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Gmac

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  1. Like
    Gmac got a reaction from xg32 in Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity   
    Linus,
     
    Good god has it been a long time since I have logged into this. I can't believe it has been 10 years since the last time I log into this forum. I have a lot less hair on my head and a lot more on my face. You grow up and life gets busy. Never stopped watching and enjoying it, however.
     
    I just wanted to express I hope you have an open mind about all of this. I am happy you have found so much success in life. It certainly was never a lack of working hard or doing the right thing. You are at a point where you, your kids, and your grandkids would never have to work another day of their lives. I am glad for you on that. You have earned it. Just don't forget how you got to where you did.
     
    I have just watched your company turn into exactly what you built it not to be. I certainly don't want to pretend I understand what it is like to be you or make the decisions you have to make on a daily basis. I didn't even realize how bad it has gotten until today. I use to turn to Linus for everything around my hobby. It wasn't until today that I released when it was time to build a new PC this year. I didn't even look at your content. That made me really sad.
     
    I hope you are able to face this head-on like you always do and come out a better person for it. Just make sure you keep an open mind to those who want the best for you.
     
    I just want you to hear it from a long-term fan.
     
    George
  2. Agree
    Gmac got a reaction from IndustrialBananaBread in Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity   
    Linus,
     
    Good god has it been a long time since I have logged into this. I can't believe it has been 10 years since the last time I log into this forum. I have a lot less hair on my head and a lot more on my face. You grow up and life gets busy. Never stopped watching and enjoying it, however.
     
    I just wanted to express I hope you have an open mind about all of this. I am happy you have found so much success in life. It certainly was never a lack of working hard or doing the right thing. You are at a point where you, your kids, and your grandkids would never have to work another day of their lives. I am glad for you on that. You have earned it. Just don't forget how you got to where you did.
     
    I have just watched your company turn into exactly what you built it not to be. I certainly don't want to pretend I understand what it is like to be you or make the decisions you have to make on a daily basis. I didn't even realize how bad it has gotten until today. I use to turn to Linus for everything around my hobby. It wasn't until today that I released when it was time to build a new PC this year. I didn't even look at your content. That made me really sad.
     
    I hope you are able to face this head-on like you always do and come out a better person for it. Just make sure you keep an open mind to those who want the best for you.
     
    I just want you to hear it from a long-term fan.
     
    George
  3. Like
    Gmac got a reaction from Gekido in Water Cooling 101 - A good place for newbies to start   
    Where to start
    Now that you have an understanding behind the theories of Water cooling. This is a good place to really start understanding what is in Custom water cooling loops. But more importantly how do you get one built. My guide here should only be half the story of building a loop. I won't go into detail about the finite processes of putting together a loop. Linus has already done a great job of really showing you how that process works; far better than I could in a forum post. I will hopefully be able to help when it comes to picking out the right components that go into a water cooling loop. Please check out his 4 part guide on Water cooling. This should be what you refer to when you are actually putting a loop together. These Guides are much better at showing how things fit together then I could even type out.
     
    Ultimate Water Cooling Guide Part 1 - Preparation Procedure NCIX Tech Tips

     
     
    Ultimate Water Cooling Guide Part 2 - Block & Component Installation NCIX Tech Tips

     
     
    Ultimate Water Cooling Guide Part 3 - Tubing, Liquid & Conclusion NCIX Tech Tips

     
     
    Guide Part 4 - Maintenance and Upgrades for your Liquid Cooled System NCIX Tech Tips

  4. Like
    Gmac got a reaction from Asez23 in Water Cooling 101 - A good place for newbies to start   
    Water Cooling 101
    I have been reading a lot of posting in this sub-forum and am seeing a lot of the same questions. So I figured this forum need some basic guide to water cooling. My basic idea is to take a ton of information on the internet and condense it down to as short and simple explanation of Water cooling. This should be a good starting place for most people. You will need to much more research than just this to be a successful water cooler.

    I have spoken to a Mod and this should be made into a sticky soon.

    My goal with this guide is to be of a FAQ than more of a building guide. Try and explain everything that has to do with what goes into a custom water cooling loop. I am trying to make a guide that will work well with Linus's water cooling videos on the NCIXcom Youtube channel. Trying hard not to cover what he has but make sure nothing is missed.

    So welcome to my Basic Noobies guide to water cooling. Please feel free to comment or post with your ideas of what I could add or change.

    So why do we water cool? Why would you want to stick a tank of water in a box of very expensive electronics?
    This is a question that gets asked a lot on the forum and I thought one of our members summed it up best;

    From our own MdX MaxX;
    “It's not just about temperatures, but about noise. With water cooling, you can run fans at much lower speeds and lower noise levels than you can with air cooling and achieve the same temperatures. Especially for GPUs, I mean GPU fans get loud. Plus you have the benefit of cooling everything you want in the same loop.

    And "good enough" isn't what enthusiasts strive for. Sure, multi-hundred dollar loops aren't necessary. An NH-D14 or Silver Arrow is "good enough." But being a PC enthusiast is much more than having a "good enough" rig. Most people here would have much lower-specced PCs if they only wanted what was "good enough" for them.

    Also, it's fun. Building is fun. Taking on [such] an intensive project is a thrilling challenge for a lot of people. You get to really absorb the experience rather than putting together a system in 2-3 hours and then you're done.

    And lastly, water cooling loops are freaking gorgeous. I mean look at them.

    I would just add that for most of us that use water cooling is more than getting the best performance out of your rig. For most of us it is a hobby. Once you get started it is hard to stop. You always want to try something new or add something to you loop, or even multiple loops.
  5. Agree
    Gmac got a reaction from vandouche in Water Cooling 101 - A good place for newbies to start   
    Water cooling Basic
    Water cooling breaks down into two subcategories:

    1) Custom Loop cooling- You add different parts to make a whole water cooling loop. These consist of; Pumps, Water blocks, (CPU, GPU, Mobo, Mosfets, Ram HDD If you can think of a computer part someone makes a block for it.) Radiators, and lastly Reservoir. You can mix and match all these different parts in different way to create a loop that is tailored made for your system.
    2) All in one closed cooling loops- The name is pretty self explanatory. These all self contained cooling system that pull all those different parts into one unite. They are always sealed and cannot be opened. They compare to good high end air cooling apparatuses but cannot keep up with a custom cooling loop. I won't be cover just about anything on these as they are very popular products and don't need much explanation

    Your budget is going too decided on which route you will take on these two ideas. If you are looking to stay under $150 you will probably want to go with the All in one closed cooling loops. You will get what you pay for with this group. If you are looking to jump into the Custom water cooling world look to start with about $300 and it will go up from there. I have seen people on this forum that easily spend $1000+ on their loops. Don't think you can cheap out on WC you will regret it in the end and more than likely spending more because of it.

    Watercooling basic theory and Delta-T
    *This all comes from TomsHardware Sticky v2 by Rubix_1011 all credit goes to him. He does far better job explaining this all then I could. (http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/277130-29-read-first-watercooling-sticky)

    Watercooling is based on the set of principles that water is proportionally better than air to conduct heat away from a heat source based on conduction, or the direct contact of a heated source and a cooling source to transfer heat energy rather than convection, otherwise known as thermal conductivity. The ability of a substance to directly absorb heat energy is considered it's specific heat; in this case, the ability of heat directly absorbed by water and the required energy to raise overall temperatures by 1°C. While convection takes place with normal air coolers to provide the ability for air to absorb dissipated heat from the cooler, watercooling also employs this concept to some degree. Once the water absorbs heat energy via conduction from the blocks, it then transfers that through tubing to radiators cooled by fans. The difference is that a larger amount of heat energy is able to be absorbed and moved at any given time with a water loop due to pump flow forcing turbulent water through the radiator tubes while the radiator provides greater surface area to conduct heat energy from the water to the radiator and then into the air. The process is more efficient at transferring, displacing and dissipating excess heat energy based on the delta-T of the loop design. In short, the ability of water's excellent specific heat allow it to absorb heat much more quickly and efficiently from a source of heat (as well as also dissipating that heat back to a cooling source for dissipation) so it can also transport far more of that absorbed energy due to the thermal capacity of it as a medium away from heat sources to be expelled elsewhere.


    Thermal Conductivity of Common Cooling Mediums (@~20°C; W/mK)
    Higher values are better

    Water...............................................0.610
    Mineral Oil........................................0.162
    Alcohol(Ethyl, Isopropyl, Buytl)...........0.161-0.200
    Ethylene Glycol..................................0.258
    Air...................................................0.0257


    Specific Heat of Common Cooling Mediums (@~20°C;kJ/kg.K)
    Higher values are better

    Water...............................................4.19
    Air...................................................1.00
    Mineral Oil........................................1.67
    Copper.............................................0.093
    Ethylene glycol..................................2.36
    Copper.............................................0.093
    Ethylene glycol..................................2.36

    When it comes to figuring out how much radiator you need for your specific loop, you have to start doing some math. I know that we all have been building a loop and thought, ˜how many, what size and what kind of radiators do I need for this loop to stay cool like I want?"

