Second Attempt @ Watercooling -- Two Routes (Revised 3/11)

[MiRai]

I'm trying to watercool an overclocked 5960X (which is currently under water), and three TitanX GPUs (which will hopefully be overclocked, as well). At the moment, only two of the GPUs are installed on air, and they're very warm while gaming. I am currently alleviating this by keeping the chassis next to an open door and allowing the cold outside air to help keep them cool, but it's starting to warm up around here and this 'fix' won't last for much longer. It's also a giant waste to only be using two of the three GPUs I have at my disposal, so they'll all need to go under water if I want to actually use them when it gets warmer.

So, here's the deal...

Route 1

Latest revision starts at post 20!


1) Sticking with a single loop for all components.

2) I've been told that the TitanXs will dump a lot of heat into the loop, so I'm aiming for at least 960mm of radiator, with the possibility of adding in a third radiator. I'm not entirely sure if the third radiator is going to fit, or if it'll be a 360mm rather than a 480mm--I still need to check clearance.

3) I've been thinking that if I can fit 1440mm (3x 480mm) of radiator for the GPUs that it may be a bit much for a single pump, so I'm thinking of adding in another to that loop.

This route would require that I move everything from my current setup into a totally new case, and redo everything.

I will most likely be going with Route 1, and that is where the discussion of this thread is moving toward. However, I am keeping most of this original post intact because some of it would not make sense otherwise.


Route 2

My other choice at the moment (which also seems much easier) would be to just buy one of the Koolance free-standing all-in-one units and use it for the GPU loop. I say it'd be the easier route because I would just have to run some tubing from the standalone unit over to the GPUs, and then attach some quick-disconnects on them so that I could move it all around if necessary. I could probably have it all set up and running in almost no time at all without having to deal with a ridiculous amount of cable management and the headache of measuring, ordering, and waiting for additional parts which can't be accounted for at the moment in Route 1.

I'm also thinking that if I choose this route I can put the standalone unit on a shelf which will be right next to an A/C unit in the summer time. This will obviously help dramatically improve the temps of the GPUs, and I can even add in a second standalone unit a few months later if I need to without having to redo an entire water loop which is intricate and crammed in a case.


After several hours of consideration tonight (and even more while writing out this post), I'm leaning toward the second route because I don't really want to pull everything out of my current chassis and start fresh... But, what do you think? Is there anything wrong with the Koolance unit I linked up above? Does anyone have any experience with those? There don't seem to be a lot of reviews of the unit, but am I being unreasonable to think it may not suit my needs or fail prematurely? Most importantly, am I going to lose street cred with other watercooling enthusiasts if I go with the standalone unit?

 

[moonbogg]

That coolance unit looks pretty damn nice to me. It would certainly make your life easier as you wouldn't have to make stuff fit in the case. I like your first option as well and I had lots of fun going that route myself, but option 2 looks nice as well. Hell, I like them both.

FLIP A COIN

 

[ReignQuake]

In your situation, option 2 looks far better. The fact you can provide cool air and remove the hot will really matter. That CPU is going to put negligible heat into such a loop that you'll probably be very happy with a single loop anyway. I'm happily running 980GTX SLI and 5930k. 2x 480mm radiators. Koolance waterblocks. D5 pump. Quiet and stable mode.

You seem to know that cleaning bleeding changing components and moving the system all becomes harder and more essential, sometimes you'll even need the sink or a bathtub. This is my main regret for going for a massive flat-pack watercooling case. The external radiator will make your life so much easier and you'll be able to utilise a smaller case because of it. Route 2 man.

 

[guskline]

MiRai, I have the Thermaltake Core X9 also. I have 3 XSPC RX480 rads mounted in it. I took out both HDD cages as they take up a ton of space. I mounted 2 of the rads in the roof and used the HDD bracket to mount the 3rd rad on the lower right side of the case. On the lower left side, front to back I have my XSPC dual bay twin D5 res with the face to the side so you can monitor the water level plus the rear discharge runs straight over to the 3rd rad. Next to the res I monted my 2 tb WD Hdd to the floor and to the back of it 2 Samsung 850 EVOs (500g each) in raid0. I used an old Chieftec 2.5" monting bracket. To the rear of that is my 1200W PC P&C psu.

