BurritoJustice posted:

EK is ok, but their QC is a bit spotty and you pay for the name.

I'm not a fan at all of EK Vardars. I would go for a 480mm+360mm, 120mm fans are preferred here because you can go for Phanteks T30-120 which absolute stomp every other fan even up to the A12x25. I would go for a rear fan as another intake, so 360 front, 480 top (or reverse if that fits better), then a rear intake for fresh air.

Don't buy EK rads unless you can fit the XE. The XE is competitive but the others are terrible, especially the SE thin rad. HWLabs make the best radiators by far, you can go for their GTS series for best all-rounders. They also make the L series which are OEM only but have the exact width of the fans on them, these are useful for cases with limited space for rads. Bits power and Corsair both rebrand slim L series HWLabs rads so you could get those if they're more available.

You might need more than 1L, I have 1.2L in my loop that is 360+280+120, but I have a huge monoblock that holds a lot.

BurritoJustice posted:

I really would look at 480 instead of 420, it's more total raddage and 140mm fans kinda suck right now (no 140x25 or T30-140)

I like performancePCs, shipping is expensive but fixed rate and they've got a full range of HWLabs.

Make sure to post your list before you order just to double check everything.

Indiana_Krom posted:

Want to throw in I have a 9900K (stock except unlimited turbo power) and a EVGA 3080 Ti FTW3 (also stock) on a custom EKWB loop with only a single 420 radiator up top. It works fine, ~500w load gaming, max coolant temperature in a comfortable room is about 43C which translates to ~52C GPU, ~60C CPU. The CPU just sits at 4.7 all core turbo forever when gaming, and the GPU settles around 1950-1965 MHz boost forever. Two radiators are not strictly necessary, although having a second one wont hurt anything, it just may not actually help by a measurable amount.

Also I stuck one of these in as the cap on my GPU manifold: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CMR3CC2/ which I use to control my radiator fans and pump via the coolant temperature directly. If your motherboard or fan controller has an option for using a thermristor like that as a control source I highly recommend doing so as it will smooth out your fan/pump speed controls like magic. (Note, certain motherboards may force the CPU FAN header to only ever be controlled by the CPU temp and cannot be overridden by a different sensor, avoid using said header if yours does.)

Indiana_Krom posted:

I run my pump at 35% PWM (~1875 RPM). Its a D5, they are insanely fast at 100% which is entirely unnecessary and excessive. Less wear and tear plus it renders it totally inaudible. I can override to 100% with some fan control software, but multiple tests checking it between 35% and 100% showed no observable difference in load temperatures on either the CPU or the GPU. Fast enough is fast enough.

Warmachine posted:

A little late to the party, but I wanted to offer my two cents.

1. I went with a grab bag of components from different places. I went with EK for my blocks because they made what I needed for my jobs. Honestly if I knew that tidbit about HWLabs, I'd have probably gotten their radiators.
2. Heat soak potential. A larger volume of water takes longer to get to saturation temperature.
3. Correct, it does not matter. What might matter is flow direction if your water blocks have some sort of directional gimmick. Read the manuals.
4. No point. You're already well into overkill/diminishing returns territory.
5. Yes. Should be well within all but the most bargain of bargain basement pump specs. Multiple pumps are generally a redundancy thing, and usually only make sense in enterprise-level implementations where you can't just shut down on a whim to fix the problem.
6. Why not set both radiators to intake and use the rear exhaust as exhaust?
7. Brown and beige if your budget allows. If you're dropping that much money on your loop, what is 7x $25USD in fans anyway? Arctic of course is the next best thing and far cheaper if money is actually an object to you.

This might be an SFF problem, but my motherboard simply didn't have the options for the level of control I wanted, so I ended up getting an aquacomputer Octo to run everything, which let me do other silly things like run a 3.25 DDC on a PWM header because the Octo's headers are specced for 2A and most motherboard fan headers are only specced at 1A. But in my case my pump speed is static unless things get outside of my target temperature. Unless I'm in a situation where every last gram of performance matters, the effect of flow speed isn't worth the extra noise--especially in my case as the pump is external due to space constraints.