    First tip: Google is your best friend to help find TDP (Thermal Design Power}

    Finding out what the TDP or your CPU or GPU is can be as simple as doing some searches by searching for i7 2600k TDP', GTX 580 TDP, or AMD 6970 TDP. Remember to account for all components, if you run a multi-card graphics setup, you need to include the TDP values for all cards in the total. For example, our i7 2600k has a stock TDP of about 95 watts at 100% load (estimated). If we have a 2x SLI setup of GTX 580's, we are looking at about 244 watts at 100% load, per card. Total? About 583 watts in heat that these three components can potentially produce when at 100% load, simultaneously; it's also safe to consider that heat dissipation can never be 100% efficient of power consumption, so even calcuating 85-90% of your TDP total is pretty safe. (This also translates very closely to wattage when you need to consider a power supply for your system, but you need to account for the remaining components: motherboard, fans, hard drives, DVD drives, etc. To help calculate a full system TDP, you can use a tool like the Extreme PSU Calculator (link). In short, when calculating loop TDP, simply add up the total values for components being cooled in the loop...if you have more than one video card, make sure you add in TDP for each one. If you want to simply calculate the overclocked TDP wattage of your CPU, just adjust the CPU section of the calculator or utilize the calculation listed a bit later.

    Once you have calculated your total loop TDP potential, you need to consider radiators that dissipate heat in watts depending on flow rate of your loop and fans being used and their speeds/power. For this task, I almost always refer to *Skinneelabs.com link from Archive.org* for all of this crucial information, graphs and comparisons.

    For example, I am going to reference the XSPC RX360 radiator for this loop. Given the total TDP of 583 watts, I want to know if this single radiator is enough for my loop, or if I should consider another radiator.



    Looking at this chart, we can see that the maximum amount of heat this radiator can dissipate is around 555 watts using 2800 rpm fans (very fast, very loud). You could get better results in a push/pull scenario, but that's even louder; you may be able to live with a 15-20° delta and loud fans if you went this route.

    In short, Delta-T is the load temperature of the water in your loop when compared to ambient air temps; if your room ambient is 27°C, and load water temp is 34°C, this gives you an approximate Delta of 7°C if you are running 100% load on all components being cooled by the loop. Basically, delta-T is a mathematical derivative of your ambient room temperature, flow rate, heat to be dissipated (in watts) and the ability of your radiator to dissipate heat (in watts) depending on fans used to produce the cooling impact by the loop as a whole. You'll notice the chart above has a listing of different fans in the upper-left corner: this determines the angle of the graph and the temperature delta on the left side of the graph. Lower fan speeds correlate to a higher delta-T as you add more heat in watts to the loop. The more heat you produce, the more important it is to remove it from the loop; and fans help accomplish this goal. If you notice the actual temperatures on the lines of the graph at the determined points (around 300 watts of load and around 555 watts), you'll see that the fan speed allows the heat dissipation to be rather normalized. However, the further to the right (and up the graph you go), you'll also notice that your delta-T rises. Below a 5° is incredibly good, 10° is still very good and even 15° deltas are very much the norm. If we wanted to run this loop at a 10° delta, we would need to run two of these RX360 radiators to keep the heat load in watts below 300 watts dissipated per radiator with fans of 600-2800 rpm (in a single-fan setup; push/pull would allow some leniency here; perhaps a RX360 and an RX240, instead).

    Granted, TDP and determining our delta-T isn't an exact science, but it gets us pretty close. It's a bit more tedius to calculate CPU overclocked wattage; however, here is a great calculation to help CPU overclocking and estimated TDP:

    OC Wattage = TDP * ( OC MHz / Stock MHz) * ( OC Vcore / Stock Vcore )^2

    [TABLE=width: 760]


    [TR]

    [TD]
    Quote :

    Example:
    Intel i7 2600k
    3.4ghz (3400mhz)
    1.25v
    95 watts TDP

    For this example I will use a relatively average overclock voltage of 1.35v to reach 4.5ghz (4500mhz)

    OC Wattage = TDP x ( OC MHz / Stock MHz) x ( OC Vcore / Stock Vcore )^2

    OC Wattage = 95 x (4500/3400) x (1.35/1.25)^2

    OC Wattage = 95 x (1.3235) x (1.08)^2

    OC Wattage = 95 x 1.3235 x 1.1664

    OC Wattage = 147 (which is exactly what was calculated by the PSU calculator for overclocked CPU watts on this chip)
    [/TD]

    [/TR]


    [/TABLE]

    *This is all very complicated and can be hard to understand. You will likely need to do more reading then what I can provide here. I do have a general rule that you can read about in the Rad section of this guide that can make all this complicated stuff unnecessary.
    [h=2]For more information please refer to overclocker.com Guide to Delta-T in Water Cooling[/h]
    [h=2]http://www.overclockers.com/guide-deltat-water-cooling/[/h]
  6. Informative
    Gmac got a reaction from Sayga Show in Water Cooling 101 - A good place for newbies to start   
    Water cooling Basic
    Water cooling breaks down into two subcategories:

    1) Custom Loop cooling- You add different parts to make a whole water cooling loop. These consist of; Pumps, Water blocks, (CPU, GPU, Mobo, Mosfets, Ram HDD If you can think of a computer part someone makes a block for it.) Radiators, and lastly Reservoir. You can mix and match all these different parts in different way to create a loop that is tailored made for your system.
    2) All in one closed cooling loops- The name is pretty self explanatory. These all self contained cooling system that pull all those different parts into one unite. They are always sealed and cannot be opened. They compare to good high end air cooling apparatuses but cannot keep up with a custom cooling loop. I won't be cover just about anything on these as they are very popular products and don't need much explanation

    Your budget is going too decided on which route you will take on these two ideas. If you are looking to stay under $150 you will probably want to go with the All in one closed cooling loops. You will get what you pay for with this group. If you are looking to jump into the Custom water cooling world look to start with about $300 and it will go up from there. I have seen people on this forum that easily spend $1000+ on their loops. Don't think you can cheap out on WC you will regret it in the end and more than likely spending more because of it.

    Watercooling basic theory and Delta-T
    *This all comes from TomsHardware Sticky v2 by Rubix_1011 all credit goes to him. He does far better job explaining this all then I could. (http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/277130-29-read-first-watercooling-sticky)

    Watercooling is based on the set of principles that water is proportionally better than air to conduct heat away from a heat source based on conduction, or the direct contact of a heated source and a cooling source to transfer heat energy rather than convection, otherwise known as thermal conductivity. The ability of a substance to directly absorb heat energy is considered it's specific heat; in this case, the ability of heat directly absorbed by water and the required energy to raise overall temperatures by 1°C. While convection takes place with normal air coolers to provide the ability for air to absorb dissipated heat from the cooler, watercooling also employs this concept to some degree. Once the water absorbs heat energy via conduction from the blocks, it then transfers that through tubing to radiators cooled by fans. The difference is that a larger amount of heat energy is able to be absorbed and moved at any given time with a water loop due to pump flow forcing turbulent water through the radiator tubes while the radiator provides greater surface area to conduct heat energy from the water to the radiator and then into the air. The process is more efficient at transferring, displacing and dissipating excess heat energy based on the delta-T of the loop design. In short, the ability of water's excellent specific heat allow it to absorb heat much more quickly and efficiently from a source of heat (as well as also dissipating that heat back to a cooling source for dissipation) so it can also transport far more of that absorbed energy due to the thermal capacity of it as a medium away from heat sources to be expelled elsewhere.


    Thermal Conductivity of Common Cooling Mediums (@~20°C; W/mK)
    Higher values are better

    Water...............................................0.610
    Mineral Oil........................................0.162
    Alcohol(Ethyl, Isopropyl, Buytl)...........0.161-0.200
    Ethylene Glycol..................................0.258
    Air...................................................0.0257


    Specific Heat of Common Cooling Mediums (@~20°C;kJ/kg.K)
    Higher values are better

    Water...............................................4.19
    Air...................................................1.00
    Mineral Oil........................................1.67
    Copper.............................................0.093
    Ethylene glycol..................................2.36
    Copper.............................................0.093
    Ethylene glycol..................................2.36

    When it comes to figuring out how much radiator you need for your specific loop, you have to start doing some math. I know that we all have been building a loop and thought, ˜how many, what size and what kind of radiators do I need for this loop to stay cool like I want?"

    First tip: Google is your best friend to help find TDP (Thermal Design Power}

    Finding out what the TDP or your CPU or GPU is can be as simple as doing some searches by searching for i7 2600k TDP', GTX 580 TDP, or AMD 6970 TDP. Remember to account for all components, if you run a multi-card graphics setup, you need to include the TDP values for all cards in the total. For example, our i7 2600k has a stock TDP of about 95 watts at 100% load (estimated). If we have a 2x SLI setup of GTX 580's, we are looking at about 244 watts at 100% load, per card. Total? About 583 watts in heat that these three components can potentially produce when at 100% load, simultaneously; it's also safe to consider that heat dissipation can never be 100% efficient of power consumption, so even calcuating 85-90% of your TDP total is pretty safe. (This also translates very closely to wattage when you need to consider a power supply for your system, but you need to account for the remaining components: motherboard, fans, hard drives, DVD drives, etc. To help calculate a full system TDP, you can use a tool like the Extreme PSU Calculator (link). In short, when calculating loop TDP, simply add up the total values for components being cooled in the loop...if you have more than one video card, make sure you add in TDP for each one. If you want to simply calculate the overclocked TDP wattage of your CPU, just adjust the CPU section of the calculator or utilize the calculation listed a bit later.

    Once you have calculated your total loop TDP potential, you need to consider radiators that dissipate heat in watts depending on flow rate of your loop and fans being used and their speeds/power. For this task, I almost always refer to *Skinneelabs.com link from Archive.org* for all of this crucial information, graphs and comparisons.

    For example, I am going to reference the XSPC RX360 radiator for this loop. Given the total TDP of 583 watts, I want to know if this single radiator is enough for my loop, or if I should consider another radiator.



    Looking at this chart, we can see that the maximum amount of heat this radiator can dissipate is around 555 watts using 2800 rpm fans (very fast, very loud). You could get better results in a push/pull scenario, but that's even louder; you may be able to live with a 15-20° delta and loud fans if you went this route.