 

[guskline]

For that much rad capacity you'll need a bigger case or an external rad like my MO-RA3-420!

 

[guskline]

Streetcreds??? Forget it. Yhey can laugh all they want, but my MO-RA3-420 Pro has aton of cooling capacity. I use it alone to cool my heavily oc'd 4790k and twin 290s.

 

[MiRai]

That coolance unit looks pretty damn nice to me. It would certainly make your life easier as you wouldn't have to make stuff fit in the case. I like your first option as well and I had lots of fun going that route myself, but option 2 looks nice as well. Hell, I like them both.

FLIP A COIN

It's most certainly a difficult decision, and I have a few weeks to decide on what I should do. After waking up this morning I'm still considering the first option because if I could pull it off I think it'd be amazing, but because it is the more expensive route with a high potential of additional costs from unforeseen issues, I'm still not completely sold. I think what I'm dreading most is having to redo all of the cable management that I just did with my InWin S-Frame. =\

In your situation, option 2 looks far better. The fact you can provide cool air and remove the hot will really matter.

Option 2 definitely seems like the better route assuming I can install a shelf so that the standalone cooling unit is able to sit in the direct line of the A/C unit's output, but that shelf doesn't exist yet.

That CPU is going to put negligible heat into such a loop that you'll probably be very happy with a single loop anyway. I'm happily running 980GTX SLI and 5930k. 2x 480mm radiators. Koolance waterblocks. D5 pump. Quiet and stable mode.

You seem to know that cleaning bleeding changing components and moving the system all becomes harder and more essential, sometimes you'll even need the sink or a bathtub. This is my main regret for going for a massive flat-pack watercooling case. The external radiator will make your life so much easier and you'll be able to utilise a smaller case because of it. Route 2 man.

Yeah, the only time the CPU begins to heat up the water is when every thread is pegged at 100% while rendering out a video, but other than that, even while gaming, it's nice and cool sitting alone on a 360mm radiator. Draining my current setup isn't a big deal because the bottom of my "case" is open and I have a drain down there, but I could see it being a bit more difficult with an actual enclosed case with multiple loops.

If I went with the second option, then in the future I could probably just pick up a second Koolance unit and put all the components on those two units sitting neatly on a shelf without having to worry about anything else. I'm estimating the total cost of the first option to probably be at least $1,800 with any additional parts (e.g. cable management stuff), shipping costs, and any taxes that I may end up having to pay, so ~$2,200 for two universal units with 2,160mm of radiator, two pumps, 18 fans, and the ability to monitor it all through built-in LCD screens doesn't seem all that crazy.

I just feel like the Koolance unit is a cop out in terms of water cooling setups, and I kind of view it like a giant version of another AIO unit. You know, something like a Corsair H110 or NZXT Kraken is nice for someone who wants to play it safe, but for someone who has done real water cooling or any custom setup in the past understands that it's kind of misleading to say you have a "water-cooled setup" when all you did was buy a basic AIO kit sealed from the factory and screwed it into place. I realize I'm probably being a bit overdramatic, but it's honestly how I kind of view those big Koolance units.

For that much rad capacity you'll need a bigger case or an external rad like my MO-RA3-420!

I just measured this morning, but I'm pretty sure I can fit a 360mm radiator on the front, no? It'd be 3 x 480mm (2x top, 1x side/bottom) and then the 360mm in the front.

 

[moonbogg]

Um, I just saw you have 4 rads in your list. FOUR 480's? Holy crap dude that's insane and you are scaring me. I'm outta here!

 

[MrTeal]

I think you're overestimating the amount of cooling you need. You won't fit four 480s in the X9, but you could fit three and a 360. Technically you could also add in another 120mm or two, but that's a little excessive.

Those are 360s, but even setting a limit of a 10C coolant rise you can dissipate about 100W per fan spot at 1300RPM. Three 480s would give you about 1200W of cooling even with a really low coolant delta.

Keep in mind the Koolance unit is rated at 2400W at a 25C delta, which is a huge difference.

I'll cede to some of the more experienced posters here, but I think you would be fine with two 480s in the top, a 480 or 360 in the side, and a single loop.

