZXT
MOBO: Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H
Processor: I7 Ivy Bridge I3770
VGA: EVGA GTX 680 (NVIDIA)
Memory: 4 GB Corsair Vengeace 1600 Mhz X 4 (16GB)
PSU: OCZ ZX 850W

What I want is a WC that can support a bit of OC and keep my VGA chilled while I play games. I want a pump/reservoir (maybe also with radiator) that fits in two 5,25" slots since my case is not that big. Then a system that goes to VGA and CPU. Can you help me out about the fitting thing, all those barbs, if I need something that will split a tube in two... What exactly do I need to buy (exact sizes, etc)...And also about brands and good kits that would fit my needs. Also I was thinking of getting the EVGA copper block and the backplate, is it a good idea?

I did a lot of reading and searching, and I think this is the best place to ask for help.

Thank you

 

[musicfan]

Beginner's Guide by Hokiealumnus is where to begin. Conumdrum has great links.

You did great explaining why you wish to water-cool. If you read the links you will learn better than others doing it for you. Next, determine how much heat you make at stock before you begin to overclock. Then share your load testing on air. Others will be along but the above links will get you started. Good luck.

 

[Pedro Lima]

Beginner's Guide by Hokiealumnus is where to begin. Conumdrum has great links.

You did great explaining why you wish to water-cool. If you read the links you will learn better than others doing it for you. Next, determine how much heat you make at stock before you begin to overclock. Then share your load testing on air. Others will be along but the above links will get you started. Good luck.

Thank you!

I will read and run the tests!

I was looking more and more for WC parts and I found this very nice pump: Koolance RP-985 Series Reservoir & Pumps

Would it suit well for my needs? It would hold up to CPU and GPU cooling?

 

[txus.palacios]

Sir, just because you're the first person I've read (that I remember right now), that has agreed to read the stickies and that has given me an extremely great first expression, I shall give you a bill of materials for your watercooling system.

CPU Waterblock: http://www.dtwaterblocks.com/cpu-waterblocks/
This guy waterblock's seems to be top of the line right now.

GPU Waterblock: Use the HydroCopper one. It's really nice and it adds some "extra value" to your graphics card because of the looks, at least, for me.

Radiator: Your case can't "naturally" hold a radiator. But you can always do a little trick. You have a 140mm fan hole there on the top. Remove the cover thingy. Using a dead / cheap 140mm fan, create a shroud by removing the wings and the motor hub. Now, use your DIY shroud to separate the case from the radiator. Screw it from the inside of the case to the radiator (or use a threaded bar and nuts). And, tada! A nice 140mm radiator!! You have grommets for tubes (I'd remove them, they were a PITA for my 800D), you can pass the tubes from the inside of the case to the outside, to your new radiator place!

Choose any 140.3 Radiator you like. For example, the Alphacool NexXxoS UT60 420mm. The best radiator fans for 140, if I remember correctly, were the Noiseblocker PK2.

Tubes and fittings: As I am not completely sure of the size of the NZXT H2 grommets, we're going to go safe here. Use 3/8" tubing, from Masterkleer. Do not go with transparent, choose a coloured one, because you shouldn't use dyes. For the fittings, personally, I like the new Monsoon fittings.

Pump and reservoir: Try to get something Laing DDC and Alphacool's reservoir if you're really short on space.

Fluid: Distilled water. Nothing else. No, that exotic "Supermegananohypercool XPR-200 Hyperconductive Fluid for Watercooling" is not better. Water is the best liquid for this. Nothing else. Oh, and ignore those "specialty distilled water" for watercooling. That's marketing BS IMHO. I think it was Martin who did a review on this fluids, and their conductivity (both electrically and thermal), and almost all the DI waters were similar in performance and electrical conductivity once they were poured into the loop. Make sure you grab a couple of PURE silver thingies, whether it's a silver coil like we use here, or a coin, to kill bacteria and algae that may think your loop is a place to live. I can't stress the "PURE" enough. You need .999 silver. Not some silver plated thing or silver alloy. You need pure silver. Mixing metals is not a good idea unless you know of the galvanic corrosion and the anodic index. We'll just tell you that as soon as you mix copper, brass and silver, you're OK. Add aluminum to the mix and you will get leaking aluminum parts. That may sound funny. But it isn't. At all!

