[Thingamajig]

No.

I don't need help deciding if i should go it - i already went watercooling years ago

- i need help deciding if i should spend the money on a single, thin 120 radiator to sit on the rear of the case to prepare for the load of both GPU and CPU cooling.

I was about to shell out the cash for some more coolant and compression fittings...and with change left over, i thought i'd ask here if it would be a good idea.

Here's a picture to detailing what i have planned:

Blue squares are fans, grey, radiators. You may be wondering why i have the bottom radiator sitting on two 120mm fans, this is because the radiator screw holes don't align with the case, so the fans secure the rad in place. I was considering downgrading to a thinner rad, but seems an awful waste.

I've never really fully understood the best way to approach fan push/pull. Perhaps you guys could shred some light on that subject? (Would be much appreciated)

Here's a pic of the way things are currently:

I freakin love this case. Bit boring to look at but so well designed/made

Anyway, cheers in advance!

 

[Arksniper]

I love my compressions they look so nice and clean was worth the 80$ to me.

As to the coolant distilled water and a kill coil was all I needed. I wanted to avoid all coolants that weren't 1$ distilled water because paying 18 x the price isn't worth it since they tend to be about the same.

As for rads I run just fine on temps with a RX360 cooling a i7 930 and 5970. You will probably be ok without the additional 120.

As to the push/pull. Push/pull gives better performance by moving more air thru the rad. Push or Pull offer about the same in terms of performance. You can add another set of fans on the bottom rads and you might see 1-2C difference depending on ambient tepms and such.

 

[mastical]

Wait so you have 2 240 rads for one cpu?

 

[Arksniper]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mastical Wait so you have 2 240 rads for one cpu?

If the pic is correct then yes he does lol super overkill but it looks like he might have planned for adding gpus later.

 

[Thingamajig]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arksniper I love my compressions they look so nice and clean was worth the 80$ to me. As to the coolant distilled water and a kill coil was all I needed. I wanted to avoid all coolants that weren't 1$ distilled water because paying 18 x the price isn't worth it since they tend to be about the same. As for rads I run just fine on temps with a RX360 cooling a i7 930 and 5970. You will probably be ok without the additional 120. As to the push/pull. Push/pull gives better performance by moving more air thru the rad. Push or Pull offer about the same in terms of performance. You can add another set of fans on the bottom rads and you might see 1-2C difference depending on ambient tepms and such.

Thanks for the reply.

As room is at a premium in this case, and the benefits of more fans is barely noticable i'd stick to without. Also noise can be a bit of an issue with me depending on my mood, so generally aiming for a quiet rig is what i'm going for.

But Yeah i must agree with you on the compression fittings. I wanted to use them ages ago but had bad luck and stuck with the old barb/jubilee clips. I've always prefered the cleaner look the compression fitting offers, and now may finally make the (second) jump to them.

The old QX6700 is a very hot processor so is quite demanding on the loop. With that said, it's getting older by the day and when building the loop i had future builds in mind - I don't intend to keep this hardware for much longer, just waiting on the funds.

edit --

I'll take into account what you said about the coolant. Not the first time i've heard people choose distilled over marketed coolant. I also have a killcoil already in my system.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mastical Wait so you have 2 240 rads for one cpu?

At the moment yeah, i'll also be buying the relevent GPU full waterblock soon.

 

[Arksniper]

The coolant debate is a long one on these forums. Really all coolants are is a mixture of distilled water/dye/pt nuke/anti-corrosive. Coolants only really work well when you get down the sub freezing temps and they FP is lower that that of waters. Plus coolant many not always stain components but it stains components enough to where it is a problem.

 

[GingerJohn]

OP, you should be good to go for your GPU with the rad you have, I would start there and add another 120 later if you are not happy with the temperatures. That way you either save yourself some money or give yourself more tinker time with your rig, win / win!

Incidentally, what fans are you running? And the rads? Is it a PA120.2 in the bottom and a RS240 in the top?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arksniper The coolant debate is a long one on these forums.