 

[thesmokingman]

1) I've been told that I should be running one loop per set of components

I would never build dual loops unless there was a very specific reason for it, like gpu mining. Imo, dual loops is generally bad advice.

 

[MiRai]

Um, I just saw you have 4 rads in your list. FOUR 480's? Holy crap dude that's insane and you are scaring me. I'm outta here!

Well, now I'm considering stacking the Core X9 to include additional radiators.

I think you're overestimating the amount of cooling you need. You won't fit four 480s in the X9, but you could fit three and a 360. Technically you could also add in another 120mm or two, but that's a little excessive.

Those are 360s, but even setting a limit of a 10C coolant rise you can dissipate about 100W per fan spot at 1300RPM. Three 480s would give you about 1200W of cooling even with a really low coolant delta.

Keep in mind the Koolance unit is rated at 2400W at a 25C delta, which is a huge difference.

I think my biggest problem is that I don't really understand how to interpret this data. Delta-T (DT) is the difference in temperature between ambient and the water in your loop, so that Koolance unit can handle 2400W of heat if there's a 25C difference between ambient and water in the loop?

I'm guessing this is at 100% fan speed which I imagine sounds like a jet engine, so I'd probably be looking for something more realistic (< 50% fan speed), which then I can assume would dissipate more like 1200W @ 25C DT?

I'll cede to some of the more experienced posters here, but I think you would be fine with two 480s in the top, a 480 or 360 in the side, and a single loop.

I may end up stacking two Core X9s in order to allow 5x 480mm radiators in a single loop , but we'll have to see what the budget is overall.

I'm guessing three pumps to be on the safe side in case one decides it wants to fail, but I'll have a breakdown of the parts a little later today (assuming I'm still considering it by then).

I would never build dual loops unless there was a very specific reason for it, like gpu mining. Imo, dual loops is generally bad advice.

Understood. I'll going to switch it up to a single loop since others are now saying I should be fine. I'm always interested in listening to what does and doesn't work for people who have been through this before.

 

[guskline]

BrightCandle gave me a rough formula to calculate the number of 120 mm rad spaces needed to cool at a 10 degree delta from ambient temp with fans at @ 800 rpms which is pretty quiet. I think it is the total wattage of heat in the loop divided by 120.
Let's run an example such as my current rig with a 5960x @ 4.4 ghz and a single GTX980 TI.
My 5960x OC'd throws a ton of heat so I estimated up to 250W. The 2 D5 pumps max dump anther 40W and finally the GTX980TI max stock is 275 but OC'd I calculate 350W. So 250+40+350=640. 640/120=5.33 rad spaces.

If we do your 3 TitanXs at 350 each we get 250+40+1050=1340. 1340/120=11.16 rad spaces so 3 480s should do fine.

 

[guskline]

MiRai if you stack the core x9s you will have plenty of space.

 

[MrTeal]

I think my biggest problem is that I don't really understand how to interpret this data. Delta-T (DT) is the difference in temperature between ambient and the water in your loop, so that Koolance unit can handle 2400W of heat if there's a 25C difference between ambient and water in the loop?

I'm guessing this is at 100% fan speed which I imagine sounds like a jet engine, so I'd probably be looking for something more realistic (< 50% fan speed), which then I can assume would dissipate more like 1200W @ 25C DT?

Yeah, pretty much exactly that. It's the temperature of the water above the ambient air temp. Not sure exactly what airflow it's specified at, it doesn't seem to say and it doesn't appear to include fans. I have a bunch of TFC1212DE-PWM fans I could sell you, I can assure you that you'd be able to get 2400W in that configuration with less than 25C delta.

I may end up stacking two Core X9s in order to allow 5x 480mm radiators in a single loop , but we'll have to see what the budget is overall.

I'm guessing three pumps to be on the safe side in case one decides it wants to fail, but I'll have a breakdown of the parts a little later today (assuming I'm still considering it by then).

Dual pumps would be fine. Even if one failed, you'd still have plenty of pressure to keep the loop running at a reasonable flow rate. The biggest benefit to running 1GPM+ is flushing air out of the system. Once you've purged the bubbles, you don't lose much at all dropping the flow rate right down.