That's about it! It's 1.04AM here, I'm sleepy, and I started writing at 0.00AM. Probably some of my research is wrong, take this with a pinch of salt! I'll check this tomorrow and edit every possible brainfart.
Please, OCFers, fix everything that might be wrong here!!

Oh. And to OCF!

 

[Conumdrum]

Thank you!

I will read and run the tests!

I was looking more and more for WC parts and I found this very nice pump: Koolance RP-985 Series Reservoir & Pumps

Would it suit well for my needs? It would hold up to CPU and GPU cooling?

Hi me here. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the Koolance pump junk you linked to is extremly weak. The pump is a teeny little thing, and not a good pump. It's very cheaply made, has low low GPM and head pressure. No, it's not enough.

Here is the link to just the pump. The rest of the fancy bling stuff in the box you linked to is cheaply made and will be discarded once you want to do real watercooling. We'll try our best to get you to buy quality stuff that won't fail and make you hate watercooling. I'll also give a link to a good quality pump that I recommend.

http://koolance.com/pump-pmp-300-g-1-4-bsp?filter_tag=Pump

A pump I can recommend: About the lowest I'll even think of, and still I have reservations.

http://www.performance-pcs.com/cata...e=product_info&cPath=59_201&products_id=24272

Here is the pump we want (I use it) these days:

http://www.performance-pcs.com/cata...e=product_info&cPath=59_201&products_id=31420

On to what you need to do.

You need to approach watercooling as a hobby, a fun way to make a quiet, overclocked, beutiful rig. You are looking at it as a "Buy a Blueray player and plug it in". It doesn't happen that way. And you will just fail at it. Seriously.

You need to learn first. You saying you'll read stuff and right away come back with that peice of junk pump box tells me you don't understand. You need to read the stickies. ALL of them and that should take a few days with many hours of not skimming, you reread and UNDERSTAND. You don't do that, all you will do is and we will and it wll be no fun for any of us. It isn't a job for us, we can just say it's not worth it because the OP (YOU) doesn't understand the effort needed. We'll give up.


You should get back to the stickies for days if not a week and learning before another post of buy idea comes from your head. SLOW DOWN.

I have popcorn for your next move. Make it a boring movie, come back with 20-40 hours of learning and ask your next question. Then you'll be able to build a beautiful well performng rig.
Please reread this again and again if you don't understand.Make your room a happy watercooling room.

A link I think that was already posted. You are for a while named AoN, who I wrote it for long ago. It's the truth.

Read it, that has enough info for 20 hours of learning.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6489396&postcount=3

 

[Pedro Lima]

@ txus.palacios: Hey man thank you very much, you did a FANTASTIC job on this reply! Really helped me with very good tips for my problem. I got very surprised and happy reading your post! I will problably follow all of your tips!

@ Conumdrum: You are absolutely right. I´m feeling such a noob trying to get all the easy stuff real quick. Turns out that I´m very anxious and I want everything for yesterday, and being this way have its risks, mostly financial, which is no good at all. You kinda 'open my eyes'. I will not buy anything before reading at least 2 weeks. You guys helped me A LOT with links, brands, names, etc. It´s on me now. Thank you very much, and I will get back to this topic when I feel ready to ask something really important or to share my progress with you guys.

 

[Whatts]

I was in the same situation as you Pedro Lima. I was a total noob over 2 weeks ago and just started reading and reading, for days. Now I'm still a noob, but at least I have a bit of a clue. I posted my first parts list 2 days ago, got great help and suggestions, adjusted my list and yesterday ordered the lot.

I'd suggest starting with the clunk.org.uk guide first. It's easy to understand, well-documented with pictures and very complete. Once you'll have read a few of these guides, you'll know better what you want and can start actually compiling a parts list.

 

[Conumdrum]

Thanks Pedro and Watts. Your the reason many of use stay year after year and help. WC is fun and we like to share our knowledge to help you folks.