    In short, Delta-T is the load temperature of the water in your loop when compared to ambient air temps; if your room ambient is 27°C, and load water temp is 34°C, this gives you an approximate Delta of 7°C if you are running 100% load on all components being cooled by the loop. Basically, delta-T is a mathematical derivative of your ambient room temperature, flow rate, heat to be dissipated (in watts) and the ability of your radiator to dissipate heat (in watts) depending on fans used to produce the cooling impact by the loop as a whole. You'll notice the chart above has a listing of different fans in the upper-left corner: this determines the angle of the graph and the temperature delta on the left side of the graph. Lower fan speeds correlate to a higher delta-T as you add more heat in watts to the loop. The more heat you produce, the more important it is to remove it from the loop; and fans help accomplish this goal. If you notice the actual temperatures on the lines of the graph at the determined points (around 300 watts of load and around 555 watts), you'll see that the fan speed allows the heat dissipation to be rather normalized. However, the further to the right (and up the graph you go), you'll also notice that your delta-T rises. Below a 5° is incredibly good, 10° is still very good and even 15° deltas are very much the norm. If we wanted to run this loop at a 10° delta, we would need to run two of these RX360 radiators to keep the heat load in watts below 300 watts dissipated per radiator with fans of 600-2800 rpm (in a single-fan setup; push/pull would allow some leniency here; perhaps a RX360 and an RX240, instead).

    Granted, TDP and determining our delta-T isn't an exact science, but it gets us pretty close. It's a bit more tedius to calculate CPU overclocked wattage; however, here is a great calculation to help CPU overclocking and estimated TDP:

    OC Wattage = TDP * ( OC MHz / Stock MHz) * ( OC Vcore / Stock Vcore )^2

    [TABLE=width: 760]


    [TR]

    [TD]
    Quote :

    Example:
    Intel i7 2600k
    3.4ghz (3400mhz)
    1.25v
    95 watts TDP

    For this example I will use a relatively average overclock voltage of 1.35v to reach 4.5ghz (4500mhz)

    OC Wattage = TDP x ( OC MHz / Stock MHz) x ( OC Vcore / Stock Vcore )^2

    OC Wattage = 95 x (4500/3400) x (1.35/1.25)^2

    OC Wattage = 95 x (1.3235) x (1.08)^2

    OC Wattage = 95 x 1.3235 x 1.1664

    OC Wattage = 147 (which is exactly what was calculated by the PSU calculator for overclocked CPU watts on this chip)
    [/TD]

    [/TR]


    [/TABLE]

    *This is all very complicated and can be hard to understand. You will likely need to do more reading then what I can provide here. I do have a general rule that you can read about in the Rad section of this guide that can make all this complicated stuff unnecessary.
    [h=2]For more information please refer to overclocker.com Guide to Delta-T in Water Cooling[/h]
    [h=2]http://www.overclockers.com/guide-deltat-water-cooling/[/h]
  7. Like
    Gmac got a reaction from Letgomyleghoe in Water Cooling 101 - A good place for newbies to start   
    Water Cooling 101
    I have been reading a lot of posting in this sub-forum and am seeing a lot of the same questions. So I figured this forum need some basic guide to water cooling. My basic idea is to take a ton of information on the internet and condense it down to as short and simple explanation of Water cooling. This should be a good starting place for most people. You will need to much more research than just this to be a successful water cooler.

    I have spoken to a Mod and this should be made into a sticky soon.

    My goal with this guide is to be of a FAQ than more of a building guide. Try and explain everything that has to do with what goes into a custom water cooling loop. I am trying to make a guide that will work well with Linus's water cooling videos on the NCIXcom Youtube channel. Trying hard not to cover what he has but make sure nothing is missed.

    So welcome to my Basic Noobies guide to water cooling. Please feel free to comment or post with your ideas of what I could add or change.

    So why do we water cool? Why would you want to stick a tank of water in a box of very expensive electronics?
    This is a question that gets asked a lot on the forum and I thought one of our members summed it up best;

    From our own MdX MaxX;
    “It's not just about temperatures, but about noise. With water cooling, you can run fans at much lower speeds and lower noise levels than you can with air cooling and achieve the same temperatures. Especially for GPUs, I mean GPU fans get loud. Plus you have the benefit of cooling everything you want in the same loop.

    And "good enough" isn't what enthusiasts strive for. Sure, multi-hundred dollar loops aren't necessary. An NH-D14 or Silver Arrow is "good enough." But being a PC enthusiast is much more than having a "good enough" rig. Most people here would have much lower-specced PCs if they only wanted what was "good enough" for them.

    Also, it's fun. Building is fun. Taking on [such] an intensive project is a thrilling challenge for a lot of people. You get to really absorb the experience rather than putting together a system in 2-3 hours and then you're done.

    And lastly, water cooling loops are freaking gorgeous. I mean look at them.

    I would just add that for most of us that use water cooling is more than getting the best performance out of your rig. For most of us it is a hobby. Once you get started it is hard to stop. You always want to try something new or add something to you loop, or even multiple loops.
  8. Like
    Gmac got a reaction from CorvusNoctem in Water Cooling 101 - A good place for newbies to start   
    Water cooling Basic
    Water cooling breaks down into two subcategories:

    1) Custom Loop cooling- You add different parts to make a whole water cooling loop. These consist of; Pumps, Water blocks, (CPU, GPU, Mobo, Mosfets, Ram HDD If you can think of a computer part someone makes a block for it.) Radiators, and lastly Reservoir. You can mix and match all these different parts in different way to create a loop that is tailored made for your system.
    2) All in one closed cooling loops- The name is pretty self explanatory. These all self contained cooling system that pull all those different parts into one unite. They are always sealed and cannot be opened. They compare to good high end air cooling apparatuses but cannot keep up with a custom cooling loop. I won't be cover just about anything on these as they are very popular products and don't need much explanation

    Your budget is going too decided on which route you will take on these two ideas. If you are looking to stay under $150 you will probably want to go with the All in one closed cooling loops. You will get what you pay for with this group. If you are looking to jump into the Custom water cooling world look to start with about $300 and it will go up from there. I have seen people on this forum that easily spend $1000+ on their loops. Don't think you can cheap out on WC you will regret it in the end and more than likely spending more because of it.

    Watercooling basic theory and Delta-T
    *This all comes from TomsHardware Sticky v2 by Rubix_1011 all credit goes to him. He does far better job explaining this all then I could. (http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/277130-29-read-first-watercooling-sticky)

    Watercooling is based on the set of principles that water is proportionally better than air to conduct heat away from a heat source based on conduction, or the direct contact of a heated source and a cooling source to transfer heat energy rather than convection, otherwise known as thermal conductivity. The ability of a substance to directly absorb heat energy is considered it's specific heat; in this case, the ability of heat directly absorbed by water and the required energy to raise overall temperatures by 1°C. While convection takes place with normal air coolers to provide the ability for air to absorb dissipated heat from the cooler, watercooling also employs this concept to some degree. Once the water absorbs heat energy via conduction from the blocks, it then transfers that through tubing to radiators cooled by fans. The difference is that a larger amount of heat energy is able to be absorbed and moved at any given time with a water loop due to pump flow forcing turbulent water through the radiator tubes while the radiator provides greater surface area to conduct heat energy from the water to the radiator and then into the air. The process is more efficient at transferring, displacing and dissipating excess heat energy based on the delta-T of the loop design. In short, the ability of water's excellent specific heat allow it to absorb heat much more quickly and efficiently from a source of heat (as well as also dissipating that heat back to a cooling source for dissipation) so it can also transport far more of that absorbed energy due to the thermal capacity of it as a medium away from heat sources to be expelled elsewhere.


    Thermal Conductivity of Common Cooling Mediums (@~20°C; W/mK)
    Higher values are better

    Water...............................................0.610
    Mineral Oil........................................0.162
    Alcohol(Ethyl, Isopropyl, Buytl)...........0.161-0.200
    Ethylene Glycol..................................0.258
    Air...................................................0.0257


    Specific Heat of Common Cooling Mediums (@~20°C;kJ/kg.K)
    Higher values are better

    Water...............................................4.19
    Air...................................................1.00
    Mineral Oil........................................1.67
    Copper.............................................0.093
    Ethylene glycol..................................2.36
    Copper.............................................0.093
    Ethylene glycol..................................2.36

    When it comes to figuring out how much radiator you need for your specific loop, you have to start doing some math. I know that we all have been building a loop and thought, ˜how many, what size and what kind of radiators do I need for this loop to stay cool like I want?"

    First tip: Google is your best friend to help find TDP (Thermal Design Power}

    Finding out what the TDP or your CPU or GPU is can be as simple as doing some searches by searching for i7 2600k TDP', GTX 580 TDP, or AMD 6970 TDP. Remember to account for all components, if you run a multi-card graphics setup, you need to include the TDP values for all cards in the total. For example, our i7 2600k has a stock TDP of about 95 watts at 100% load (estimated). If we have a 2x SLI setup of GTX 580's, we are looking at about 244 watts at 100% load, per card. Total? About 583 watts in heat that these three components can potentially produce when at 100% load, simultaneously; it's also safe to consider that heat dissipation can never be 100% efficient of power consumption, so even calcuating 85-90% of your TDP total is pretty safe. (This also translates very closely to wattage when you need to consider a power supply for your system, but you need to account for the remaining components: motherboard, fans, hard drives, DVD drives, etc. To help calculate a full system TDP, you can use a tool like the Extreme PSU Calculator (link). In short, when calculating loop TDP, simply add up the total values for components being cooled in the loop...if you have more than one video card, make sure you add in TDP for each one. If you want to simply calculate the overclocked TDP wattage of your CPU, just adjust the CPU section of the calculator or utilize the calculation listed a bit later.