Looking at the right hand column, there's essentially a 7% performance gain going from 0.5 GPM to 1.5 GPM with their Gentle Typhoon fans at 1300RPM, and really no performance gain with the fans at 750RPM. Dual pumps have the added benefit of having a good number of prebuilt models.

 

[thesmokingman]

Understood. I'll going to switch it up to a single loop since others are now saying I should be fine. I'm always interested in listening to what does and doesn't work for people who have been through this before.

http://www.overclock.net/lists/display/view/id/2705229


You can see my rig and it's evolution. I've done single and dual loops, internal vs external rads, triple pumps, dual psu, done that been there. Single is the way to go for 99% of setups. I also am a fan of external rads, massive amount of rads, and quick disconnects. I'm also not much in to show rigs, I don't really care what it looks like behind a covered panel. I'm just interested in the overclocks the cooling achieves.

 

[thesmokingman]

Some thoughts, I follow Martin's rule of thumb for radiator surface area, 360mm per block to start, triple gpu or higher dual pump, variable pwm pumps.

A quick look over of your specs, hexacore and three titans, not too complicated. What case are you using? It doesn't matter much if you go external but it'll be nice to have one in mind.

If I were to build that up, I'd do it just like my current rig. Also, are you using a board block? Are you overclocking? What's the purpose of this rig, to game on, work on, benchmark on, or a lil of everything?

 

[MiRai]

http://www.overclock.net/lists/display/view/id/2705229


You can see my rig and it's evolution. I've done single and dual loops, internal vs external rads, triple pumps, dual psu, done that been there. Single is the way to go for 99% of setups. I also am a fan of external rads, massive amount of rads, and quick disconnects. I'm also not much in to show rigs, I don't really care what it looks like behind a covered panel. I'm just interested in the overclocks the cooling achieves.

Good stuff. Unfortunately, I do tend to like things to be a bit flashier, and while I completely understand that it costs more to do that with little to no added functionality, it's always how I've been.

Some thoughts, I follow Martin's rule of thumb for radiator surface area, 360mm per block to start, triple gpu or higher dual pump, variable pwm pumps.

A quick look over of your specs, hexacore and three titans, not too complicated. What case are you using? It doesn't matter much if you go external but it'll be nice to have one in mind.

If I were to build that up, I'd do it just like my current rig. Also, are you using a board block? Are you overclocking? What's the purpose of this rig, to game on, work on, benchmark on, or a lil of everything?

To answer your questions in order...

1) The current machine is set up in an In-Win S-Frame which is why I'd be forced to go with the standalone Koolance unit if I want to add any additional cooling.

2) I am not using a motherboard block.

3) I am overclocking, but not by an extraordinary amount (4.5GHz @ < 1.3v), although I wouldn't necessarily mind pushing it a bit more if I can keep the temps down. Also, I would like to overclock the GPUs.

4) The machine is meant to do everything from gaming (both solo and multiboxing) to editing and rendering video.

-----------------------------

Now, earlier today I think I was getting a little out of hand thinking that I would stack two Core X9 cases and use five 480mm radiators, and while that isn't entirely out of the picture, I thought that I could approach this a bit differently and still maintain my sanity. So, Route 2 up above is still the same, but Route 1 has changed...


Route 1 (New)

VIDEO (Some quality options may be missing in certain browsers while the video processes)

One thing I'd like to add that was in the original Route 1, but I forgot to mention in the new one: I chose the most expensive fittings just to account for a worst-case scenario, when in reality the fittings will cost less because I will mostly be using 45/60/90 degree angled fittings which cost much less than the triple rotary fittings. Not all that big of a deal, but it will shave a small chunk off of the estimated total.

So, this is where I'm at...

Either I build a super custom water loop and impress people on the internet with it (and hopefully not fail miserably in the process of doing something so custom I've never done before), or I can grab one of those external Koolance standalone units and just hook it up to my current build--hell, I can almost afford two of them for the cost of the latest revision of option 1. Now, I've been thinking about this all day and clearly the first option is more fun when you're planning things out and what not, and while I was dreading redoing my cable management in a prior post, I don't think I am so much anymore after doing this mock-up.