 

[Nightman28]

Welcome to the forums. We it comes to WC these guys know their stuff. Listen well to Conundrum, he can be brash but he just wants you to have fun and not waste money. These links should be in the stickies but spend a lot of time checking the parts with these guys:

http://martinsliquidlab.org/

http://skinneelabs.com/

@Conundrum, I have seen you post many times a post with many more links to more information, I think it should be made a sticky as well. It would be great if a moderator could do that.

 

[boucher91]

Conundrum really knows his stuff. and there excellent stickies to give u lots of knowledge..
I like you was very anxious at first and bought a cheapo (not bad tho) kit to start me off..
kept reading and asked a few questions here and there ,,now have 5 really silent and very cool rigs all of them are oc,ed nicely..
almost as if they turned me into a monster hanging round here...(lol)

 

[Conumdrum]

@Conundrum, I have seen you post many times a post with many more links to more information, I think it should be made a sticky as well. It would be great if a moderator could do that.

Well mine has links that are not permissioned to link here, not saying they would say no. I just don't have a relationship with the other sites, like the GPU wattage one, that is also outdated, and I don't speak French. For example Skinnee lets us link to his graphs and pages in our stickies. He posts here and he has met IMOG and me in person. Great guy! Yea, I mean you too IMOG!

Our stickies if you notice have mainly OCF generated content, not links to other places unless permissioned. Thus mine is not stickied, it's just a post. It's best that way. It was discussed a few years ago on what to do with it. Your welcome to link to that post, I know a few poeple who do.

 

[Pedro Lima]

Okay! So today I think I spent about 7 hours reading and adventuring myself through all those links and some more for my own. I'm still a noob, I know.. But I want to share my progress with you guys...

All my understanding have lead me to this project.. This is just a initial scratch I just made... I wanna know what you guys think. Since Im short on space, I'd figure that 2 small radiators would be better than one. Also I am going to get a 5,25 HDD bay adapter (Im running just one 2TB HDD and 164GB SSD for cache who is on top of the case, which has a specific place for SSD), so I can use all HDD bays for the 240mm radiator...

Palacios idea is pretty good tho... Problem is I dont have Height anymore to put anything above the case.... (If I understand it correctly)

Im still not sure about all the sizes and the cooling effectiveness, but Im planning on getting really good Items, im not caring that much with budget... What you guys think of this?

 

[Nightman28]

Originally posted by Conundrum

Well mine has links that are not permissioned to link here, not saying they would say no. I just don't have a relationship with the other sites, like the GPU wattage one, that is also outdated, and I don't speak French. For example Skinnee lets us link to his graphs and pages in our stickies. He posts here and he has met IMOG and me in person. Great guy! Yea, I mean you too IMOG!

Our stickies if you notice have mainly OCF generated content, not links to other places unless permissioned. Thus mine is not stickied, it's just a post. It's best that way. It was discussed a few years ago on what to do with it. Your welcome to link to that post, I know a few poeple who do.

I see. The OCF information is what brought me here and even though I have learned a lot, theres always seem more to learn and you seem to have a nack at finding it. Someday I may finally post my WC parts lists.

@Pedro Lima, the layout looks good but your flow is bad. It would be better to go from the pump to the 240 rad to the cpu block to the 120 rad then gpu and return to resivoir. The reason is your large radiator will give the most cooling, that will help the cpu cool down. Then running through the 120 rad will cool it back down before the gets it.

 

[stainlineho]

Pedro, run the tubes to what aesthetically pleases you, unless you are running 2 GPUs...then I'd consider hitting a rad before going to the CPU. But really, its doesn't matter.

 

[musicfan]

Pedro, this is from Conundrum's Guide to Delta-T in Water-Cooling in the links:

Water temperatures in a stabilized loop, amazingly, are very similar anywhere in the loop. There is only a 2-3°C maximum difference between the radiator out temperature and the CPU out temperature; this has been verified by Skinnee.

I do not think your flow is bad because your water temperature will be fairly uniform no matter how you route the tubing. Route your tubing to avoid kinks and preserve good case air-flow is my opinion.

 

[Conumdrum]

@Pedro Lima, the layout looks good but your flow is bad. It would be better to go from the pump to the 240 rad to the cpu block to the 120 rad then gpu and return to resivoir. The reason is your large radiator will give the most cooling, that will help the cpu cool down. Then running through the 120 rad will cool it back down before the gets it.

