Eheim 1250 pump, no reservoir needed?

[Fluxer]

Simple question: Do you need a reservoir/tank to hold water with a Eheim 1250 pump or is the water just poured into the pump?

 

[Hoot]

You don't need a resevoir with any pump. For the life of me, I don't understand everyones love affair with resevoirs. They take up additional space and add more opportunities for failure to a system. That is my personal opinion.

Hoot

 

[cyber mouse45]

You don't need a resevoir with any pump. For the life of me, I don't understand everyones love affair with resevoirs. They take up additional space and add more opportunities for failure to a system. That is my personal opinion.

Hoot

But there're so cool!! Wait 'till you see what I'm doing.

 

[Mr. $T$]

If you know how to set up a resevoir then no problem it might keep the Cpu a little cooler.

 

[Fluxer]

Thanks for the reply Hoot! Just ordered one of the nice Eheim 1250 pumps and I don't want to use a reservoir - just wanted to make sure I didn't have to.

 

[Ploaf]

You need to prime the pump if that's what you mean. It won't prime itself, but Hoot is right. I only used the reservoir to help with setup and once most of the air was out of the system the reservoir was out of there. The system is running well and is very quiet and temps are good.

 

[Fluxer]

Actually, I think there can be advantages to a reservoir system. With water cooling, you want the water to react as little as possible to heat changes so the water temperature does not increase much above ambient temperature. I think it would be easier to achieve this with more water in a reservoir compared to less water in a inline pump. The more water, the harder it will be to heat up and the closer it will be to ambient temperatures. Although, this is over looking the fact that the pumps in the reservoir generate heat over long periods. I forget who, but I remeber someone in this forum not even using a heat exchanger with their water cooling system, just using a big fish tank filled with a lot of water. In the end it seems more efficient and easier without a reservoir.

 

[Ploaf]

I think it's phiber who is using the fish tank although there could be others. I like going without because I can't keep it self contained with a res. This way everything is neat and fits in my case.

 

[Barryng]

I think some of us have lost touch with some of the basic immutable laws of mother nature (thermodynamics) when we talk of replacing a radiator with a large resevoir or fish tank.

The CPU puts energy into our cooling system at some rate. Unless this energy is being removed from the cooling system at the same rate it is going in, the temperature of the system will increase. There is nothing we can do to change this.

The fish tank represents a large mass of water. The glass sides have lousy heat transfer properties so, practically speaking it is a lousy radiator. Probably most heat is transfered out of the tank by evaporation but even this will be very limited if the tank is covered.

Since the CPU is putting energy into the system and the system (fish tank) is not doing a good job of rejecting this energy, its temperature must increase. Because the tank has a large mass of water, the rate of temperature increase will be low. Even though the tank is a lousy radiator, it is not perfectly insulated so some heat is rejected. The rate of this rejection is a function of the temperature of the tank. The higher the temperature of the tank compared to the ambient temperature surrounding it, the faster it will transfer energy to the surrounding air. Eventually the tank will get hot enough so an equilibrium is reached and the tank is rejecting as much heat as the CPU is putting in. Unfortunately, this equilibrium will only be reached at uncomfortably elevated temperatures because of the terrible heat transfer characteristics of the fish tank.

What we call a radiator is really just a heat exchanger that is relatively small and light wieght. By design and materials it efficiently transfers energy to the surrounding air. The fish tank is large, bulky, heavy, and does a terrible job of transfering or radiating energy to the surrounding air. It will do so but only at an elevated temperature will it transfer a useful amount of heat. It does represent a large thermal surge mass so it can absorb a large amount of energy before its temperature starts to noticeably rise. However, it will still eventually take on the role of a radiator.

I hope you can see my point. The fish tank is still a radiator. It is just a large unwieldy device that will not work as well as a device specifically intended to transfer energy.

 

[rivercom9]

You dont need a rservoir for that pump. Only pumps that are supposed to be submersible need reservoirs.

 

[IFMU]

Originally posted by Hoot You don't need a resevoir with any pump. For the life of me, I don't understand everyones love affair with resevoirs. They take up additional space and add more opportunities for failure to a system. That is my personal opinion.Hoot

I have to disagree with you here. There are some pumps that require the use of a resivoir. I can understand if you have a problem with resivoirs, but there are some that cannot work without it. Most of these are the home depot - fountain types that some of us are stuck to getting due to financial constraints or the difficulties of buying online.

Now in my opinion, all I have used to date is these. I have never been able to use an inline pump. To expensive or unreachable for me. I like the submersible pumps personally. Easier to use for me.

Just my 2 coppers!~!

IFMU

*EDIT* hehe.... as far as the original question. I personally couldnt say about that pump. But I would take what someone else has already said that its not needed with that pump.