Who knows... like I said I have up to 6-7 weeks to really decide, so by then maybe I'll have come up with some other crazy idea to try. /shrug

 

[thesmokingman]

Hmm, how will you situate the case? Where will you stuff or hide the radiators? And on the matter of rads, I would get a some MORA 3 Pros (two or three), in either 360 or 420 layout, whichever fan size you use. I use two Phobya 1080s equivalent to the MORA 3 360 and two GTX480s inside my case. I don't use the GTX rads unless benching.

http://www.performance-pcs.com/watercool-mo-ra3-360-pro-stainless-steel.html

You then use quick disconnects to string a row of these together. Use qdc's to connect the rads to your loop, and also qdc's to allow quick removal of your gpus. This is probably the most important part imo. I would use a pair of 35X2 pumps given the level of restriction of the MORAs and the amount of blocks. Given the type of loop, rads, loop size, blocks I would not run mcp655 pumps. They just don't have enough head for this type of duty.

http://www.performance-pcs.com/swiftech-mcp35x2-pump-black.html

If you look at the link of my rig pics you'll see how I have my rads hidden underneath my desk. I don't know how you will have your rig situated by given your circumstances, I would definitely go external. I don't really like Koolance for radiator duty, I prefer Watercool and Phobya for external 1080 and 1260 radiators.

I would also probably not go with PWM fan especially with that many fans. With as much radiator area as you can afford to hold, you will keep the fans static at a noise level you are comfortable with for 24-7 use. When you bench turn the fan controller up.

For fittings I would not buy a bunch or too soon. I would wait until I got most of the big components, rads, case, blocks, then start to think about how it will come together. Yours is a big ass project and it will have delays upon delays as you change this or that etc, so there's no need to crank it out and get things before you know what you really need. Once you get things into the general position you want them, start to flesh out your fittings, use yarn to tie port to port. This will give you a fuller sense of your loop and how many of what type to order.

Again, the sort of space the rig will sit in will dictate the logistics of an external rad setup. Think about and what type of rads you can use or how you will hide them in that space.

 

[MrTeal]

With three pumps, you won't need three separate reservoirs unless you really like the symmetrical look. As far as restriction goes and concern about the pump failing, I currently have the two 420 GTS rads, the 480 is a EK PE, and the 360 is an EK XE.

Not quite equal since this is for 360mm rads, but take a look at the restriction on my GTS rads (way at the bottom). One of them is likely more restrictive than all the UT60s in your planned loop together. I run those with two GPU blocks and a CPU block on a single (non-strong) D5, and get 0.8-0.9GPM doing so as measured by a flow sensor. Not trying to discourage you if you want to go that route, but three D5s is likely a bit overkill. Even with a single pump my loop has no problem handling a 1000W Furmark and Prime95 AVX load.

On your clearance measurements, make sure to take into account that you'll need to have fittings coming out of the rads and try to to underestimate the bend radius of your tubing if your not going to have straight runs.

I'd spend a bit more time looking into fans. You're going to be putting 16 of the things into your case, it might be worth spending a little more to get the Nidec GT fans so many people seem to like to use.

 

[MiRai]

Hmm, how will you situate the case? Where will you stuff or hide the radiators?

The machine is likely going to be ~10 feet away from me on a separate desk/table, so there is plenty of space to put or hide things, but I've changed some things up as I mention below.

And on the matter of rads, I would get a some MORA 3 Pros (two or three), in either 360 or 420 layout, whichever fan size you use. I use two Phobya 1080s equivalent to the MORA 3 360 and two GTX480s inside my case. I don't use the GTX rads unless benching.

http://www.performance-pcs.com/watercool-mo-ra3-360-pro-stainless-steel.html

You then use quick disconnects to string a row of these together. Use qdc's to connect the rads to your loop, and also qdc's to allow quick removal of your gpus. This is probably the most important part imo. I would use a pair of 35X2 pumps given the level of restriction of the MORAs and the amount of blocks. Given the type of loop, rads, loop size, blocks I would not run mcp655 pumps. They just don't have enough head for this type of duty.

http://www.performance-pcs.com/swiftech-mcp35x2-pump-black.html

If you look at the link of my rig pics you'll see how I have my rads hidden underneath my desk. I don't know how you will have your rig situated by given your circumstances, I would definitely go external. I don't really like Koolance for radiator duty, I prefer Watercool and Phobya for external 1080 and 1260 radiators.

