[Aparition]

Hi all. Once again I'm posting from my phone so please forgive any funkiness.

I'm in the process of installing the loop into my rig thus the phone posting. What I have for you all today are results from a flow test I did between using one pump and two pumps.



For the setup I used a simple method of timing how fast it takes to empty an amount of water into a measuring cup. The other good thing about this test is that I can flush the loop with some distilled water.



Setup took a bit of time. I had some trouble getting all the air out but after performing the traditional radiator dance of our peoples I was ready to go.

After doing 4 runs I consistently measured a little less than 100ml of water. I was going to do some better testing than a simple time test but my reservoir is very small, so I only had a tiny amount of water to measure before the pumps would start pulling air from the reservoir. I did attempt to extend my loop into a larger container from the reservoir but it didn't work and I just made a large mess.

So let's get scientific!
What we need first is a control. That would be the same test done but with only a single pump and radiator. This will give us the flow of the AIO is it was originally intended.



We have the single loop setup all ready to go. The amount of water in the reservoir is the amount I will use through out the testing. To try too keep it consistent I just put the water collected in the measuring cup back into the reservoir.

The other factor is where the water holds in the drain side of the loop, going into the measuring cup. The natural pressure of the loop with the tube sitting in the cup about the same place every time left about 6 inches of water consistently, so that will just have to do.

For the control I ran 3 tests which came out at an average of 6.8 seconds. Just shy of 7 seconds.

Ok! Onto the main event!



Here is the level I stopped timing at. Just as the water level hit the top of the barb fitting. If I let it go past that the pump would pull air into the radiator.



In the test I will measure the flow of 1 pump and then 2 pumps in the completed loop.

The results!

Control: 6.8 seconds.
1 pump: 11.3 seconds
2 pumps: 7.2 seconds

Ain't that interesting! We all know these pumps are small and low flow designed. From a visual test to see how well a single pump did versus 2 pumps didn't give me any indication of a difference in flow rate. Clearly there is a noticeable difference. While the impact in temperature is still to be determined we can conclude that the larger the loop the less flow a single pump will have.

With the single pump test I didn't have any trouble sucking air into the radiators when I let the reservoir empty to much so a single pump will still work.

Next up will be the temperature comparison!

 

[Rickles]

You will want to put a corrosion inhibitor in there or switch out the radiators as they are usually aluminium cores in AIOs.

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

my past takes on this mod.

 

[Aparition]

Nice! Yes I plan on using mayhems for the completed loop. In the short term I still have the glycol mixture from the original loop I will partially mix in.

I'm concerned about plasticizer so I'll probably switch out the tubing then as well, for the finished loop.

 

[Rickles]

You can always go with norprene, it just kinks easily. Although black tubing isn't for everybody.

 

[Aparition]

Surprise!

I still have not received my GPU bracket so I got impatient and finished the dual loop just on my CPU. It's been an interesting ride that is for certain.

To start let's send a a very good farewell to the workhorse of my system for over 5 years. It started with a simple C2D e7200 on a budget P45 board. It performed brilliantly cooling a simple dual core CPU. It went on to a Q9550 keeping things in check and allowing an overclock of 3.8 for everyday use. Then it went on in a brief period cooling a Sandy 2600k on a new Asus P8Z77-V motherboard. It was short lived because the new Ivy 3770k released just a week later. For a whole year it cooled a 3770k at 4.5 Ghz for 24/7 keeping things under 80'c even during the toughest encoding session.

We wish you well, you tried and tested, CPU cooler.
Xigmatek S1283.



Now I have to share something with you all. During the installation of the Kuhler 620 I ran into a small issue. Nothing too concerning but I feel it does need attention.

Here you see the back-plate and the back of the motherboard. Look closely. The white strips are the sticky pads, but I hate those things, so I leave the covering on.


This is the issue. Where the white pad is on the right hand side of the bracket you can see it rests directly up on the soldered pins. When you go to tighten down the bracket these pins will push into the pad. Not a risk I want to take. A simple modification to the pad will fix this issue.


You can see the indention of the pins when I gently pressed the pad against them. This is the section to cut.


Now when the bracket is pressed up against the rear of the motherboard the soldered pins will rest safely between the pad.

On to the Madness!