Not all that long: They are bad.

See? Nice and short. (Not arguing with you, agreeing with you)

Skinnee did a test on them a while ago and found that they don't perform any different from water really, except Fluid XP which is just horrible. The results look like this:

As for the gunking up of blocks goes, here is my Zalman WB5 after use with the Zalman coolant for 3 months (from back in the bad old days when I didn't really know what I was doing):

Note that the top of the block is Alu, the bottom copper, so some of the mess is due to galvanic corrosion. I have seen many other pics along similar lines with different coolants. OP, have you opened yours up recently? It would be interesting to see what is in there.

 

[soilentblue]

any dye manufacturer that says their dye/coolant/bleh won't stain is a complete liar. only thing that doesn't stain is straight up distilled. hell i've had hoses(tygon antimicrobial silver tubing) that stained before. do yourself a favor and stick to distilled.

as far as the push/pull confusion here you go
http://www.overclock.net/water-cooli...ll-vs-tfc.html

you don't need another rad for your system. it looks like you are planning on putting a block on the 6870. i would say you have enough cooling for xfire 6870s. a rad is only as effective as it's cooling. make sure the flow is good and your fans are effective at cooling the rads well. also don't let someone compare your two 240 rads to a 480 as it's not the same. two 240s cool better than one 480 rad. same as two 120mm rads cool better than one 240mm rad.

also I don't know what block you are going with but if you go with an ek block then make sure you get one with a "+" in the name as it's the revision of the old one.

 

[Thingamajig]

Quote:

Originally Posted by soilentblue any dye manufacturer that says their dye/coolant/bleh won't stain is a complete liar. only thing that doesn't stain is straight up distilled. hell i've had hoses(tygon antimicrobial silver tubing) that stained before. do yourself a favor and stick to distilled.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GingerJohn OP Incidentally, what fans are you running? And the rads? Is it a PA120.2 in the bottom and a RS240 in the top? Note that the top of the block is Alu, the bottom copper, so some of the mess is due to galvanic corrosion. I have seen many other pics along similar lines with different coolants. OP, have you opened yours up recently? It would be interesting to see what is in there.

Yup. When i first started out watercooling i was running the standard clear tubing/dyed coolant. Few months down the line the tubing stained and i had loads of gunk in the loop.

I quickly learnt from this and only purchased clear coolant with coloured tubes instead. I currently run Thermochill clear coolant as the bottom rad is a bulky Thermochill PA120.2.

The top rad is a "Black Ice GT Stealth", and the waterblock is a good old Dtek Fuzion (Version 1).

The fans i use are all Xigmatek's. purchased for the pretty LED's (Yeah, i'm shallow

) It was the only brand i was able to find that had white LED 120mm fans, as i wanted white fans = exhaust, blue fans = intake. All rated at around:
- Speed: 1500 R.P.M
- Air Flow: 68.33 CFM
- Noise Level: <20 dBA

Temps are pretty unimpressive if i were honest with you, but as i said i put that down to the old inefficient quad extreme it's running. With a core I7 i expect this loop to excel. Temps are listed in my sig specs, just click the link.

Quote:

Originally Posted by soilentblue also I don't know what block you are going with but if you go with an ek block then make sure you get one with a "+" in the name as it's the revision of the old one.

I'll bare this in mind. I did intend to go with EK blocks.

I won't buy a 120 rad, unless i find it's necessary. I'll also only purchase distilled water from now on as marketed coolant is just too expensive. So i'll go with what you guys recommend

All the inputs appreciated; reps dished out.

Final question though: If this were your rig, what would you do with it? I mean in regards to cooling, fans, case mods, etc. Not talking about replacing the hardware

I ask because i'm running out of things to do now, but i want to do something. Something useful, or necessary - basically what i'm saying is, have i missed anything?

 

[soilentblue]

not sure if you have one but i don't see an SSD. I recommend those to everyone. 60gb at least. I did 40gb and after Win7, CAD, CS5, and Firefox I basically have room for 1 game...maybe.