At the moment I'm going to stick with putting everything in the case. Just this morning I was thinking about how to ensure that, if need be, I could add in an external radiator like the MO-RA3, and I think everything should work. I need to keep the budget a bit more under control, and $2,000 for water cooling (in addition to the existing blocks I have), was just a little too much.

I would also probably not go with PWM fan especially with that many fans. With as much radiator area as you can afford to hold, you will keep the fans static at a noise level you are comfortable with for 24-7 use. When you bench turn the fan controller up.

I talk about fans further down in reply to MrTeal.

For fittings I would not buy a bunch or too soon. I would wait until I got most of the big components, rads, case, blocks, then start to think about how it will come together. Yours is a big ass project and it will have delays upon delays as you change this or that etc, so there's no need to crank it out and get things before you know what you really need. Once you get things into the general position you want them, start to flesh out your fittings, use yarn to tie port to port. This will give you a fuller sense of your loop and how many of what type to order.

Right, the fittings that were priced in the image were for a worst-case situation and I was just trying to account for a large amount of the fittings budget. I went through this with my last setup, so I definitely understand that it can be frustrating to constantly have to wait for fittings when you realize you need more of a certain type that you didn't order enough of.

With three pumps, you won't need three separate reservoirs unless you really like the symmetrical look.

It was definitely for symmetry and aesthetics.

As far as restriction goes and concern about the pump failing, I currently have the two 420 GTS rads, the 480 is a EK PE, and the 360 is an EK XE.

Not quite equal since this is for 360mm rads, but take a look at the restriction on my GTS rads (way at the bottom). One of them is likely more restrictive than all the UT60s in your planned loop together. I run those with two GPU blocks and a CPU block on a single (non-strong) D5, and get 0.8-0.9GPM doing so as measured by a flow sensor. Not trying to discourage you if you want to go that route, but three D5s is likely a bit overkill. Even with a single pump my loop has no problem handling a 1000W Furmark and Prime95 AVX load.

I've actually gone ahead and revised the first option, yet again, this morning, and things were getting a bit out of hand yesterday in terms of spending. Last night (after posting the video above) I realized that I could mount my SSDs elsewhere and remove the HDD/SSD cage altogether. This opens up enough space for me to move pumps and reservoirs into the case itself. So, since I already have an XSPC D5 Photon 170 pump/reservoir combo, and it will fit in the case with a small modification, I decided to just add one more of those for now (again for symmetry/aesthetics). This not only cuts down on my overall cost (whew), but I think make things look a bit cleaner by keeping everything contained (for now).

It's nice to know that the AC UT60 rads that I've selected have a nice low restriction on them, but now I'm wondering if it's possible to pass water through the radiator too quickly? If the water passes through the radiator too quickly will it have enough time to be adequately cooled? I plan on using PWM pumps, so I guess I can adjust the flow manually if it's actually going to be an issue.

Also, as I mentioned above, I'm going to do my best to ensure that, with only a few additional modifications to the planned setup, I will be able to add in external radiator setups like the MO-RA3, or whatever else, if necessary.

On your clearance measurements, make sure to take into account that you'll need to have fittings coming out of the rads and try to to underestimate the bend radius of your tubing if your not going to have straight runs.

Definitely. I should be okay with about 100-115mm everywhere, which is ~4 inches.

I'd spend a bit more time looking into fans. You're going to be putting 16 of the things into your case, it might be worth spending a little more to get the Nidec GT fans so many people seem to like to use.

I'd love to have some really nice fans in this setup, but my main concern, and I realize that some may consider it to be a bit ridiculous, is color matching. At the moment, the build itself uses a red/black color scheme, and I'd like to keep that if I can since I can re-use my custom cabling and not have to paint any part of the motherboard. Technically, I could go red, white, and black, but I'm going to have to look around at fans.

So far, I've heard of Noise Blocker eLoop fans, and now you mention the Nidec Gentle Typhoon fans (which looks like they used to be Scythe)--both are supposed to be able to get the job done and stay pretty quiet. The only problem with these is that they're white and black, so now I have to figure out what I want to do with the color scheme.

