Legit Reviews

this is not a question but more of a discussion about it. I been water cooling my computers for quite a few years, I have seen or done various types of configurations that will make your head swim. I also have seen how water blocks have evolved into what they are today. And I like to state that my particular water cooling set up is far from typical, in a lot of ways it is a bit excessive for my computer, but then again I like to go a bit excessive on the overclocking. The old saying goes, it is better to have it and never use it, then to not have it when you need it most. I do not consider myself "An Expert" either, but I do happen to know quite a bit about water cooling in general.

But here lately I have been seeing some seriously screwed up water cooling configurations, these water cooling configurations clearly would spell doom back in the old school days of water cooling, that being using a lot of 90° barbs with your water cooling set up or daisy chaining (in series) a lot of water blocks/rads in the same loop. ie. pump>Vid>Rad>CPU>rad>res. (is a typical one I am seeing most often) This particular setup would not jive way back when, and even more so considering that these newer blocks restrict even more water flow then the older style of water blocks ever did. I mean even though these guys are running a rad in between a vid and cpu water blocks do they not realize that the flow rate has been restricted so much that is essentially killing the efficiency of the fluid on top of the rads ability of dissipating that much heat. Which is causes a perpetual heating issues that grows the more and more the longer you run your computer. Again this based on my own personal observations, and from my own personal trial and errors when i first got into water cooling.

I run a dual loop shared res configuration, listed below. I am curious to you computer user if you are or if you plan on running water cooling on your computer how would you or do you run your configuration.

Loop 1 Res/Pump combo>Koolance CPU 360 water block> XSPC quad 120mm radiator/res/pump conbo
Loop 2 Res/pump combo>Koolance 697 Video card water blocks (ran in a parallel configuration)>Swift tech Dual 120mm Radiator>res/pump combo

The custom built 1 gallon glass (cookie jar) res houses 2 200GPH submersible pumps.

I couldn't find a res anywhere that could house two pumps so I ran to Wal-Mart and picked up a glass cookie jar that could and built my own res.

As I said it is a bit excessive, but it works perfectly.

Pics or it doesn't exist.

Back in the day the older blocks and rads were not as efficient as the new blocks and rads, so that helps.

With newer (last couple years) blocks and rads from what I have seen in test is that the order of parts makes no difference, same for the size of the res (some dont even run one). You have a large res for your setup, even for that 1gal res (plus maybe another quart in the loop) you are cycling the water through the loop 3 times a minute.

Drop that to a something like the EK-Multioption 150 that holds roughly 160ml of coolant, with a D5 pump. The D5 flows something like 317gph with a max head pressure of 50psi. In your single CPU loop with the smaller res and faster pump looking around a quart or so total fluid in the system. The coolant now cycles the system 21 times a minute. With a quad rad for just the CPU the coolant will never over run the rad.

Throw an after market top in there and you can start doing some neat stuff. Dual, even tripple, pump tops are out now to run pumps in series. I have yet to see the point for single rad loops. Guys that are running like 4+ rads in a single loop, yeah, they need the head pressure to get through all of it.

Fittings are better now as well. Back in the day a 90* 1/2 barb fitting was basically home plumbing parts and had a 1/4 hole through it, cast metal or plastic. Now with full flow rotary's and full flow standard 90* are more like 3/8 and smooth as all get out.

With the new efficiencies users can now go for looks and still have function. So you could have PUMP - CPU - CHIPSET - GPU - DUAL RAD - QUAD RAD - RES all ran off single pump, all nice a neat straight line A to B connections.

For the test bench I built for here I ran separate loops, but that was to eliminate heat from the GPU throwing off the CPU tests and vise versa

Everytime I try and do a similar set up my flow rate goes to crap, and the heat starts climbing. The only reason why i am using a large res is so that it can fit the 2 pumps I am using in to it. I did have a smaller one but it was a pain to work with. as far as barbs being slightly larger, you are still limited to the size of the opening of the threads. So yo can have a 9/16" barb opening but it is restricted to 3/8" or 25/64" at a max because of the threads of a 1/4" NPT (1/2" x 18) so it does not really matter, DD used a 9/16" vs the 1/4" NPT (or 1/2" x 18) thread size on their barbs and it still would cause issues if you started daisy chaining the blocks and multiple rads.

for what these new guys are running I can reduce the amount of hoses, and rads and still get better cooling efficiency while using 1 rad. That by running the blocks in parallel to each other, then run it through a single rad. Of course this be limited to video card block(s) and the CPU, if you plan on running mosfets, nb/sb, and memory in your computer as well you will need to split it into a dual loop set up.


your right about a multiple loop set is that I truly do not need it, but at the time I set it up it made my life easier because I was constantly switching out hardware and being able to pull the block video cards with blocks with out having to break/drain the water cooling loop made life loads easier. So it is just a carry over from that time is all.