    Once you have calculated your total loop TDP potential, you need to consider radiators that dissipate heat in watts depending on flow rate of your loop and fans being used and their speeds/power. For this task, I almost always refer to *Skinneelabs.com link from Archive.org* for all of this crucial information, graphs and comparisons.

    For example, I am going to reference the XSPC RX360 radiator for this loop. Given the total TDP of 583 watts, I want to know if this single radiator is enough for my loop, or if I should consider another radiator.



    Looking at this chart, we can see that the maximum amount of heat this radiator can dissipate is around 555 watts using 2800 rpm fans (very fast, very loud). You could get better results in a push/pull scenario, but that's even louder; you may be able to live with a 15-20° delta and loud fans if you went this route.

    In short, Delta-T is the load temperature of the water in your loop when compared to ambient air temps; if your room ambient is 27°C, and load water temp is 34°C, this gives you an approximate Delta of 7°C if you are running 100% load on all components being cooled by the loop. Basically, delta-T is a mathematical derivative of your ambient room temperature, flow rate, heat to be dissipated (in watts) and the ability of your radiator to dissipate heat (in watts) depending on fans used to produce the cooling impact by the loop as a whole. You'll notice the chart above has a listing of different fans in the upper-left corner: this determines the angle of the graph and the temperature delta on the left side of the graph. Lower fan speeds correlate to a higher delta-T as you add more heat in watts to the loop. The more heat you produce, the more important it is to remove it from the loop; and fans help accomplish this goal. If you notice the actual temperatures on the lines of the graph at the determined points (around 300 watts of load and around 555 watts), you'll see that the fan speed allows the heat dissipation to be rather normalized. However, the further to the right (and up the graph you go), you'll also notice that your delta-T rises. Below a 5° is incredibly good, 10° is still very good and even 15° deltas are very much the norm. If we wanted to run this loop at a 10° delta, we would need to run two of these RX360 radiators to keep the heat load in watts below 300 watts dissipated per radiator with fans of 600-2800 rpm (in a single-fan setup; push/pull would allow some leniency here; perhaps a RX360 and an RX240, instead).

    Granted, TDP and determining our delta-T isn't an exact science, but it gets us pretty close. It's a bit more tedius to calculate CPU overclocked wattage; however, here is a great calculation to help CPU overclocking and estimated TDP:

    OC Wattage = TDP * ( OC MHz / Stock MHz) * ( OC Vcore / Stock Vcore )^2

    [TABLE=width: 760]


    [TR]

    [TD]
    Quote :

    Example:
    Intel i7 2600k
    3.4ghz (3400mhz)
    1.25v
    95 watts TDP

    For this example I will use a relatively average overclock voltage of 1.35v to reach 4.5ghz (4500mhz)

    OC Wattage = TDP x ( OC MHz / Stock MHz) x ( OC Vcore / Stock Vcore )^2

    OC Wattage = 95 x (4500/3400) x (1.35/1.25)^2

    OC Wattage = 95 x (1.3235) x (1.08)^2

    OC Wattage = 95 x 1.3235 x 1.1664

    OC Wattage = 147 (which is exactly what was calculated by the PSU calculator for overclocked CPU watts on this chip)
    [/TD]

    [/TR]


    [/TABLE]

    *This is all very complicated and can be hard to understand. You will likely need to do more reading then what I can provide here. I do have a general rule that you can read about in the Rad section of this guide that can make all this complicated stuff unnecessary.
    [h=2]For more information please refer to overclocker.com Guide to Delta-T in Water Cooling[/h]
    [h=2]http://www.overclockers.com/guide-deltat-water-cooling/[/h]
  9. Informative
    Gmac got a reaction from Benjy98 in Water Cooling 101 - A good place for newbies to start   
    Water cooling Basic
    Water cooling breaks down into two subcategories:

    1) Custom Loop cooling- You add different parts to make a whole water cooling loop. These consist of; Pumps, Water blocks, (CPU, GPU, Mobo, Mosfets, Ram HDD If you can think of a computer part someone makes a block for it.) Radiators, and lastly Reservoir. You can mix and match all these different parts in different way to create a loop that is tailored made for your system.
    2) All in one closed cooling loops- The name is pretty self explanatory. These all self contained cooling system that pull all those different parts into one unite. They are always sealed and cannot be opened. They compare to good high end air cooling apparatuses but cannot keep up with a custom cooling loop. I won't be cover just about anything on these as they are very popular products and don't need much explanation

    Your budget is going too decided on which route you will take on these two ideas. If you are looking to stay under $150 you will probably want to go with the All in one closed cooling loops. You will get what you pay for with this group. If you are looking to jump into the Custom water cooling world look to start with about $300 and it will go up from there. I have seen people on this forum that easily spend $1000+ on their loops. Don't think you can cheap out on WC you will regret it in the end and more than likely spending more because of it.

    Watercooling basic theory and Delta-T
    *This all comes from TomsHardware Sticky v2 by Rubix_1011 all credit goes to him. He does far better job explaining this all then I could. (http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/277130-29-read-first-watercooling-sticky)

    Watercooling is based on the set of principles that water is proportionally better than air to conduct heat away from a heat source based on conduction, or the direct contact of a heated source and a cooling source to transfer heat energy rather than convection, otherwise known as thermal conductivity. The ability of a substance to directly absorb heat energy is considered it's specific heat; in this case, the ability of heat directly absorbed by water and the required energy to raise overall temperatures by 1°C. While convection takes place with normal air coolers to provide the ability for air to absorb dissipated heat from the cooler, watercooling also employs this concept to some degree. Once the water absorbs heat energy via conduction from the blocks, it then transfers that through tubing to radiators cooled by fans. The difference is that a larger amount of heat energy is able to be absorbed and moved at any given time with a water loop due to pump flow forcing turbulent water through the radiator tubes while the radiator provides greater surface area to conduct heat energy from the water to the radiator and then into the air. The process is more efficient at transferring, displacing and dissipating excess heat energy based on the delta-T of the loop design. In short, the ability of water's excellent specific heat allow it to absorb heat much more quickly and efficiently from a source of heat (as well as also dissipating that heat back to a cooling source for dissipation) so it can also transport far more of that absorbed energy due to the thermal capacity of it as a medium away from heat sources to be expelled elsewhere.


    Thermal Conductivity of Common Cooling Mediums (@~20°C; W/mK)
    Higher values are better

    Water...............................................0.610
    Mineral Oil........................................0.162
    Alcohol(Ethyl, Isopropyl, Buytl)...........0.161-0.200
    Ethylene Glycol..................................0.258
    Air...................................................0.0257


    Specific Heat of Common Cooling Mediums (@~20°C;kJ/kg.K)
    Higher values are better

    Water...............................................4.19
    Air...................................................1.00
    Mineral Oil........................................1.67
    Copper.............................................0.093
    Ethylene glycol..................................2.36
    Copper.............................................0.093
    Ethylene glycol..................................2.36

    When it comes to figuring out how much radiator you need for your specific loop, you have to start doing some math. I know that we all have been building a loop and thought, ˜how many, what size and what kind of radiators do I need for this loop to stay cool like I want?"

    First tip: Google is your best friend to help find TDP (Thermal Design Power}

    Finding out what the TDP or your CPU or GPU is can be as simple as doing some searches by searching for i7 2600k TDP', GTX 580 TDP, or AMD 6970 TDP. Remember to account for all components, if you run a multi-card graphics setup, you need to include the TDP values for all cards in the total. For example, our i7 2600k has a stock TDP of about 95 watts at 100% load (estimated). If we have a 2x SLI setup of GTX 580's, we are looking at about 244 watts at 100% load, per card. Total? About 583 watts in heat that these three components can potentially produce when at 100% load, simultaneously; it's also safe to consider that heat dissipation can never be 100% efficient of power consumption, so even calcuating 85-90% of your TDP total is pretty safe. (This also translates very closely to wattage when you need to consider a power supply for your system, but you need to account for the remaining components: motherboard, fans, hard drives, DVD drives, etc. To help calculate a full system TDP, you can use a tool like the Extreme PSU Calculator (link). In short, when calculating loop TDP, simply add up the total values for components being cooled in the loop...if you have more than one video card, make sure you add in TDP for each one. If you want to simply calculate the overclocked TDP wattage of your CPU, just adjust the CPU section of the calculator or utilize the calculation listed a bit later.

    Once you have calculated your total loop TDP potential, you need to consider radiators that dissipate heat in watts depending on flow rate of your loop and fans being used and their speeds/power. For this task, I almost always refer to *Skinneelabs.com link from Archive.org* for all of this crucial information, graphs and comparisons.

    For example, I am going to reference the XSPC RX360 radiator for this loop. Given the total TDP of 583 watts, I want to know if this single radiator is enough for my loop, or if I should consider another radiator.



    Looking at this chart, we can see that the maximum amount of heat this radiator can dissipate is around 555 watts using 2800 rpm fans (very fast, very loud). You could get better results in a push/pull scenario, but that's even louder; you may be able to live with a 15-20° delta and loud fans if you went this route.