This the loop setup I am going to use. The 300R is an Air designed case. Thus water is very difficult to build into the case. I wanted to run both radiators at the top, but there was not enough clearance by the RAM locks, the Optical bay, and where the mounting holes aligned on the mesh top. Fan would fit fine, as the case is designed around Air.

Nope, I was not going to build outside of the case.

This setup works. I had to shave a mm off part of the top radiator fan to give just the whisper of clearance needed to not press on the memory locking tab. But it all fits! When the bracket comes for the GPU all I will do is connect it between the reservoir and radiator, simple.

Running Loop!


The pump is a tad loud at the moment. I primed the loop outside of the case and the pump wasn't making near as much noise. Must be an air bubble still in there...

I tried rotating and tapping the pump to try to dislodge any trapped air but I didn't see any come out. I'll work on it. With the side panels on and sitting 1 ft away all I hear is a gently woosh of the fans.

Now for what everyone wants to know. How well does it cool? OK!
So I did this similar to how I did the flow. I ran a prime95 session for 8 passes using 4k.
Setup was the Xig S1283 with the CPU at 4.5 Ghz using Offset. CPUz will show the rest.



Next shot is of the exact same setup with the Prime95 stress test using the Dual Radiator Kuhler Loop!



Keep in mind my 3770k is still lidded.
With the Air cooler my max temp during that stress test was 80'c.
With the Kuhler loop my max temp was 73'c
The greatest difference between core delta was 10'c !

So now we have a baseline for the Kuhler loop without the GPU. Since I don't have a true custom water setup I don't know how this compares. I'll try to dig around for some temp reports but I expect most will be for above 4.5 clocks.

Thanks guys!

 

[Aparition]

Success! Pumps gone quiet.

So I did a little pump transplanting. The pump head I initially installed I made no modification or adjustment too. No matter how I tried I could not get that pump to stop rattling. I'm sure it was air but I didn't feel like waiting. I removed the loop from the system and tried to get those air bubbles out, but was never successful. The second pump head I had previously dismantled and actually found a bit of plastic jutting out from the impeller.

Using a razor blade and piece of fine 1500 grit sand paper I rounded off those rough edges. There was a tiny bit of excess on the impeller blades as well so I took a very tiny sliver off the end of the prop as well.

Image View of what I Did!

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

Here is what the copper block looks like inside! The channels are extremely small between the copper fins. Water is pulled through those channels, by the impeller, and then back towards the radiators.



On my first mount I noticed the TIM was not uniform on the die. I cleaned it up and re-mounted the new pump and block.
I didn't have to dismantle and drain the whole loop. All I did was remove the barbs from the pump, and then install them into the other pump. By positioning the pump just above level with the rest of the loop I kept the water inside. A little leaked out but was easily replaced.
I actually lowered the water level a tad in the reservoir anyways, so no big deal.

Here is a new temp screenshot. It is even better! Remember the air cooler I was getting 80'c during this prime95 test. Now the hottest core is ~71'c and the average staying in the 50's and 60's !

 

[Aparition]

I got a couple of 920's in the mail the other day

The Antec rep here on the forums was very kind in sending these my way to play with.

I also received the GPU Cool prototype bracket. You can find more information about that, and some more pictures, here...
http://www.overclock.net/t/1423091/gpu-cool-the-new-mod-for-your-card-coming-soon

Pictures of the bracket on my 780.


Shot with the Kuhler 620 pump


Some shots of the full install

with the 920's.



I'm not done yet. Now that I have the system up and running I will be working towards improving the layout. I'm just not happy with it yet.

To switch the loop from the 620 pumps to the 920 is very easy to do. All I did was remove the barb, with the tube on, and stick it in the other pump. Bleed the loop once more and then call it a day.

The loop isn't quite finished yet, aside from the layout, temps at load are not what they should be so I will be replacing TIM and adjusting the mounting brackets.
The loop is as quiet as my loudest fan. The 920 pumps are higher LPM than the 620 pumps so that should change the final numbers a bit. It is a nice feature of the 920's to measure temperature of the water. So far at load the water stays at ~23'c (72'F). GPU idle is ~24-25'c and CPU is ~28'c.
The temperatures spike when load is placed on the chips but dramatically decline when load stops. A GPU load of ~70'c drops back down to ~30's in a mere second.

 

[thebufenator]

Great stuff. I have a TT Water 2.0 pro and an Extreme. The pro is not in use, so I guess my new plan is to add the radiator from the pro to the extreme that I am using.

