Quick watercooling question

[notarat]

I've completed the mock-ups of parts for my O11 Dynamic build and it raised a question...

Whenever I've built custom loops int he past I really didn't try to minimize hose runs because I thought it was a good way to have extra coolant in the loop, like having a larger/extra reservoir.

With the build I'm doing now, my loops seem to be much "shorter" (not as much tubing as in previous builds) so the question that popped into my mind was:

"Is it better to have longer/more tubing for the extra coolant in the loop? Or, is it better to keep runs short so that water spends more time in the Radiators getting cooled than moving from point A to point B?"

 

[EarthDog]

The latter. More fluid simply delays the time to reach an equilibrium.. and a but more tubing yields lite more fluid. Build the loop with the shortest neatest runs. The time difference of water spent in the rad is negligible.

 

[caddi daddi]

longer or larger tube, above 3/8 or 11mm makes little difference in temps, it just takes longer for it to heat more water, it spends the same amount of time in the rad.

 

[notarat]

I was initially leaning towards keeping the loop as short as possible myself and it's nice to get validation because it's something I've never considered in previous builds.

I just ran the soft tubes on previous builds to avoid things like blocking in your RAM or Video card. With this build I'm using hard lines so I didn't want to have a bunch of extra tubing to cut/bend...and I think that's where the question came into being.

 

[batboy]

I've tried it both ways, short efficient hoses and sloppy long hoses (temporary loop while waiting on other parts). Not much difference in performance or temps, but tidy and efficient sure looks better.

 

[Sprucemoose]

The reservoir is only there to make the filling and bleeding of the system easier, it doesn't affect the cooling ability of the loop. If you were able to fill and bleed it properly, a loop with no reservoir at all will cool just as well as a regular loop. However, the more water you have in your loop, the more time it will take to heat up or cool down (i.e. reaching temperature equilibrium). The size of the reservoir is only important for the look.

In theory, short tubing runs make for lesser flow resistance, although I can't imagine that it has any practical significance in a computer case. What really matters for the total flow restriction in any computer cooling loop are the water blocks.

 

[DaPoets]

The more coolant you have, the longer it takes for the temperature of the coolant to rise. Eventually no matter how much coolant you have (a reasonable min & max) eventually the temps will end up being the same. For example if you are gaming for 2 hours, then a little bit or a lot of coolant the temps will be the same +/- a degree or two. I'm a big fan of using the most coolant your case can hold. In doing this if you are doing burst work on your cpu the coolant temps won't budge at all. Also if you are having an overclocking session to push your chip as fast as it can go having more coolant is always going to be better as you can do more runs w/ your temps no moving much at all compared to having a small amount of coolant. I'm actually about to add another 250ml res to my system this week due to this as well as to just make it look a bit more full as I have a very large case.