Best custom reservoir setup

[Costas Athan]

Prompted by aigomorla's photos:

in the thread "Water cooling air eliminators", I started this thread to seek opinions on custom reservoir setups.

What are the best practices to get the most out of a custom reservoir?

 

[Agent11]

Depends on loop requirements.

If you are going to run parallel loops you need enough ports, if you use a high power pump you need enough volume to allow the water to settle as well as allow easier filling, space requirements factor in, bay reservoir or tube have very different footprints. Then there is what you find aesthetically pleasing, there's lots of bling available.

Otherwise it just needs to hold water and not suck air.

 

[Costas Athan]

Depends on loop requirements.

If you are going to run parallel loops you need enough ports, if you use a high power pump you need enough volume to allow the water to settle as well as allow easier filling, space requirements factor in, bay reservoir or tube have very different footprints. Then there is what you find aesthetically pleasing, there's lots of bling available.

Otherwise it just needs to hold water and not suck air.

I'm interested in single loop configurations and I'm talking about performance not aesthetics.

You say that high power pumps need reservoirs of greater volume, but there is more than that in aigomorla's setup. For example there is a vortex breaker at the base of the reservoir and there is a second department with an inner tube which I'm not sure what it does.

 

[Agent11]

They don't really 'need' it, it's just helpful because they tend to cause vortexes and turbulence in smaller reservoirs. With cylindrical reservoirs especially because of the shape, so they started putting those baffles in many of them.

Everything else is mostly cosmetic.

If the reservoir design incorporates a pump it can have an impact on performance but it isn't much.

The tube you mention simply extends the reservoir inlet, in an effort to reduce turbulence at the outlet. Not required, but it helps reduce bubbles getting sucked into the outlet.