LEDs would be nice, but not necessary since I can just slap some LED strips into the case and light things up, so there's that.

PWM, however, seems to be a mixed bag? This MSI motherboard has very good PWM control built into the BIOS (every 4-pin fan header has its own separate control with several different points of adjustment for speed & degrees), so I'm almost wondering why someone wouldn't want to go with a PWM setup if they could? Even if PWM isn't all that necessary, I could easily just set every single point in the adjustment graph to be the same speed regardless of the temperature, but I feel like I could be saving some power when the machine is hardly being used by toning down the fan speed a bit, no?


Now, I know I'm most likely going to catch a lot of flack for this, but I've also decided that I'd like to go with hard tubing. I completely understand that soft tubing is much easier to work with, but this is something I've wanted to try and I feel that it gives a cleaner look overall. Having said that, I will be doing my best to plan around weird clearance issues--like being able to remove the RAM without having to remove hard tubing that could be in the way and what not. I do not plan on bending the tubing myself, and I plan on using the Bitspower couplers to attach straight pieces of tubing together. I imagine this is a bit more restrictive, but am I honestly going to notice it?

Here's the updated parts list without any fans or the additional Phobya splitters.

Latest Parts List (3/11):

 

[MrTeal]

That looks good, though you'll want to look into a bending kit for the hard tubing.

On the fans, Nidec is the large OEM (Similar to Delta, Comair Rotron, Sunon, etc) that actually makes the fans. Scythe sold the fans in the computer cooling market quite successfully. Unfortunately they're getting hard to get now, but the EK Vardar series is pretty highly reviewed and shares a striking visual similarity with them.

In my system I use PWM splitters to control the two sets of fans separately, as the 140mm fans and 120mm fans have different PWM/Noise/Airflow curves. With the kind of money you're looking at spending, I'd really look at getting a good fan controller with a couple temperature inputs. One disadvantage I've found with my current setup is that I'm really basing the fan speed on the wrong thing. With an air cooler the thermal resistance between die and cooler is often much less than the cooler to air thermal resistance, so just looking at die temp and controlling PWM works pretty well. With water it's a lot tougher to do that. Try looking at your core temps at idle, and then start running 16 threads of AVX2 P95 with constant fan speed. You'll see your temps jump up immediately, and then keep slowly rising as the temp in your loop equalizes. At least for me, that immediate jump from silicon to water is much larger than the increase in water temp from idle to steadystate, which makes setting a fan curve a nightmare. If I were you (and I do plan to do this at some point), I would set the PWM of the fans based on the ambient and water temperature. That will give a much smoother fan profile.

The other big gotcha with motherboard PWM control is selecting a control signal. You don't want to just look at CPU temps; if you're rendering on three Titan X's and dumping 750W into the loop but just looking at the CPU temp your GPU temperatures are going to get a little high. In a lot of ways just setting the fans and forgetting it is a lot easier. The benefits of fan control are pretty substantial though. Depending on your use profile, it can make it a lot cheaper to build your system as you can use less rad and faster fans for the same cooling capacity. Looking at the table I posted awhile ago of cooling capacity vs fan speed, @ 1GPM you get around 70% better cooling 1300RPM vs 750RPM. In your system, that's equivalent to running what you have at 1300RPM or adding another 10.5 fan placements with the fans at 750RPM which is a pretty massive difference. If you're primarily only going to be under full load while gaming, a slightly louder system at that time might definitely be worth ramping them down to 500RPM and having a quieter and smaller system when idle or semi-idle.

As for passing water through to quickly, don't worry about it. The water might move through faster at higher flow rates, but there's always the same amount of it in the radiator. If you want to think of it another way, one water molecule might move through the radiator faster, but it will also make more trips through the rad each minute.

For mounting SSDs, look underneath the MB tray. There's another tray there with spots for mounting two drives.

 

[MiRai]

That looks good, though you'll want to look into a bending kit for the hard tubing.

It's most certainly on my list of things to do in the future, but because I'd like the least amount of downtime while moving everything over to the new case, I'd like to take the slightly easier route and just use couplers this time around.

