Is res/pump combo worth it?

[Slufa111]

Black Ice GT Stealth 240 X-Flow Radiator
Koolance Water Block for CPU-380i
MCP655 modded with tapped fittings
Bitspower Water Tank Z-Multi 150

Would it be worth it or provide any sort of extra cooling (aside from less space) to get the upgrade kit for mcp655 and z-multi 150? Right now it is all separate.

 

[Cerb]

Frankly, a lot of what you're paying for is looks. I mean, you could use an inline pump, and an auto/industrial rad, and get as good or better cooling, cheaper, and probably wouldn't need a reservoir, but it would look downright fugly.

What, "upgrade kit," specifically, and what case is it all going in?

The single res/pump bracket kit, FI, just neatens up your space, and if you have the length available, allows the setup to more easily take less total space, and/or be easily mounted where it might otherwise be difficult. The normal side mount, FI, needs a lot of case space, while the single top upgrade kit basically just requires a mount above it or below it. Some people have used that to get some really tight MicroATX and MiniITX cases to work, for instance.

I might be mistaken, but the dual version looks like it makes the pumps work back to back, which would work, but I would question how much added cooling capacity that would offer, given that you're using a single radiator, especially when the dual version is about the cost of 2 singles, which would support 2 reservoirs (doubling your water, which accounts for thermal mass).

I'm going mostly by knowledge of physics, so I might be missing something, but aside from pump redundancy, I'm not sure you'd get all that much, without a lot of hoses and multiple rads (in which case, the pump has more work to do, and impeller pumps in series would reduce the load per pump) (example). IoW, an impeller pump kind of sucks against a lot of pressure, in terms of flow, but is good at keeping flow going anyway (much like a squirrel cage fan, and for the same reasons). With not too many connections, not too many hose or radiator bends, etc., any fairly high-flow one is probably as good as any other (ones like the MCP655 have the advantage of mods/add-ons to fit), save maybe for reliability and/or noise concerns, unless the radiator is undersized (doubtful). But, as the pressure to work against increases, multiple pumps will reduce the pressure each one has to work against, so those more complex builds can definitely use them.

OTOH, most of my tweaking has been on the opposite end of things (I can't buy fans rated to run at 200RPM, anymore ), so there may be some specific parts issues, or bits of theory I'm wrong on.

 

[Slufa111]

http://www.frozencpu.com/products/1...de_Kit_150-_Clear_BP-D5TOPUK150AC-BKCLCL.html is the upgrade kit.

and the case is an antec p280.


I wish there were reviews on different cooling schemes such as a pump/res combo versus all separate.

 

[Cerb]

If you don't have a high-end video card looped through the same radiator, I would be very surprised if even the dual-pump upgrade would do better, or even an added radiator.

I know what you mean about reviews, and I haven't used anything like those parts (I switched gears the other way, right around the time I would have gone into water and such), but if you're using typical 3/8" or 1/2" tube, that is the full list of major parts in the loop, and with a fairly big radiator like that (for just CPU, anyway), I have a hard time believing you'll get much by improving the water part of it. Assuming a couple feet of tubing, the 150 res mostly full, and that radiator, that's a ton of thermal mass, and plenty of surface area.

Based on your temperatures thread, you're at 4.8GHz. That high, stable, is no small feat (most air OCs topped out around 4.3-4.5), and I'm thinking along the lines of IDC, that you're probably in that last stretch of what your CPU can give you, short of going to LN2 level extremes.

 

[Slufa111]

I see what you mean. I was thinking of buying a 7950 and cooling that with an additional single 120mm radiator. It would be a side grade if anything but there are no full blocks for my non reference 6950. Any input on that?

 

[BrightCandle]

I have 3 radiators, 2 GPUs, 1 CPU plus the reservoir and at one point 2 extra blocks on the motherboard and I still only needed one pump. You don't really need two pumps, I have them now for redundancy not for performance.

I see what you mean. I was thinking of buying a 7950 and cooling that with an additional single 120mm radiator. It would be a side grade if anything but there are no full blocks for my non reference 6950. Any input on that?

The 7950 is quite a bit quicker than the 6950, should be about +50%. You haven't mentioned your fan speeds but make sure you do the maths and confirm your dissipation matches your heat input. A GPU puts more heat into a loop than an overclocked CPU does.

 

[Slufa111]

Could you explain this fan math to me?

 

[BrightCandle]

There is a rough rule (and a precise calculation for particular models) that goes something like this. A 120mm fan slot with a typical fan at 800rpm can cool 120W of heat to a water delta temperature of 10C. If you exceed 120W it can still be cooled but the water temperature will be higher, past about 17-20C water cooling starts to perform worse than air cooling and hence we usually say 10C is about the point where its worth having water cooling, 5C is good cooling and 2C is extreme.

So however you calculated your dissipation thermals before when building your custom loop you'll want to revisit those reviews and numbers and calculate your total dissipation performance and make sure it can cover your CPU (what ever its dissipation is) combined with the GPU to somewhere around 10C, or be willing to loose some CPU overclock and potentially run a warm loop.