I actually can't praise the Octo/Quadro enough. Aquacomputer's software is great, most of the settings save directly to the board so you can set it and forget it if you don't want to use the more functions. The big thing for me is the ability to set a target temperature that is variable with the ambient temperature.

Above all remember that in the vast majority of cases water cooling is 100% luxury and you're doing this for fun.

KirbyKhan posted:

I just got back from a Best Buy and I'm looking for ways to add after market cooling onto my pre-built PC and I got upsold on water based cooling. I can have the store do installation, but I just read the first page of this thread and the last two pages of this thread and I understood nothing and now it's kinda making me scared.

I don't know. If I get an all in one kit and a guy who's contractually obligated to work on my computer can I approximate the artesian experience locally? What words do I need to know and how should I ask how to contract maintenance? I am not ready to do this as a hobby,

Should I even try to shove a liquid cooler in the ASUS ROG case? Should I make the dude transfer every component into my old Fractal case and maintain air cooling. Instead of spending all this money on cooling... maybe I should get a cabinet or someplace off the floor to put this $1700 piece of capital equipment. Man the future is so loving weird plz help.

KirbyKhan posted:

I built a computer when that first Trump check hit. The graphics card fried from a wired electrical storm that bordered on a haunting. I suddenly got clearance to buy a whole rear end prebuilt and some extra money to make it nicer. A buckwild position to be in. So I was vulnerable to being upsold.

The problem I'm trying to solve is noise and airflow. I used a stock fan on the computer I built and I don't like it. After sitting on it for the night I remember why I don't go liquid cooling.

The total tech is a family thing... Like an HBO subscription that was set up to watch Sopranos when it was current and just... kept going and now the next generation has HBO Go and a grandbaby gets to watch Dune. So I guess I'm trying to maximize the use of the subscription service because I'm not allowed to turn it off to save other people money.

The water cool upsell was mostly motivated by being burned by the GPU drop this morning. I wanted best buy to pay and I couldnt think of anything more cantankerous that making a geeksquad guy do extra fiddling to a prebuilt. Thank you thread for existing and responding. I'm much calmer now. Just gonna trade in the water cooler for a Master Cooler and another monitor or some ram I guess idk I'm booting the thing tomorrow.

Edit: or whatever the only thing I wanted was the 3070. I got a fractal case and case fans already lmao my CPU wasn't broken it was just the gpu oh computers and decision making are hard. What the gently caress am I gonna do with all these components?!?! Ahhh this is how people end up with NAS storage and Plex servers!!!

BurritoJustice posted:

Personally, I would go front intake, top exhaust on the radiators, then just gave the rear 140 on intake. The bottom two slots will just mess with the flow, I feel. You'll also run into space issues with the max size rads and a decent PSU trying to fit bottom fans.

I have 360 front intake, 280 top and 120 rear exhaust rads and I have to run the front fans a slightly higher curve to have positive pressure (testing just by feeling airflow over little gaps)

adeadcrab posted:

I would probably go intake on all rad fans and bottom two fans, exhaust on rear.

If you try lighting an incense stick over the top of your case, you’ll see that spare 60mm at the top rear will function as a passive exhaust.

I have tried and observed this on my system (2 bottom intake, 2 front intake pulling through GPU AIO rad, 2 top intake, Noctua DH-15 pulling all that air to the rear of my case).
Because my top fans are 2*140 I have a gap at the rear so I cranked my rear 140 exhaust 10-20% and the top rear passively exhausts the rest.

The difference with your setup is there is no extra airflow in the centre of your case as mine is with a CPU air cooler. You could slightly increase the front intake RPM to mitigate this, however.

Coredump posted:

Dang that's who I was looking at. Are bitspower or barrow any better?

AutismVaccine posted:

Set your D5 at max 35% and your fans to 600rpm or so. Should be plenty as long your components arent too restrictive

My D5 is set at 30% and my Noctua fans are at like 550rpm. I use a 420 and 280 UT60 with only 9fpi, so the low air flow works out ok. With furmark and prime running (~500W) the water gets very warm, but who cares if the CPU or GPU is at 60 or 65 or 70 degree.

Moey posted:

So I have an HP OEM 3090 that I am planning out a build around. Trying to keep it SFF, while still having some livable thermals. Currently I am planning on using an NR200 for a case.

