What are some good radiators?

[ssjwizard]

Personally I prefer a reservoir setup. They make bleeding much much easier and faster than bleeding a T line IMO. To bleed the system you fill it as much as you can and fire up the pump let it circulate until the res is nice and aerated then turn your pump off for a few seconds to let the bubbles out. Repeat this process until you need to top off the reservoir. Then just let it run for hours and hours and it will most of the way bleed itself. In a perfect world you should be able to get 99.5% of the air out of your system and seal it up then never have to worry about it. Im only about 2 days since my last teardown and rebuild on my FX system and it has very little air left in it. Probably in another few days I might finish topping off the res IF I feel like its gone down enough(more than 1/8 of the tank empty).

 

[m0r7if3r]

Set it up the same way you always do, if it's particularly bubbly you might have to pump the pump and tap the res a bit, but that's it. This is all covered in the sticky, btw.

 

[zeke]

Okay so I will need a seprate tank as a resivor, how big should I get 1 gallon?

 

[m0r7if3r]

Okay so I will need a seprate tank as a resivor, how big should I get 1 gallon?

You should really really really read the sticky if you have to ask whether or not you need a reservoir. No one's gonna hold your hand through this, and no one's gonna feel bad for you when you kill your gear because you don't know what you're doing.

 

[bmwbaxter]

Okay so I will need a seprate tank as a resivor, how big should I get 1 gallon?

Yes you will need a res and you will definitely need to read the stickies before you kill 3k of hardware.

You should really really really read the sticky if you have to ask whether or not you need a reservoir. No one's gonna hold your hand through this, and no one's gonna feel bad for you when you kill your gear because you don't know what you're doing.

m0r is right here, read the stickies. we won't hold your hand but we will help if you want to put in some of the work yourself.

 

[zeke]

Can I get a link to the stickies I have seen one...

 

[m0r7if3r]

Can I get a link to the stickies I have seen one...

 

[Diggrr]

Now that you've ready them, questions??

 

[zeke]

Ummm, that is a awesome source of info thanks for making me read it... But I do have some questions. My case does have room for a resivor down at the bottom, and I believe a pump will fit down there with it, but what I was reading made me think about doing like a loop and a half where they share a rad but each "loop" has its own pump going to a t to the rad, would that be doable to cool the gc's seperate from the CPU?

And then can I modifiy my h100 to use as a water block or do I need a new water block for my CPU if I do does anyone have any reccomendations?

Exactly how much of a Benifit would water cooling my ram have in a 25-40% OC situation if any.

And finally for my system in partucular how much rad would you reccomend, I was thinking an internal 120.2 and an external 120.4 to keep it nice and cool. The rads would be in sieries.

I7 3930k
Gtx 580 soon to be two
And posibly 4 ram slots if needed

 

[Diggrr]

1. No gains from splitting your loop(s) like that. It will cost you an extra pump too.
2. You would need a new waterblock as far as I know, I don't think the tubing fittings would match up.
Do Not reuse the H100 radiator, it's aluminum, not copper/brass as most are and requires to the use of anti-corrosives in it's water supply.
3. There's no benefit to watercooling ram, unless you sell ram waterblocks.
4. With decent fans, that rad setup would work pretty well. A fan controller will allow you more quiet while you aren't gaming too.

 

[zeke]

Okay thanks, because I have just measured and have room inside my pc for everything but a 120.4 rad, I am presuming an old fan will work on this but I would like the quietest setup possible so what are some of the most quiet fans per unit of air moved?

 

[zeke]

Also I can get an old car rad for free so should I be daring and use that in place of a 120.4 external rad because I believe it would be so big that I almost wouldn't need fans on it...

 

[Diggrr]

I haven't been purchasing many fans of late, but I've seen a newcomer named Cougar making some very quite, good performing fans.
There's a thread on them in the general cooling section.

I've used a car radiator myself, and felt it could cool a nuclear reactor if need be. You have to be cautious though because ones with plastic end tanks have aluminum cores, and mixing aluminum with copper in a water loop is problematic (read: something I avoid at all costs).
There is a fair amount of skill needed to adapt the 1 1/2" radiator barbs to the usual 1/2" while being water tight, but it can be done with a few parts from the plumbing isle of Home Depot.

 

[m0r7if3r]

The other consideration is the restriction that car radiators have, so you can't skimp on pumping power.

 

[zeke]

I was considering using 8 fans to a side on the rad and then for pumping using 3 pumps on on each side of the rad and one in the middle of the loop is this overkill or warranted?

 

[bmwbaxter]

I would say stay away from the free car rad and the price you save on pumps and fans can buy a nice 4x120 rad.

 

[Diggrr]

Car radiators aren't restrictive at all. The flow area of the cross tubes is far higher than the flow area of the fittings.
However for peak efficiency, you need a lot of flow to keep water molecules defeating the boundary layer of non-moving water. Heat is transferred most efficiently when those molecules strike the copper surfaces...the idea behind the impingement water blocks.
I used a 1300 lph pump w/1" fittings, a pond pump called the Quiet One 1300. The flow was divided to 3 parallel loops in the computer by custom manifold and then recombined for the return trip in 1" tubing.

Now for the sobering knock to the science of it: Members here have used a normal 1/2" (single) pump with them and they've worked very well, even well enough to turn off the radiator fans and the temps weren't bad!
The water is slow, but the pure surface area wins out. Computers just don't have the heat load to saturate that big of a radiator, so flow rate is less important than you (or I) might think.

There is still the issue of used radiators and all the gunk that they accumulate. I'd not use one without a thorough flushing out with a chemical radiator flushing product and a garden hose. And I'd still avoid aluminum period.

I'd doubt you'd need dozens of fans in push-pull either, car radiators don't really have a high fin-per-inch count, so a group of quiet fans on one side would do just fine. Those 4 Sanyo-Denki server fans I used turned out to be overkill.
BTW, my shrouds are so tall because optimum shrouds have less than 35° angles to the sides, and my rad was 16" x 20" on the fin area.

 

[zeke]

Would a single or double 230 mm fan setup work on a larger radiator?

 

[m0r7if3r]

Would a single or double 230 mm fan setup work on a larger radiator?

Depends on the fan and the rad. The issue with the larger fans (really most everything over 120mm) is that they scale up the blade size, but not the motor power, which leads to a pretty large lack of static pressure and makes the fans struggle to get air through the rad.

 

[zeke]

Okay so I would be better off spending some extra money on a set of smaller fans

My 230's are rosewill if that means anything