Do you have a fan controller?
Compression fittings or barbs that won't need clamps like dd fatboys.

I would buy a second 6870 and two waterblocks myself. I think that along with some fittings that got rid of the clamps would look very nice and hold you over until you were ready to upgrade your cpu and motherboard.

you also have the ooption of picking up two more sammys for eyefinity later also. or upgrading to 24" eyefinity.

also i have absolutely no room to talk but wire management if you are dedicated enough.

 

[JedixJarf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mastical Wait so you have 2 240 rads for one cpu?

This is OCN!

 

[Thingamajig]

Quote:

Originally Posted by soilentblue not sure if you have one but i don't see an SSD. I recommend those to everyone. 60gb at least. I did 40gb and after Win7, CAD, CS5, and Firefox I basically have room for 1 game...maybe. Do you have a fan controller? Compression fittings or barbs that won't need clamps like dd fatboys. I would buy a second 6870 and two waterblocks myself. I think that along with some fittings that got rid of the clamps would look very nice and hold you over until you were ready to upgrade your cpu and motherboard. you also have the ooption of picking up two more sammys for eyefinity later also. or upgrading to 24" eyefinity. also i have absolutely no room to talk but wire management if you are dedicated enough.

I'm definitely on top of wire management, despite what that photograph may look like. It was taken some time ago, and i've gone right through the system since.

I used to use a fan controller, but now it just collects dust as i refuse to use it outta principle.

I feel as though that with the introduction of EFI, we should have far more extensive control over fan settings and speeds. I actially view fan controllers as rather primitive and unecessary, given that with a bit of effort, we could program them to kick in or switch off at given times.

Think along the lines of the Radeon BIOS editor fan control settings:

I won't be satisfied till we see something similar to this in our BIOS/EFI settings.

This is also one reason why i'm holding back on upgrades

. I also want EFI to mature a bit before taking the plunge, so to speak.

As for a second GPU; i don't think i could afford it, not just for the initial price but also the power usage, or even the room within the case - i suspect the bottom rad pipes will get in the way.

This is one reason why i considered downgrading to a thinner rad, but as i said; it's a waste really. I've also bad experiences using Crossfire in the past with poor game support/poor drivers that just put me off the idea of multi-gpu setups altogether.

A new monitor is in my sights as my current doubles as a television which i don't need or want (I'd rather not pay for a television licence either)

I'll definitely go samsung again though

 

[GingerJohn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thingamajig Final question though: If this were your rig, what would you do with it? I mean in regards to cooling, fans, case mods, etc. Not talking about replacing the hardware

If it were my rig I would replace the CPU block first. For £45 you can get a Rasa, or for ~£55 a EK Supreme HF, which would knock anywhere from ~5-10C off your CPU temps.

You can also replace the fans with Scythe GT 1850s, they are usually hard to come by, although Scan has some in right now, as does SpecialTech. They are great from a noise / performance perspective, although a little pricey (£12-£14 ea).

If you are looking at replacing your monitor, I can really recommend the Dell Ultra Sharp series. I have a U2311h and it is awesome, bright vivid colours, a nice size (I personally dislike huge monitors) and not too badly priced for an IPS. Scan have them for £260, a lot more than the TN panels but, I think, a lot better.

 

[Thingamajig]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GingerJohn;13025683
If it were my rig I would replace the CPU block first. For £45 you can get a Rasa, or for ~£55 a EK Supreme HF, which would knock anywhere from ~5-10C off your CPU temps.

You can also replace the fans with Scythe GT 1850s, they are usually hard to come by, although Scan has some in right now, as does SpecialTech. They are great from a noise / performance perspective, although a little pricey (£12-£14 ea).

You really think those blocks would make that much of a difference? So whats the best block on the market at the moment?

I already have a pair of gentle typhoons buried somewhere. Whats the benefit they have that the current ones i use don't? From what i've read, my current Xigmateks offer more CFM