Anyone have any experience with Bykski waterblocks? I have been eyeballing this one. An active backplate is a must, since this card likes to cook the memory chips on the backside of the PCB.

https://www.bykski.us/products/byks...n-rtx3090h-x-v2

I was also hoping to go with this goofy combo CPU block/pump/res.

http://www.barrowint.com/product/cpuslt/Barrowch_CPU_Water_Block/1615.html

For radiators, I can fit a 240mm radiator up top and a 92mm rad on the back.

For the loop I was planning on going

- CPU block pump
- 240mm rad
- GPU
- 92mm rad
- back to start

Any thoughts on this? I am new to the water cooling game.

Subjunctive posted:

Hi there!

I have a 3950X/3090 setup that makes the office warm and loud, and while the warm part is a matter of physics I’m considering moving to water for noise reasons. I generally frame limit FFXIV to make it run quieter, which is sort of a waste of that card.

What are my best options here? I’m not against assembling a custom loop if that process can be made relatively idiot-proof and reversible. My case is a “be quiet! Silent Base 600”, in case anyone can recognize that in terms of radiator and fan options. I’m not super price-sensitive, especially if most of it can be reused for future AM5/40x0 parts.

Thanks for any guidance you can provide!

Ninja: I’m located in Canada but I can get stuff forwarded from the US, in case that matters for part recommendations.

Subjunctive posted:

Thanks, I’ll check them out. Is there a guide you’d recommend for figuring out how to put the plan together? I’m in Toronto and have a trip to Ottawa planned for next month, so that could work out well.

I already have an undervolt on my card, alas. I’ll make sure it didn’t stop getting applied due to a software update or something, but FFXIV is a terrible engine. The NVIDIA monitoring tool shows it peaking at about 50% GPU utilization but the fans run something fierce anyway. Maybe an airflow issue in the case? I could try that angle first I guess and buy some more fans.

Subjunctive posted:

I got Argus Monitor so that I could anchor fans against the worse of CPU/GPU temps, but I might not have set it up right. I’ll check the temps after I play for a bit next time, since I don’t remember off-hand what the GPU settles at. I think Argus can tell me if the GPU is throttling due to thermals? Maybe it was another program, but something can.

Would be great if the solution was just “some more fans”, at least from a cash perspective. The water cooling stuff does look like fun, though…

PoizenJam posted:

I agree with parts of this in principle, but placing the GPU at the top of the case is not (physically) possible with my current setup, and would also place the pump at the extreme top of the GPU AIO loop (i.e. the pump is in the RAD, not the water block). But also, isn't dumping the warmed air from the CPU RAD into the way-warmer GPU RAD going to just decrease the effectiveness of that GPU AIO?

As for the fan control you suggest, I use FanControl. I have done something conceptually similar to what you suggest already. I link the RAD fans to Temp of their respective device; the case fans to the averaged temp across several internal components. I also link the AIO pump speeds to the time-averaged temp of their devices, but in those cases I've used a step function (i.e. they'll typically kick up to 100% pump speed under heavy load where the sound is masked by the fans anyway).

Nolgthorn posted:

I'm hesitating a purchase for 3 days now all because this one 80 cent item in my cart is out of stock https://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-hdc-fitting-14mm-o-ring-6pcs I probably don't need spare o-rings for my first build right?

Nolgthorn posted:

I mean I'm not going to damage an o-ring, all I have to do is not damage one. How hard could it be?

Nolgthorn posted:

My experience with a lot of companies is that when something goes out of stock they never know when it'll be in stock so I'm going to go ahead and make the purchase without spare parts. Oh baby Jesus. Who bought all the o-rings, are they clumsy or something?

Indiana_Krom posted:

IMO if you have two radiators they should either both be on intake or both be on exhaust, I experimented with my own two radiators and both on intake kept my coolant about 1-2C lower at load compared to various intake/exhaust/mixed configurations. I settled on both as intake because my case has filters for the locations where I have my radiators mounted so I could minimize dust intake by making my case positive pressure and drawing in all the air passing over my radiators from outside. As a result my case has 5 fans on intake (280MM + 420MM radiators) with only a single fan in the back on exhaust that barely needs to exist at all because the positive pressure is so high. But it works and quite well at that, when my system is at load you can easily feel the heat blowing out the single exhaust fan in the back.