Did you notice a temp difference between the old and newer waterblocks?.

 

[Aparition]

The only difference I can see between the 620 and 920 blocks are the impeller rpm's. The 920 spin up to 3k rpm while the 620 I think is between 1500-2000rpm's.
I did not measure any significant difference between the blocks, nope. My margin of error is about 5 'c, as the time to switch out the pump blocks and then bleed the whole system again is about 30 minutes, so it is hard to see any small differences.

What I did find is that the 920's were a bit quieter, and more quickly, than the 620. The higher speed of the 920 I think had a large part in this.
The way these impellars are designed it looks like they behave better the faster they go.

Maybe in the future I'd be able to get a full water block for my GPU, and that would be a great test. That is out of my reach for now though.

 

[Nukemaster]

This is great

 

[Aparition]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nukemaster

This is great

Thanks! Still cooling well, and no leaks.
I'm on the fence now about de-lidding my CPU

I need to update the main page I think

 

[Nukemaster]

Best part is when either the cpu or video card is loaded it gets the cooling from both rads and together they still get good cooling.

Would love to try that with my H80i + LQ310(letting the H80i pump do all the work if I could), but I have no real liquid cooling experience. And both my coolers are rather new.

 

[Aparition]

That would be interesting to try. Using the same pumps does not negatively affect flow.

I don't know how mixing 2 different pumps would work. If they ran at the same rpm there may be no problems at all.

I don't think the flow might be horribly affected from different pumps but the slower pump might have a higher wear from the flow rate change.

 

[Nukemaster]

One never knows when another H80i or some Asetek cooler will come on sale

If I could get 2 the same it would be interesting(I also like your rez because you will never run dry without being able to see it).

My FT03 case makes it quite hard to fit a proper liquid cooler setup inside(at least so little experience in custom loops).

 

[Aparition]

If you can fit an AIO you can fit a custom loop especially with using these pump block systems. There are in line tube reservoirs that are smaller than my micro res. They tend to be more expensive though. I was able to modify my kuhlers for just about $35. Which was a goal of the mod.

Once you start spending money there comes a point where investing in an AIO mod loses value compared to similar money in better parts.

It's a great mod to do if like me you have some aging tech that can be played with.

 

[Nukemaster]

The micro res would fit, but adding an actual pump would take more space.

Now I do have thoughts of how to fit everything in my case

 

[ADHDadditiv]

Totally following this. I would never do it but good on you for actually doing so!

 

[Aparition]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ADHDadditiv

Totally following this. I would never do it but good on you for actually doing so!

Cheers man!
Been a while since I've done an update. The system is running great, just with all the holidays have not had the time to get some benches in for temp runs.

Mod works great though, and for the price it is hard to beat

 

[Gereti]

hmm, i have one question about this mod

can i dot this using ounly 1/4 tubing?
and second, i have now cuhler 620 with 2x120mm reference radiator (i haven't do this, i bought it with modded,)
i was going to get one , leaking 620 unit with cheap 15e+post's price

i have same watertank what you have, got it 5e+post's but...

i was thinking, how about phenom II x6+7870 cooed with 3x120mm rad+2x those pump-block's,

but, may i have to buy 3/8 tubing becose i have that tank, or can i just try to put 1/4 tubing to 3/8 fitting's,

 

[Aparition]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gereti

hmm, i have one question about this mod

can i dot this using ounly 1/4 tubing?
and second, i have now cuhler 620 with 2x120mm reference radiator (i haven't do this, i bought it with modded,)
i was going to get one , leaking 620 unit with cheap 15e+post's price

i have same watertank what you have, got it 5e+post's but...

i was thinking, how about phenom II x6+7870 cooed with 3x120mm rad+2x those pump-block's,

but, may i have to buy 3/8 tubing becose i have that tank, or can i just try to put 1/4 tubing to 3/8 fitting's,

Yes you can use the 1/4 tubing size that fits the pumps barbs. You can try to fit 1/4 tubing over 3/8 by heating the end of the tubing up so it is very soft, just be careful that you don't burn it, hot water can be a good way to try this.

You can also buy connectors that change the link size. They are called reducers. Shop around for the best price, you can find them in plastic and in brass... Brass Reducer

360mm of rad is enough to cool a Phenom2 and a 7870, yup.