    In short, Delta-T is the load temperature of the water in your loop when compared to ambient air temps; if your room ambient is 27°C, and load water temp is 34°C, this gives you an approximate Delta of 7°C if you are running 100% load on all components being cooled by the loop. Basically, delta-T is a mathematical derivative of your ambient room temperature, flow rate, heat to be dissipated (in watts) and the ability of your radiator to dissipate heat (in watts) depending on fans used to produce the cooling impact by the loop as a whole. You'll notice the chart above has a listing of different fans in the upper-left corner: this determines the angle of the graph and the temperature delta on the left side of the graph. Lower fan speeds correlate to a higher delta-T as you add more heat in watts to the loop. The more heat you produce, the more important it is to remove it from the loop; and fans help accomplish this goal. If you notice the actual temperatures on the lines of the graph at the determined points (around 300 watts of load and around 555 watts), you'll see that the fan speed allows the heat dissipation to be rather normalized. However, the further to the right (and up the graph you go), you'll also notice that your delta-T rises. Below a 5° is incredibly good, 10° is still very good and even 15° deltas are very much the norm. If we wanted to run this loop at a 10° delta, we would need to run two of these RX360 radiators to keep the heat load in watts below 300 watts dissipated per radiator with fans of 600-2800 rpm (in a single-fan setup; push/pull would allow some leniency here; perhaps a RX360 and an RX240, instead).

    Granted, TDP and determining our delta-T isn't an exact science, but it gets us pretty close. It's a bit more tedius to calculate CPU overclocked wattage; however, here is a great calculation to help CPU overclocking and estimated TDP:

    OC Wattage = TDP * ( OC MHz / Stock MHz) * ( OC Vcore / Stock Vcore )^2

    [TABLE=width: 760]


    [TR]

    [TD]
    Quote :

    Example:
    Intel i7 2600k
    3.4ghz (3400mhz)
    1.25v
    95 watts TDP

    For this example I will use a relatively average overclock voltage of 1.35v to reach 4.5ghz (4500mhz)

    OC Wattage = TDP x ( OC MHz / Stock MHz) x ( OC Vcore / Stock Vcore )^2

    OC Wattage = 95 x (4500/3400) x (1.35/1.25)^2

    OC Wattage = 95 x (1.3235) x (1.08)^2

    OC Wattage = 95 x 1.3235 x 1.1664

    OC Wattage = 147 (which is exactly what was calculated by the PSU calculator for overclocked CPU watts on this chip)
    [/TD]

    [/TR]


    [/TABLE]

    *This is all very complicated and can be hard to understand. You will likely need to do more reading then what I can provide here. I do have a general rule that you can read about in the Rad section of this guide that can make all this complicated stuff unnecessary.
    [h=2]For more information please refer to overclocker.com Guide to Delta-T in Water Cooling[/h]
    [h=2]http://www.overclockers.com/guide-deltat-water-cooling/[/h]
  10. Like
    Gmac got a reaction from Benjy98 in Water Cooling 101 - A good place for newbies to start   
    Water Cooling 101
    I have been reading a lot of posting in this sub-forum and am seeing a lot of the same questions. So I figured this forum need some basic guide to water cooling. My basic idea is to take a ton of information on the internet and condense it down to as short and simple explanation of Water cooling. This should be a good starting place for most people. You will need to much more research than just this to be a successful water cooler.

    I have spoken to a Mod and this should be made into a sticky soon.

    My goal with this guide is to be of a FAQ than more of a building guide. Try and explain everything that has to do with what goes into a custom water cooling loop. I am trying to make a guide that will work well with Linus's water cooling videos on the NCIXcom Youtube channel. Trying hard not to cover what he has but make sure nothing is missed.

    So welcome to my Basic Noobies guide to water cooling. Please feel free to comment or post with your ideas of what I could add or change.

    So why do we water cool? Why would you want to stick a tank of water in a box of very expensive electronics?
    This is a question that gets asked a lot on the forum and I thought one of our members summed it up best;

    From our own MdX MaxX;
    “It's not just about temperatures, but about noise. With water cooling, you can run fans at much lower speeds and lower noise levels than you can with air cooling and achieve the same temperatures. Especially for GPUs, I mean GPU fans get loud. Plus you have the benefit of cooling everything you want in the same loop.

    And "good enough" isn't what enthusiasts strive for. Sure, multi-hundred dollar loops aren't necessary. An NH-D14 or Silver Arrow is "good enough." But being a PC enthusiast is much more than having a "good enough" rig. Most people here would have much lower-specced PCs if they only wanted what was "good enough" for them.

    Also, it's fun. Building is fun. Taking on [such] an intensive project is a thrilling challenge for a lot of people. You get to really absorb the experience rather than putting together a system in 2-3 hours and then you're done.

    And lastly, water cooling loops are freaking gorgeous. I mean look at them.

    I would just add that for most of us that use water cooling is more than getting the best performance out of your rig. For most of us it is a hobby. Once you get started it is hard to stop. You always want to try something new or add something to you loop, or even multiple loops.
  11. Like
    Gmac got a reaction from Cavalry Canuck in Water Cooling 101 - A good place for newbies to start   
    Water Cooling 101
    I have been reading a lot of posting in this sub-forum and am seeing a lot of the same questions. So I figured this forum need some basic guide to water cooling. My basic idea is to take a ton of information on the internet and condense it down to as short and simple explanation of Water cooling. This should be a good starting place for most people. You will need to much more research than just this to be a successful water cooler.

    I have spoken to a Mod and this should be made into a sticky soon.

    My goal with this guide is to be of a FAQ than more of a building guide. Try and explain everything that has to do with what goes into a custom water cooling loop. I am trying to make a guide that will work well with Linus's water cooling videos on the NCIXcom Youtube channel. Trying hard not to cover what he has but make sure nothing is missed.

    So welcome to my Basic Noobies guide to water cooling. Please feel free to comment or post with your ideas of what I could add or change.

    So why do we water cool? Why would you want to stick a tank of water in a box of very expensive electronics?
    This is a question that gets asked a lot on the forum and I thought one of our members summed it up best;

    From our own MdX MaxX;
    “It's not just about temperatures, but about noise. With water cooling, you can run fans at much lower speeds and lower noise levels than you can with air cooling and achieve the same temperatures. Especially for GPUs, I mean GPU fans get loud. Plus you have the benefit of cooling everything you want in the same loop.

    And "good enough" isn't what enthusiasts strive for. Sure, multi-hundred dollar loops aren't necessary. An NH-D14 or Silver Arrow is "good enough." But being a PC enthusiast is much more than having a "good enough" rig. Most people here would have much lower-specced PCs if they only wanted what was "good enough" for them.

    Also, it's fun. Building is fun. Taking on [such] an intensive project is a thrilling challenge for a lot of people. You get to really absorb the experience rather than putting together a system in 2-3 hours and then you're done.

    And lastly, water cooling loops are freaking gorgeous. I mean look at them.

    I would just add that for most of us that use water cooling is more than getting the best performance out of your rig. For most of us it is a hobby. Once you get started it is hard to stop. You always want to try something new or add something to you loop, or even multiple loops.
  12. Informative
    Gmac got a reaction from Monkey Butler in Water Cooling 101 - A good place for newbies to start   
    Water Cooling 101
    I have been reading a lot of posting in this sub-forum and am seeing a lot of the same questions. So I figured this forum need some basic guide to water cooling. My basic idea is to take a ton of information on the internet and condense it down to as short and simple explanation of Water cooling. This should be a good starting place for most people. You will need to much more research than just this to be a successful water cooler.

    I have spoken to a Mod and this should be made into a sticky soon.

    My goal with this guide is to be of a FAQ than more of a building guide. Try and explain everything that has to do with what goes into a custom water cooling loop. I am trying to make a guide that will work well with Linus's water cooling videos on the NCIXcom Youtube channel. Trying hard not to cover what he has but make sure nothing is missed.

    So welcome to my Basic Noobies guide to water cooling. Please feel free to comment or post with your ideas of what I could add or change.

    So why do we water cool? Why would you want to stick a tank of water in a box of very expensive electronics?
    This is a question that gets asked a lot on the forum and I thought one of our members summed it up best;

    From our own MdX MaxX;
    “It's not just about temperatures, but about noise. With water cooling, you can run fans at much lower speeds and lower noise levels than you can with air cooling and achieve the same temperatures. Especially for GPUs, I mean GPU fans get loud. Plus you have the benefit of cooling everything you want in the same loop.

    And "good enough" isn't what enthusiasts strive for. Sure, multi-hundred dollar loops aren't necessary. An NH-D14 or Silver Arrow is "good enough." But being a PC enthusiast is much more than having a "good enough" rig. Most people here would have much lower-specced PCs if they only wanted what was "good enough" for them.

    Also, it's fun. Building is fun. Taking on [such] an intensive project is a thrilling challenge for a lot of people. You get to really absorb the experience rather than putting together a system in 2-3 hours and then you're done.

    And lastly, water cooling loops are freaking gorgeous. I mean look at them.

    I would just add that for most of us that use water cooling is more than getting the best performance out of your rig. For most of us it is a hobby. Once you get started it is hard to stop. You always want to try something new or add something to you loop, or even multiple loops.
  13. Like
    Gmac got a reaction from Nobaris in Water Cooling 101 - A good place for newbies to start   
    Water Cooling 101
    I have been reading a lot of posting in this sub-forum and am seeing a lot of the same questions. So I figured this forum need some basic guide to water cooling. My basic idea is to take a ton of information on the internet and condense it down to as short and simple explanation of Water cooling. This should be a good starting place for most people. You will need to much more research than just this to be a successful water cooler.

    I have spoken to a Mod and this should be made into a sticky soon.

    My goal with this guide is to be of a FAQ than more of a building guide. Try and explain everything that has to do with what goes into a custom water cooling loop. I am trying to make a guide that will work well with Linus's water cooling videos on the NCIXcom Youtube channel. Trying hard not to cover what he has but make sure nothing is missed.

    So welcome to my Basic Noobies guide to water cooling. Please feel free to comment or post with your ideas of what I could add or change.