On the fans, Nidec is the large OEM (Similar to Delta, Comair Rotron, Sunon, etc) that actually makes the fans. Scythe sold the fans in the computer cooling market quite successfully. Unfortunately they're getting hard to get now, but the EK Vardar series is pretty highly reviewed and shares a striking visual similarity with them.

Gotcha.

In my system I use PWM splitters to control the two sets of fans separately, as the 140mm fans and 120mm fans have different PWM/Noise/Airflow curves. With the kind of money you're looking at spending, I'd really look at getting a good fan controller with a couple temperature inputs. One disadvantage I've found with my current setup is that I'm really basing the fan speed on the wrong thing. With an air cooler the thermal resistance between die and cooler is often much less than the cooler to air thermal resistance, so just looking at die temp and controlling PWM works pretty well. With water it's a lot tougher to do that. Try looking at your core temps at idle, and then start running 16 threads of AVX2 P95 with constant fan speed. You'll see your temps jump up immediately, and then keep slowly rising as the temp in your loop equalizes. At least for me, that immediate jump from silicon to water is much larger than the increase in water temp from idle to steadystate, which makes setting a fan curve a nightmare. If I were you (and I do plan to do this at some point), I would set the PWM of the fans based on the ambient and water temperature. That will give a much smoother fan profile.

The other big gotcha with motherboard PWM control is selecting a control signal. You don't want to just look at CPU temps; if you're rendering on three Titan X's and dumping 750W into the loop but just looking at the CPU temp your GPU temperatures are going to get a little high. In a lot of ways just setting the fans and forgetting it is a lot easier. The benefits of fan control are pretty substantial though. Depending on your use profile, it can make it a lot cheaper to build your system as you can use less rad and faster fans for the same cooling capacity. Looking at the table I posted awhile ago of cooling capacity vs fan speed, @ 1GPM you get around 70% better cooling 1300RPM vs 750RPM. In your system, that's equivalent to running what you have at 1300RPM or adding another 10.5 fan placements with the fans at 750RPM which is a pretty massive difference. If you're primarily only going to be under full load while gaming, a slightly louder system at that time might definitely be worth ramping them down to 500RPM and having a quieter and smaller system when idle or semi-idle.

You're absolutely right about the points where I'll be reading the temperature from. I guess if I can stick with PWM then I'll stick with PWM so that I can manually adjust the fans where I want them to be and so there won't be large spikes in water temperature while they ramp up. Like you said, more fans will make things slightly quieter, so I may actually run a push/pull setup on some (or all) of the radiators which will allow me to drop the RPM down even more.

EDIT: It looks like there is a PWM version of the Nidec Gentle Typhoon.

As for passing water through to quickly, don't worry about it. The water might move through faster at higher flow rates, but there's always the same amount of it in the radiator. If you want to think of it another way, one water molecule might move through the radiator faster, but it will also make more trips through the rad each minute.

That makes sense.

For mounting SSDs, look underneath the MB tray. There's another tray there with spots for mounting two drives.

That's exactly where I found the mounting positions. At first, I didn't realize I could remove the plastic piece under there and flip the tray itself so that I can mount them directly to the metal piece.

Well, this is all exciting, and I may pick up the radiators here in the next week so that I can get them in place to get a better feel for where everything might end up. I've got a bunch of spare 120mm fans lying around so that I can actually see what type of clearance I'm going to have, and I should be able to get a better estimate as to which fittings I'll be using.

Thanks, again, to everyone who has (and who will) add their feedback.

 

[guskline]

You can buy the ap15 gentle typhoons from cooler dude guys

 

[moonbogg]

Why are you getting different versions of the same rad? You are getting two standard 480's and one X-flow 480. BTW I have the UT60's and think they are pretty awesome. What made you choose those rads?

 

[MiRai]

Why are you getting different versions of the same rad? You are getting two standard 480's and one X-flow 480. BTW I have the UT60's and think they are pretty awesome. What made you choose those rads?

The reason for the different radiators is mentioned in the video I posted last night, but it's for the purpose of easy tube routing.

As for why I chose them, well I wanted a thicker radiator and I wanted to try out Alpha Cool. I wish I had a better reason than that, but now I know they're non-restrictive and that's even better.