[Krilikz]

Now next year once vista comes out im building my next computer. With doing this im interested in water cooling and I know its expensive.
So what i was thinking of doing is cooling my hard drive, chip, and 2 videocards with the system. Now i dont want to run each tube to the next thing since it will get to warm i think. Really im a complete newbie when it comes to this. Iv read a few guides but theres a lot im unsure of.
So heres my idea...


Green is the video card
Red is HardDrive
Yellow is my processor

the dark blue is the 3/8th of an inch and light is 1/4

Now my idea is to have 1 line coming in with 3/8ths and then in splits twice with the 1/4 going to the hd and the processor while i have the 3/8th running to vga 1 & 2 then back out. My idea is that the 1/4th will keep the pressure running to the hd and processor since im not sure if the pump would be able to handle pushing all of that, but like i said im not sure how most of this works.

So if you can give me any ideas or links that would help me it would be much appreciated.

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are you talking about buildidng a WC system from scratch? or using a prebuilt kit?

[dsenette]

are you talking about buildidng a WC system from scratch? or using a prebuilt kit?

[Krilikz]

From scratch lol i doubt they would have a system like this

[dsenette]

...well....your "design"...looks pretty much like what most WC systems look like...each cooling block (which...you'll need to figure out how to make one of those if you are planning on custom making this contraption)..is piped out to the cooling unit (water pump) on it's own plumbing usually....so you end up getting a cooling block for each device you want to cool...that block has an in...and an out...i would assume depending on the system...you either daisy chain them...or you can with certain systems do what you're wanting which would be to h ave them individually plumbed...i know your concern with daisy chaining them is that the water will get hot on the first device...and not be able to cool the second device...but...they wouldn't sell these things if that was the case....there is a continual flow of cold water coming through there....so when the water get's to the first device..it's not like it goes instantly hot...the first shot of water that hits the first block takes a little heat away from each device..not alot...it's the cumulative effect of the water continually flowing that keeps the water and devices cool

[Krilikz]

Ok now 1 more question with daisy chaining. Lets say i pump the water up to the prosseser then bring them down to the two videocards. Will it still keep up the flow. I have never tested physics of pumps and water so i have less of an understanding about all of this.

[dsenette]

well...if it's a closed system...which...it has to be...then the preassure is constant so yes...the water or coolant would move throughout the whole system...without concern of the length of the tubing....assuming that it is a truely closed system with an adequate pump (unfortunately...no matter how hard you try...there will still be SOME preassure loss...but it's nominal as long as you keep the resevoir full)

[Krilikz]

Hmm ok, now when water cooling does it evaporate much? How often do you have to change the distilled water or coolant? Can you mix coolant with the distilled water?

[dsenette]

hehe...haven't researched the stuff that far....i would imagine that there would be a spec sheet somewhere that would list the standard evaporation amounts...not sure about the coolant deal...

[warriorscot]

Well ill try and explain this to my understanding of it(doing chemical engineering at uni so i live for this stuff).

Given your diagram it seems that you dont have the neccesary training to build one from scratch, but most people build them up from existing kits as better quality kits are very flexible you can add subtract and modify cooling loops whatever way you want. You just buy tubing connectors and cooling blocks(youll have to buy this stuff anyway it cant really be easily made). What i would buy is the asetek kit which is what most of the custom builders who make there own cooling loops do they use the asetek pumps and radiator just buy more connections blocks etc as neccesary.

Evaporation will be minimal as long as its properly fitted and the seals are good and you have the resevoir you would want to change out the coolant every now and again.

Coolant, you need distilled water, the higher level of distilation the better, preferably so highly filtered its unfit for human consumption but thats not easily gotten to most, but distilled or deionised water is fine you would add anti freeze or something similar to minimise biological build up and scaling, or you can use a special liquid coolant that also doesnt conduct this is safer but expensive thing to get, easily gotten hold off but it can run as high as 90 quid a liter.

But i dont see it as feasible to build your own from scratch not even the custom builders who can do it actually do it all from scrath, building an adequate pump and heat exchanger would be difficult for you or anyone really at home.

To your diagram its a little complicated your gonna have some flow issues(direction of flow on a diagram would be good) because of the complexity your going to have issues maintaining good flowrate to ensure turbulent flow in the whole system, your flow would need to be very high. I wouldnt do the hard drive as the blocks for Hard drives are larger and harder to get and larely unnecesary HDD arent that hot and dont benefit from cooling alot, its also a pain to rig them up like that on a single cooling system if you had a double cooling system with a seperate loop and exchaner for the CPU and gfx card different story entirely then you could manage HDD but then again i still wouldnt.

I wouldnt try and do this without doing the neccesary calculations first, they arent to hard worst is a fairly annoying differential equation and of course itll take a fair few pages of working but you can work out your flowrates allright.

Also single gfx is better than two for water, and generally its more sensible as a whole unless your gonna be using ultra high res monitor then single card it cheaper and often more effective, two cards are more complexity on a number of levels. Also Water cooling itself may not be needed the general trend towareds CPUs these days is to much lower heat outpout and pwer consumption so air is usually cheaper and just as effective because all this years new CPUs have substantially lower heat output from previous years ontop of better performance.

Also there you have two inputs and two outputs you want one input and one output unless its two enitrley different cooling loops. But ill let you think on what ive said and ask some questions i can go on for a while on cooling(mostly because its been blasted at me for the last 6 months at uni).
You might talk to pomp as well i babysat him through the process for a while, just for the bugger to send it back and get air like i told him to in the first place.

[Krilikz]

Thanks for the info!