    So why do we water cool? Why would you want to stick a tank of water in a box of very expensive electronics?
    This is a question that gets asked a lot on the forum and I thought one of our members summed it up best;

    From our own MdX MaxX;
    “It's not just about temperatures, but about noise. With water cooling, you can run fans at much lower speeds and lower noise levels than you can with air cooling and achieve the same temperatures. Especially for GPUs, I mean GPU fans get loud. Plus you have the benefit of cooling everything you want in the same loop.

    And "good enough" isn't what enthusiasts strive for. Sure, multi-hundred dollar loops aren't necessary. An NH-D14 or Silver Arrow is "good enough." But being a PC enthusiast is much more than having a "good enough" rig. Most people here would have much lower-specced PCs if they only wanted what was "good enough" for them.

    Also, it's fun. Building is fun. Taking on [such] an intensive project is a thrilling challenge for a lot of people. You get to really absorb the experience rather than putting together a system in 2-3 hours and then you're done.

    And lastly, water cooling loops are freaking gorgeous. I mean look at them.

    I would just add that for most of us that use water cooling is more than getting the best performance out of your rig. For most of us it is a hobby. Once you get started it is hard to stop. You always want to try something new or add something to you loop, or even multiple loops.
  14. Informative
    Gmac got a reaction from Sir_damian in Water Cooling 101 - A good place for newbies to start   
    Water cooling Basic
    Water cooling breaks down into two subcategories:

    1) Custom Loop cooling- You add different parts to make a whole water cooling loop. These consist of; Pumps, Water blocks, (CPU, GPU, Mobo, Mosfets, Ram HDD If you can think of a computer part someone makes a block for it.) Radiators, and lastly Reservoir. You can mix and match all these different parts in different way to create a loop that is tailored made for your system.
    2) All in one closed cooling loops- The name is pretty self explanatory. These all self contained cooling system that pull all those different parts into one unite. They are always sealed and cannot be opened. They compare to good high end air cooling apparatuses but cannot keep up with a custom cooling loop. I won't be cover just about anything on these as they are very popular products and don't need much explanation

    Your budget is going too decided on which route you will take on these two ideas. If you are looking to stay under $150 you will probably want to go with the All in one closed cooling loops. You will get what you pay for with this group. If you are looking to jump into the Custom water cooling world look to start with about $300 and it will go up from there. I have seen people on this forum that easily spend $1000+ on their loops. Don't think you can cheap out on WC you will regret it in the end and more than likely spending more because of it.

    Watercooling basic theory and Delta-T
    *This all comes from TomsHardware Sticky v2 by Rubix_1011 all credit goes to him. He does far better job explaining this all then I could. (http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/277130-29-read-first-watercooling-sticky)

    Watercooling is based on the set of principles that water is proportionally better than air to conduct heat away from a heat source based on conduction, or the direct contact of a heated source and a cooling source to transfer heat energy rather than convection, otherwise known as thermal conductivity. The ability of a substance to directly absorb heat energy is considered it's specific heat; in this case, the ability of heat directly absorbed by water and the required energy to raise overall temperatures by 1°C. While convection takes place with normal air coolers to provide the ability for air to absorb dissipated heat from the cooler, watercooling also employs this concept to some degree. Once the water absorbs heat energy via conduction from the blocks, it then transfers that through tubing to radiators cooled by fans. The difference is that a larger amount of heat energy is able to be absorbed and moved at any given time with a water loop due to pump flow forcing turbulent water through the radiator tubes while the radiator provides greater surface area to conduct heat energy from the water to the radiator and then into the air. The process is more efficient at transferring, displacing and dissipating excess heat energy based on the delta-T of the loop design. In short, the ability of water's excellent specific heat allow it to absorb heat much more quickly and efficiently from a source of heat (as well as also dissipating that heat back to a cooling source for dissipation) so it can also transport far more of that absorbed energy due to the thermal capacity of it as a medium away from heat sources to be expelled elsewhere.


    Thermal Conductivity of Common Cooling Mediums (@~20°C; W/mK)
    Higher values are better

    Water...............................................0.610
    Mineral Oil........................................0.162
    Alcohol(Ethyl, Isopropyl, Buytl)...........0.161-0.200
    Ethylene Glycol..................................0.258
    Air...................................................0.0257


    Specific Heat of Common Cooling Mediums (@~20°C;kJ/kg.K)
    Higher values are better

    Water...............................................4.19
    Air...................................................1.00
    Mineral Oil........................................1.67
    Copper.............................................0.093
    Ethylene glycol..................................2.36
    Copper.............................................0.093
    Ethylene glycol..................................2.36

    When it comes to figuring out how much radiator you need for your specific loop, you have to start doing some math. I know that we all have been building a loop and thought, ˜how many, what size and what kind of radiators do I need for this loop to stay cool like I want?"

    First tip: Google is your best friend to help find TDP (Thermal Design Power}

    Finding out what the TDP or your CPU or GPU is can be as simple as doing some searches by searching for i7 2600k TDP', GTX 580 TDP, or AMD 6970 TDP. Remember to account for all components, if you run a multi-card graphics setup, you need to include the TDP values for all cards in the total. For example, our i7 2600k has a stock TDP of about 95 watts at 100% load (estimated). If we have a 2x SLI setup of GTX 580's, we are looking at about 244 watts at 100% load, per card. Total? About 583 watts in heat that these three components can potentially produce when at 100% load, simultaneously; it's also safe to consider that heat dissipation can never be 100% efficient of power consumption, so even calcuating 85-90% of your TDP total is pretty safe. (This also translates very closely to wattage when you need to consider a power supply for your system, but you need to account for the remaining components: motherboard, fans, hard drives, DVD drives, etc. To help calculate a full system TDP, you can use a tool like the Extreme PSU Calculator (link). In short, when calculating loop TDP, simply add up the total values for components being cooled in the loop...if you have more than one video card, make sure you add in TDP for each one. If you want to simply calculate the overclocked TDP wattage of your CPU, just adjust the CPU section of the calculator or utilize the calculation listed a bit later.

    Once you have calculated your total loop TDP potential, you need to consider radiators that dissipate heat in watts depending on flow rate of your loop and fans being used and their speeds/power. For this task, I almost always refer to *Skinneelabs.com link from Archive.org* for all of this crucial information, graphs and comparisons.

    For example, I am going to reference the XSPC RX360 radiator for this loop. Given the total TDP of 583 watts, I want to know if this single radiator is enough for my loop, or if I should consider another radiator.



    Looking at this chart, we can see that the maximum amount of heat this radiator can dissipate is around 555 watts using 2800 rpm fans (very fast, very loud). You could get better results in a push/pull scenario, but that's even louder; you may be able to live with a 15-20° delta and loud fans if you went this route.

    In short, Delta-T is the load temperature of the water in your loop when compared to ambient air temps; if your room ambient is 27°C, and load water temp is 34°C, this gives you an approximate Delta of 7°C if you are running 100% load on all components being cooled by the loop. Basically, delta-T is a mathematical derivative of your ambient room temperature, flow rate, heat to be dissipated (in watts) and the ability of your radiator to dissipate heat (in watts) depending on fans used to produce the cooling impact by the loop as a whole. You'll notice the chart above has a listing of different fans in the upper-left corner: this determines the angle of the graph and the temperature delta on the left side of the graph. Lower fan speeds correlate to a higher delta-T as you add more heat in watts to the loop. The more heat you produce, the more important it is to remove it from the loop; and fans help accomplish this goal. If you notice the actual temperatures on the lines of the graph at the determined points (around 300 watts of load and around 555 watts), you'll see that the fan speed allows the heat dissipation to be rather normalized. However, the further to the right (and up the graph you go), you'll also notice that your delta-T rises. Below a 5° is incredibly good, 10° is still very good and even 15° deltas are very much the norm. If we wanted to run this loop at a 10° delta, we would need to run two of these RX360 radiators to keep the heat load in watts below 300 watts dissipated per radiator with fans of 600-2800 rpm (in a single-fan setup; push/pull would allow some leniency here; perhaps a RX360 and an RX240, instead).

    Granted, TDP and determining our delta-T isn't an exact science, but it gets us pretty close. It's a bit more tedius to calculate CPU overclocked wattage; however, here is a great calculation to help CPU overclocking and estimated TDP:

    OC Wattage = TDP * ( OC MHz / Stock MHz) * ( OC Vcore / Stock Vcore )^2

    [TABLE=width: 760]


    [TR]

    [TD]
    Quote :

    Example:
    Intel i7 2600k
    3.4ghz (3400mhz)
    1.25v
    95 watts TDP

    For this example I will use a relatively average overclock voltage of 1.35v to reach 4.5ghz (4500mhz)

    OC Wattage = TDP x ( OC MHz / Stock MHz) x ( OC Vcore / Stock Vcore )^2

    OC Wattage = 95 x (4500/3400) x (1.35/1.25)^2

    OC Wattage = 95 x (1.3235) x (1.08)^2

    OC Wattage = 95 x 1.3235 x 1.1664

    OC Wattage = 147 (which is exactly what was calculated by the PSU calculator for overclocked CPU watts on this chip)
    [/TD]

    [/TR]


    [/TABLE]

    *This is all very complicated and can be hard to understand. You will likely need to do more reading then what I can provide here. I do have a general rule that you can read about in the Rad section of this guide that can make all this complicated stuff unnecessary.
    [h=2]For more information please refer to overclocker.com Guide to Delta-T in Water Cooling[/h]
    [h=2]http://www.overclockers.com/guide-deltat-water-cooling/[/h]
  15. Like
    Gmac got a reaction from suekaroo in The Water Cooling Gallery   
    So apparently everything is deleted when you edit a post and just replaces it with your edit. So...
    If you want to see pictures check out my profile; http://linustechtips.com/main/special/albums/5663-my-system#post5663
    But my loop is as follows:
    XSPC Dual Bay Res with D5 vero pump
    XSPC Raystorm on my I7-930
    XSPC RAZOR gtx 680 on my GTX 670 ftw
    XSPZ 280mm Rad at the top of my case that bring cool air in from the top of the case
    This is my first loop and i love it. It was a lot of fun and very frustrating to put together, which is a good thing when building a computer if you ask me. When im pushing my system at over 4ghz on the cpu and over 1200 mhz on my gtx my temps stay around ~65 centigrade. But when im gaming at my normal 3.61 ghz and stock gtx boot clock setting i never break 50 centigrade on them both.
    So my question to my fellow water coolers is who has used XSPC and like them. I have been very impressed my self with their products. In my opinion they are the best looking products on the market and they are certainly on the cheaper side when it comes to water cooling. I was going to go with swiftech products when i started thinking about water cooling but i really just dont think they are worth the money. And really not that great looking.
  16. Informative
    Gmac got a reaction from bigmouthbob1 in Water Cooling 101 - A good place for newbies to start   
    Water Cooling 101
    I have been reading a lot of posting in this sub-forum and am seeing a lot of the same questions. So I figured this forum need some basic guide to water cooling. My basic idea is to take a ton of information on the internet and condense it down to as short and simple explanation of Water cooling. This should be a good starting place for most people. You will need to much more research than just this to be a successful water cooler.