The differnce in temp will be so minimal, remeber a well designed loop... Umm not one that has 3 GTX 680s watercooling output and a VERY overclocked CPU and GPU, that's called outside the normal watercooling noob things, for xtreme users who KNOW.

In a normal loop, like you and me, the water temp between max temp into the rad and out of the rad setup is only at max, 2C. It's proven with $100's of gear at Skinnee and Martins and others.

So don't worry at all about where rads are placed in a loop, please. It's overall cooling area that matters. And fannage etc.

 

[Whatts]

Palacios idea is pretty good tho... Problem is I dont have Height anymore to put anything above the case.... (If I understand it correctly)

Pedro, he means something like this. Instead of those 4 little spacers between case and rad you can gut an old fan (so you just keep the outer casing) and use that as a spacer. Same thing can be done to hang your rad on the back of your case (again with a gutted fan or something like this). Or do as I'm going to do with my build and get some cheap rad stands like these and keep your rad separate from your case.

 

[Pedro Lima]

Hmmm I see... In last case scenario I would have to hang the rad on the side of the case like you said, Whatts! Hope I don´t have to do it...

After you guys approved my layout, I did a lot more reading, and as Conumdrum says a lot more of "UNDERSTANDING" as well. Skinnee and Martin Labs are A MUST-USE tool for those who want to see gears tested and reviewd. VERY important if you want to choose your parts... Here is my first-partial-list.. tell me what you guys think.





Radiators - Black Ice GTX or Alphacool NeXxoS UT60 or Swiftech Extreme
Performance ( I wanna get same radiator for the 240mm and the 120mm spaces and It´s really hard to get one cause the ones who are good with high RPM fans like Black Ice, are not so good with low RPM, and I don´t exactly know in details how much chilling effects I will need with low noise... I wanna go safe here, without having to sacrifice the noise ratio)

Fans - Scythe Gentle Typhoon AP 15 or Noiseblocker NB-BlackSilentFan XLP ( I think I´ll go with the Typhoon)

Pump - Swiftech MCP35B™ 12 VDC Pump (Conumdrum tip)

CPU Block - DT Waterblock (Palacios tip): Only problem is that I don´t know how to contact the guy to see if he is willing to ship to brazil.. does someone know how to contact him?

GPU Block - EVGA Hydro Copper Block for GTX 680 or XSPC Razor nVidia GTX 680 Full Coverage VGA Block (Any difference between them beside aesthetics?)

Reservoir - Bitspower BP-DDCT2-CL DDC Mini Water Tank or Swiftech MCRES-MICRO™ Rev. 2

Fluid - Distilled Water

Tubing - Masterkleer PVC Tubing 3/8" ID / 1/2" OD

Fan Controller - Logisys 6-Channel Single 5,25 Bay

Compression Fittings - Bitspower Ultimate G 1/4 Thread 3/8" ID x 1/2" OD (Not sure if I´m gonna need those angled ones... What you guys think?)

Thermal Paste - IC Diamond "7 Carat" Thermal Compound

 

[Conumdrum]

Don't forget the silver Killcoils for your biocide. The angled fittings make it much easier to route tubing, and since your geting Mastercleer which kinks easier, you should get some. And it's hell when you are missing just one thing to make it right. And you wait, and wait for it to come in.

Get Bitspower 90 degree rotaries, they bend all sorts of different ways. 4 should be enough.

I mentioned the 35x, not the B, not sure what the diff is though or if the B is just a typo.

Head over to xtreme systems forum under watercooling and look at the post about the DT waterblock, think there is info there. I'm sure some store sells it.

 

[skorpien]

The 35X is 18W and PWM controlled whereas the 35B is only 12W and non-PWM. The flowrate is slightly less on the 35B, though it probably won't make a noticeable difference on the temps in the loop. If the OP is not planning on using PWM I would say the 35B is a good choice. Though if it were me, I'd get the 35X and run it off the mobo's PWM header and just use the fan controller for the fans...

Product info:
http://www.swiftech.com/mcp35x12vdcpump.aspx
http://www.swiftech.com/mcp35b.aspx