Advice on my plan for a first time water custom loop.

[El-Skunk]

Right I've just got a Corsair 900D case to build a custom watercooling loop.

These are the parts I already have:

• GTX 690 (SLI)
• i7 3770k
• Sabertooth z77 Mobo
• Seasonic Platinum 1000w
• Corsair Vengeance Ram 16GB

Everything is in my current air cooled PC bar one of the 690's.

My loop design:

Green arrows are where I'll try to hide the tubing.

Now my questions are:

1. Does this loop look sensible to anyone?
2. Should I change the top rad to be a 360 instead of quad?
3. Should I use push/pull on the rads (there is space to do that)
4. I'm only going to use distilled water but what size tubing should I use?

Finally
The XSPC 690 GPU block is what I was looking at for theGTX 690's. However this has aluminium in. From reading up this seems a really bad idea in a loop?? (All the other blocks listed are copper/plexi. Can someone confirm I shouldn't put aluminium anywhere near this.

Thanks for reading, any advice really appreciated.

 

[smackababy]

You are right in the aluminum + copper is a bad idea. You will get galvanic corrosion.

I am not sure why you are showing something going to your fan controller. That shouldn't have anything water should go through. Unless it measures the water temps and adjusts the fans accordingly (which would be pretty cool).

What you want it is the shortest loop possible. Res / pump -> radiator -> cpu -> gpu -> gpu -> radiator -> res / pump looks like it will be the shortest. I think your loop could be done with a 360 in top, but that is up to you. Dual 480s should give you 800w+ of heat dissipation. The 690 has a 300w TDP, so sli would mean 600w, that leaves ~200w for your CPU.

For tubing, I always go with 1/2" ID, 3/4" OD Tygon tubing. It is more expensive, but I have never had a problem and never have to worry about it. If you're going to just use distilled water, you will need some sort of kill coil or additive to stop growth. I use a kill coil + distilled water myself.

I don't believe push / pull configuration will offer any added benefit. Just get a quality fan with good static pressure.

I would also look into dual pumps. That is a lot of hardware to be cooling and if your pump fails for some reason, everything will be heating up rather quickly. Dual pumps, at the very least, will keep you up and running until you get a new pump installed.

 

[El-Skunk]

I am not sure why you are showing something going to your fan controller. That shouldn't have anything water should go through. Unless it measures the water temps and adjusts the fans accordingly (which would be pretty cool).

It's the Aquaero 5 XT

http://martinsliquidlab.org/2011/12/20/ac-aquaero-5-review-guide-wip/10/

This page shows the block which is used to cool the fan controller so I can chain more fans onto it.

What you want it is the shortest loop possible. Res / pump -> radiator -> cpu -> gpu -> gpu -> radiator -> res / pump looks like it will be the shortest. I think your loop could be done with a 360 in top, but that is up to you. Dual 480s should give you 800w+ of heat dissipation. The 690 has a 300w TDP, so sli would mean 600w, that leaves ~200w for your CPU.

Is a quad rad going to be cool enough for going through the CPU then 2 x GPU? Also with 200w for the CPU I presume this leaves me a bit tight if I start looking at overclocking?

I don't believe push / pull configuration will offer any added benefit. Just get a quality fan with good static pressure.

I'm going for the Corsair SP 120 HP fans.

I would also look into dual pumps. That is a lot of hardware to be cooling and if your pump fails for some reason, everything will be heating up rather quickly. Dual pumps, at the very least, will keep you up and running until you get a new pump installed.

The Aquaero fan controller can be setup to monitor if your pump or res loses water and shut the system down.

 

[dma0991]

Leave out watercooling from the Aquaero 5 XT, it should do just fine with the fins. You're over complicating the loop by routing tubes back and forth from the fan controller.

 

[El-Skunk]

So do you think I could chain 4 fans on the quad rad together using a splitter and the XT would be ok? I think I might need to read up some more on fan amps and controllers.

 

[dma0991]

Depends on how many watts does each channel supports. My Lamptron FC5v2 is rated to support 30W per channel which is a lot, even possible for 4 fan daisy chaining but 4 way Y-splitters are rare(usually 2-3).

Corsair SP120 HP is rated at 0.18A@12V which is about 2.16W. From the review, it said that it has a maximum of 1.5A per channel, 18W maximum per channel. That's way more than 4 Corsair SP120 could pull. Simply put, if the Aquaero 5 XT required watercooling for within specification use, its failure by design if it shipped with fin heatsinks that isn't sufficient to dissipate the heat. Of course, you could add in the block for added bling that nobody will ever see.

 

[smackababy]

Leave out watercooling from the Aquaero 5 XT, it should do just fine with the fins. You're over complicating the loop by routing tubes back and forth from the fan controller.

This +10.

The fact that you are only cooling it makes it pretty worthless. If it monitored your system and adjusted the fans accordingly, it would be completely optional, but at least have a use. This is just adding complexity and additional heat to your loop for no reason other than to say "it is water cooled".


Your quad rads should be enough. 100w per 120x1 rad is a fairly conservative estimate. It should be between 100w-120w, and the TDP of your CPU is 77w. So, the total combined TDP is 677w, and that is at full load. Add in the heat from your pump and you are still safe.

I prefer to pump parity because I've had my only single pump loop fail on me and if I wasn't monitoring, it should have shut down due to heat. My CPU was around 90C when I noticed something wasn't working. I would much rather not take the chance of a pump failing and something not shutting off in time before damage occurs. But, if you trust something monitoring it, go ahead. Best case scenario for a single pump failing is you're down until you can get a replacement. That doesn't happen in a dual pump loop unless both fail (which is pretty unlikely).

 

[T_Yamamoto]

Your loop design is okay but it won't look pretty.

 

[dma0991]

I forgot to mention that XSPC X20 will not be sufficient for that much watercooling gear. The restriction will be too high to allow optimal performance. If you're adamant on a bay reservoir, got for Koolance RP-452X2 with dual MCP-655 for redundancy or my recommendation is a compact tube reservoir combination, MCP35X2 + tube reservoir.

 

[Aikouka]

I forgot to mention that XSPC X20 will not be sufficient for that much watercooling gear. The restriction will be too high to allow optimal performance. If you're adamant on a bay reservoir, got for Koolance RP-452X2 with dual MCP-655 for redundancy or my recommendation is a compact tube reservoir combination, MCP35X2 + tube reservoir.

The Koolance bay reservoir is certainly a nice option. I considered using one in my 900D, which meant that I'd have to drop my optical drive, but it's still nicer than trying to find a spot to mount the two pumps.