    I have spoken to a Mod and this should be made into a sticky soon.

    My goal with this guide is to be of a FAQ than more of a building guide. Try and explain everything that has to do with what goes into a custom water cooling loop. I am trying to make a guide that will work well with Linus's water cooling videos on the NCIXcom Youtube channel. Trying hard not to cover what he has but make sure nothing is missed.

    So welcome to my Basic Noobies guide to water cooling. Please feel free to comment or post with your ideas of what I could add or change.

    So why do we water cool? Why would you want to stick a tank of water in a box of very expensive electronics?
    This is a question that gets asked a lot on the forum and I thought one of our members summed it up best;

    From our own MdX MaxX;
    “It's not just about temperatures, but about noise. With water cooling, you can run fans at much lower speeds and lower noise levels than you can with air cooling and achieve the same temperatures. Especially for GPUs, I mean GPU fans get loud. Plus you have the benefit of cooling everything you want in the same loop.

    And "good enough" isn't what enthusiasts strive for. Sure, multi-hundred dollar loops aren't necessary. An NH-D14 or Silver Arrow is "good enough." But being a PC enthusiast is much more than having a "good enough" rig. Most people here would have much lower-specced PCs if they only wanted what was "good enough" for them.

    Also, it's fun. Building is fun. Taking on [such] an intensive project is a thrilling challenge for a lot of people. You get to really absorb the experience rather than putting together a system in 2-3 hours and then you're done.

    And lastly, water cooling loops are freaking gorgeous. I mean look at them.

    I would just add that for most of us that use water cooling is more than getting the best performance out of your rig. For most of us it is a hobby. Once you get started it is hard to stop. You always want to try something new or add something to you loop, or even multiple loops.
  17. Informative
    Gmac got a reaction from NomadC in Water Cooling 101 - A good place for newbies to start   
    Water Cooling 101
    I have been reading a lot of posting in this sub-forum and am seeing a lot of the same questions. So I figured this forum need some basic guide to water cooling. My basic idea is to take a ton of information on the internet and condense it down to as short and simple explanation of Water cooling. This should be a good starting place for most people. You will need to much more research than just this to be a successful water cooler.

    I have spoken to a Mod and this should be made into a sticky soon.

    My goal with this guide is to be of a FAQ than more of a building guide. Try and explain everything that has to do with what goes into a custom water cooling loop. I am trying to make a guide that will work well with Linus's water cooling videos on the NCIXcom Youtube channel. Trying hard not to cover what he has but make sure nothing is missed.

    So welcome to my Basic Noobies guide to water cooling. Please feel free to comment or post with your ideas of what I could add or change.

    So why do we water cool? Why would you want to stick a tank of water in a box of very expensive electronics?
    This is a question that gets asked a lot on the forum and I thought one of our members summed it up best;

    From our own MdX MaxX;
    “It's not just about temperatures, but about noise. With water cooling, you can run fans at much lower speeds and lower noise levels than you can with air cooling and achieve the same temperatures. Especially for GPUs, I mean GPU fans get loud. Plus you have the benefit of cooling everything you want in the same loop.

    And "good enough" isn't what enthusiasts strive for. Sure, multi-hundred dollar loops aren't necessary. An NH-D14 or Silver Arrow is "good enough." But being a PC enthusiast is much more than having a "good enough" rig. Most people here would have much lower-specced PCs if they only wanted what was "good enough" for them.

    Also, it's fun. Building is fun. Taking on [such] an intensive project is a thrilling challenge for a lot of people. You get to really absorb the experience rather than putting together a system in 2-3 hours and then you're done.

    And lastly, water cooling loops are freaking gorgeous. I mean look at them.

    I would just add that for most of us that use water cooling is more than getting the best performance out of your rig. For most of us it is a hobby. Once you get started it is hard to stop. You always want to try something new or add something to you loop, or even multiple loops.
  18. Like
    Gmac got a reaction from Metro_boomin in Water Cooling 101 - A good place for newbies to start   
    Water Cooling 101
    I have been reading a lot of posting in this sub-forum and am seeing a lot of the same questions. So I figured this forum need some basic guide to water cooling. My basic idea is to take a ton of information on the internet and condense it down to as short and simple explanation of Water cooling. This should be a good starting place for most people. You will need to much more research than just this to be a successful water cooler.

    I have spoken to a Mod and this should be made into a sticky soon.

    My goal with this guide is to be of a FAQ than more of a building guide. Try and explain everything that has to do with what goes into a custom water cooling loop. I am trying to make a guide that will work well with Linus's water cooling videos on the NCIXcom Youtube channel. Trying hard not to cover what he has but make sure nothing is missed.

    So welcome to my Basic Noobies guide to water cooling. Please feel free to comment or post with your ideas of what I could add or change.

    So why do we water cool? Why would you want to stick a tank of water in a box of very expensive electronics?
    This is a question that gets asked a lot on the forum and I thought one of our members summed it up best;

    From our own MdX MaxX;
    “It's not just about temperatures, but about noise. With water cooling, you can run fans at much lower speeds and lower noise levels than you can with air cooling and achieve the same temperatures. Especially for GPUs, I mean GPU fans get loud. Plus you have the benefit of cooling everything you want in the same loop.

    And "good enough" isn't what enthusiasts strive for. Sure, multi-hundred dollar loops aren't necessary. An NH-D14 or Silver Arrow is "good enough." But being a PC enthusiast is much more than having a "good enough" rig. Most people here would have much lower-specced PCs if they only wanted what was "good enough" for them.

    Also, it's fun. Building is fun. Taking on [such] an intensive project is a thrilling challenge for a lot of people. You get to really absorb the experience rather than putting together a system in 2-3 hours and then you're done.

    And lastly, water cooling loops are freaking gorgeous. I mean look at them.

    I would just add that for most of us that use water cooling is more than getting the best performance out of your rig. For most of us it is a hobby. Once you get started it is hard to stop. You always want to try something new or add something to you loop, or even multiple loops.
  19. Informative
    Gmac got a reaction from AverageLeo in Water Cooling 101 - A good place for newbies to start   
    Water Cooling 101
    I have been reading a lot of posting in this sub-forum and am seeing a lot of the same questions. So I figured this forum need some basic guide to water cooling. My basic idea is to take a ton of information on the internet and condense it down to as short and simple explanation of Water cooling. This should be a good starting place for most people. You will need to much more research than just this to be a successful water cooler.

    I have spoken to a Mod and this should be made into a sticky soon.

    My goal with this guide is to be of a FAQ than more of a building guide. Try and explain everything that has to do with what goes into a custom water cooling loop. I am trying to make a guide that will work well with Linus's water cooling videos on the NCIXcom Youtube channel. Trying hard not to cover what he has but make sure nothing is missed.

    So welcome to my Basic Noobies guide to water cooling. Please feel free to comment or post with your ideas of what I could add or change.

    So why do we water cool? Why would you want to stick a tank of water in a box of very expensive electronics?
    This is a question that gets asked a lot on the forum and I thought one of our members summed it up best;

    From our own MdX MaxX;
    “It's not just about temperatures, but about noise. With water cooling, you can run fans at much lower speeds and lower noise levels than you can with air cooling and achieve the same temperatures. Especially for GPUs, I mean GPU fans get loud. Plus you have the benefit of cooling everything you want in the same loop.

    And "good enough" isn't what enthusiasts strive for. Sure, multi-hundred dollar loops aren't necessary. An NH-D14 or Silver Arrow is "good enough." But being a PC enthusiast is much more than having a "good enough" rig. Most people here would have much lower-specced PCs if they only wanted what was "good enough" for them.

    Also, it's fun. Building is fun. Taking on [such] an intensive project is a thrilling challenge for a lot of people. You get to really absorb the experience rather than putting together a system in 2-3 hours and then you're done.

    And lastly, water cooling loops are freaking gorgeous. I mean look at them.

    I would just add that for most of us that use water cooling is more than getting the best performance out of your rig. For most of us it is a hobby. Once you get started it is hard to stop. You always want to try something new or add something to you loop, or even multiple loops.
  20. Agree
    Gmac got a reaction from mrZER0 in Water Cooling 101 - A good place for newbies to start   
    Water Cooling 101
    I have been reading a lot of posting in this sub-forum and am seeing a lot of the same questions. So I figured this forum need some basic guide to water cooling. My basic idea is to take a ton of information on the internet and condense it down to as short and simple explanation of Water cooling. This should be a good starting place for most people. You will need to much more research than just this to be a successful water cooler.