PoizenJam posted:

So last night I decided to test the dual-intake config. Rather than move the AIO RAD as initially planned, I simply flipped the fans on my CPU AIO RAD into an intake pull config, then flipped the 3x120mm FRONT/SIDE fans to be exhaust, for the following config:

FRONT/SIDE: 3 x 120mm case fans (EXHAUST)
TOP: 360mm CPU AIO RAD + FANS (INTAKE, PULL CONFIGURATION)
BOTTOM: 240mm GPU AIO RAD + FANS (INTAKE, PULL CONFIGURATION)
REAR: 1 x 120mm case fan (EXHAUST)

This is slightly sub-optimal (compared to moving the rad to the FRONT-SIDE position), if only because I am fighting convection with those top intake fans. However, I noticed an immediate decrease of 6-10C on the CPU at idle, depending on the load of the GPU. At load, though, there doesn't appear to be a huge difference compared to my original config (GPU AIO Intake, CPU AIO Exhaust). The temperatures of interior components in the case (MOBO, PCH, SSD) increased across the board as both the CPU and GPU are now dumping hot air in the case. I'm not particularly worried, since MOBO is still safe and NVME run just fine at the temps. The PCH seems to run hotter in this config though... About 82C. Which is concerning, but maybe not a problem.

I could flip the FRONT/SIDE case fans back to INTAKE for extreme positive pressure (8 x 120mm intakes total vs. 1 x 120mm exhaust), and to add some fresh, non-heated air to the mobo. But I always thought a balanced or slightly positive pressure build was best?

Edit: So after analyzing this further, it seems that this configuration is worse in pretty much every way except for the CPU idle temps. GPU is ~2-5C warmer in most use conditions, and my PCH temps climbed up to >90C after a soak in period. In my old config (GPU AIO INTAKE + CPU AIO EXHAUST), those temps were low 70s. Ram feels pretty hot too. Best guess is dumping so much hot air into the case is particularly bad after a 'soak' period. I'm going to try an exhaust configuration next.

Nolgthorn posted:

I'm realizing I don't think my motherboard has a header for the temperature sensor.

Motherboard manual.pdf

What should I do? I think I need a specialized fan controller that accepts a temperature reading, but we're entering a realm of customization with this thing that makes me uncomfortable. What would I need to buy?


E:

It's going in the loop either way because it makes this 45 clear the fan.

Nolgthorn posted:

I'm putting the temperature sensor on the pump outlet, unless anyone tells me not to.

Nolgthorn posted:

I know right, the rad is massive. It's the middle thick 360 from ek, the case is meshify 2. I'm starting to see why water-cooling is put in xl cases. Can't imagine wanting to put this into a compact.

I just took apart my ek quantum magnitude strx40 block to reverse outlets, that was harrowing. I hope to God it still works.

Nolgthorn posted:

Nolgthorn posted:

Wish me luck

Pray for me.

namlosh posted:

So where do I get pipe like that? Sorry to storm in, but I loosely follow the thread after water cooling decades ago and want to know what pipe can be heated up and bent like that. It’s very cool, great job man!

Nolgthorn posted:

I'm uh I'm indecisive.

After a couple of hours with this tube, I've come up with this result. It seems to fit. I'm going to step back and look at it again tomorrow.

It's got a much less symmetrical look than I intended when I started. The tubes run parallel up from the pump, and then do their own thing.






I think part of the issue is this is really hard.

Nolgthorn posted:

Akasa SOHO AR AK-FN108-KT03 120mm - x3

I realized after I bought them they might be air flow fans rather than strictly air pressure fans, but the ratings were pretty good either way. I've also read it doesn't make too big a difference. It might be something I change later. Are they ok? I don't think there is space around them.

Might be auxillary fans, blowing air in weird directions inside my case. In any way I'm not really trying to min max, just get everything running to a comfortable operating efficiency. The numbers for which I have no idea.

Are mine poor? This is a threadripper 3970x and it spits fire. So I'm happy with the results I'm just wondering if they should be improved or are are ok as they are.