    I have spoken to a Mod and this should be made into a sticky soon.

    My goal with this guide is to be of a FAQ than more of a building guide. Try and explain everything that has to do with what goes into a custom water cooling loop. I am trying to make a guide that will work well with Linus's water cooling videos on the NCIXcom Youtube channel. Trying hard not to cover what he has but make sure nothing is missed.

    So welcome to my Basic Noobies guide to water cooling. Please feel free to comment or post with your ideas of what I could add or change.

    So why do we water cool? Why would you want to stick a tank of water in a box of very expensive electronics?
    This is a question that gets asked a lot on the forum and I thought one of our members summed it up best;

    From our own MdX MaxX;
    “It's not just about temperatures, but about noise. With water cooling, you can run fans at much lower speeds and lower noise levels than you can with air cooling and achieve the same temperatures. Especially for GPUs, I mean GPU fans get loud. Plus you have the benefit of cooling everything you want in the same loop.

    And "good enough" isn't what enthusiasts strive for. Sure, multi-hundred dollar loops aren't necessary. An NH-D14 or Silver Arrow is "good enough." But being a PC enthusiast is much more than having a "good enough" rig. Most people here would have much lower-specced PCs if they only wanted what was "good enough" for them.

    Also, it's fun. Building is fun. Taking on [such] an intensive project is a thrilling challenge for a lot of people. You get to really absorb the experience rather than putting together a system in 2-3 hours and then you're done.

    And lastly, water cooling loops are freaking gorgeous. I mean look at them.

    I would just add that for most of us that use water cooling is more than getting the best performance out of your rig. For most of us it is a hobby. Once you get started it is hard to stop. You always want to try something new or add something to you loop, or even multiple loops.
  21. Informative
    Gmac got a reaction from Saftfresse in Water Cooling 101 - A good place for newbies to start   
    Where to start
    Now that you have an understanding behind the theories of Water cooling. This is a good place to really start understanding what is in Custom water cooling loops. But more importantly how do you get one built. My guide here should only be half the story of building a loop. I won't go into detail about the finite processes of putting together a loop. Linus has already done a great job of really showing you how that process works; far better than I could in a forum post. I will hopefully be able to help when it comes to picking out the right components that go into a water cooling loop. Please check out his 4 part guide on Water cooling. This should be what you refer to when you are actually putting a loop together. These Guides are much better at showing how things fit together then I could even type out.
     
    Ultimate Water Cooling Guide Part 1 - Preparation Procedure NCIX Tech Tips

     
     
    Ultimate Water Cooling Guide Part 2 - Block & Component Installation NCIX Tech Tips

     
     
    Ultimate Water Cooling Guide Part 3 - Tubing, Liquid & Conclusion NCIX Tech Tips

     
     
    Guide Part 4 - Maintenance and Upgrades for your Liquid Cooled System NCIX Tech Tips

  22. Informative
    Gmac got a reaction from SaintPosum in Water Cooling 101 - A good place for newbies to start   
    Water cooling Basic
    Water cooling breaks down into two subcategories:

    1) Custom Loop cooling- You add different parts to make a whole water cooling loop. These consist of; Pumps, Water blocks, (CPU, GPU, Mobo, Mosfets, Ram HDD If you can think of a computer part someone makes a block for it.) Radiators, and lastly Reservoir. You can mix and match all these different parts in different way to create a loop that is tailored made for your system.
    2) All in one closed cooling loops- The name is pretty self explanatory. These all self contained cooling system that pull all those different parts into one unite. They are always sealed and cannot be opened. They compare to good high end air cooling apparatuses but cannot keep up with a custom cooling loop. I won't be cover just about anything on these as they are very popular products and don't need much explanation

    Your budget is going too decided on which route you will take on these two ideas. If you are looking to stay under $150 you will probably want to go with the All in one closed cooling loops. You will get what you pay for with this group. If you are looking to jump into the Custom water cooling world look to start with about $300 and it will go up from there. I have seen people on this forum that easily spend $1000+ on their loops. Don't think you can cheap out on WC you will regret it in the end and more than likely spending more because of it.

    Watercooling basic theory and Delta-T
    *This all comes from TomsHardware Sticky v2 by Rubix_1011 all credit goes to him. He does far better job explaining this all then I could. (http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/277130-29-read-first-watercooling-sticky)

    Watercooling is based on the set of principles that water is proportionally better than air to conduct heat away from a heat source based on conduction, or the direct contact of a heated source and a cooling source to transfer heat energy rather than convection, otherwise known as thermal conductivity. The ability of a substance to directly absorb heat energy is considered it's specific heat; in this case, the ability of heat directly absorbed by water and the required energy to raise overall temperatures by 1°C. While convection takes place with normal air coolers to provide the ability for air to absorb dissipated heat from the cooler, watercooling also employs this concept to some degree. Once the water absorbs heat energy via conduction from the blocks, it then transfers that through tubing to radiators cooled by fans. The difference is that a larger amount of heat energy is able to be absorbed and moved at any given time with a water loop due to pump flow forcing turbulent water through the radiator tubes while the radiator provides greater surface area to conduct heat energy from the water to the radiator and then into the air. The process is more efficient at transferring, displacing and dissipating excess heat energy based on the delta-T of the loop design. In short, the ability of water's excellent specific heat allow it to absorb heat much more quickly and efficiently from a source of heat (as well as also dissipating that heat back to a cooling source for dissipation) so it can also transport far more of that absorbed energy due to the thermal capacity of it as a medium away from heat sources to be expelled elsewhere.


    Thermal Conductivity of Common Cooling Mediums (@~20°C; W/mK)
    Higher values are better

    Water...............................................0.610
    Mineral Oil........................................0.162
    Alcohol(Ethyl, Isopropyl, Buytl)...........0.161-0.200
    Ethylene Glycol..................................0.258
    Air...................................................0.0257


    Specific Heat of Common Cooling Mediums (@~20°C;kJ/kg.K)
    Higher values are better

    Water...............................................4.19
    Air...................................................1.00
    Mineral Oil........................................1.67
    Copper.............................................0.093
    Ethylene glycol..................................2.36
    Copper.............................................0.093
    Ethylene glycol..................................2.36

    When it comes to figuring out how much radiator you need for your specific loop, you have to start doing some math. I know that we all have been building a loop and thought, ˜how many, what size and what kind of radiators do I need for this loop to stay cool like I want?"

    First tip: Google is your best friend to help find TDP (Thermal Design Power}

    Finding out what the TDP or your CPU or GPU is can be as simple as doing some searches by searching for i7 2600k TDP', GTX 580 TDP, or AMD 6970 TDP. Remember to account for all components, if you run a multi-card graphics setup, you need to include the TDP values for all cards in the total. For example, our i7 2600k has a stock TDP of about 95 watts at 100% load (estimated). If we have a 2x SLI setup of GTX 580's, we are looking at about 244 watts at 100% load, per card. Total? About 583 watts in heat that these three components can potentially produce when at 100% load, simultaneously; it's also safe to consider that heat dissipation can never be 100% efficient of power consumption, so even calcuating 85-90% of your TDP total is pretty safe. (This also translates very closely to wattage when you need to consider a power supply for your system, but you need to account for the remaining components: motherboard, fans, hard drives, DVD drives, etc. To help calculate a full system TDP, you can use a tool like the Extreme PSU Calculator (link). In short, when calculating loop TDP, simply add up the total values for components being cooled in the loop...if you have more than one video card, make sure you add in TDP for each one. If you want to simply calculate the overclocked TDP wattage of your CPU, just adjust the CPU section of the calculator or utilize the calculation listed a bit later.

    Once you have calculated your total loop TDP potential, you need to consider radiators that dissipate heat in watts depending on flow rate of your loop and fans being used and their speeds/power. For this task, I almost always refer to *Skinneelabs.com link from Archive.org* for all of this crucial information, graphs and comparisons.

    For example, I am going to reference the XSPC RX360 radiator for this loop. Given the total TDP of 583 watts, I want to know if this single radiator is enough for my loop, or if I should consider another radiator.



    Looking at this chart, we can see that the maximum amount of heat this radiator can dissipate is around 555 watts using 2800 rpm fans (very fast, very loud). You could get better results in a push/pull scenario, but that's even louder; you may be able to live with a 15-20° delta and loud fans if you went this route.

    In short, Delta-T is the load temperature of the water in your loop when compared to ambient air temps; if your room ambient is 27°C, and load water temp is 34°C, this gives you an approximate Delta of 7°C if you are running 100% load on all components being cooled by the loop. Basically, delta-T is a mathematical derivative of your ambient room temperature, flow rate, heat to be dissipated (in watts) and the ability of your radiator to dissipate heat (in watts) depending on fans used to produce the cooling impact by the loop as a whole. You'll notice the chart above has a listing of different fans in the upper-left corner: this determines the angle of the graph and the temperature delta on the left side of the graph. Lower fan speeds correlate to a higher delta-T as you add more heat in watts to the loop. The more heat you produce, the more important it is to remove it from the loop; and fans help accomplish this goal. If you notice the actual temperatures on the lines of the graph at the determined points (around 300 watts of load and around 555 watts), you'll see that the fan speed allows the heat dissipation to be rather normalized. However, the further to the right (and up the graph you go), you'll also notice that your delta-T rises. Below a 5° is incredibly good, 10° is still very good and even 15° deltas are very much the norm. If we wanted to run this loop at a 10° delta, we would need to run two of these RX360 radiators to keep the heat load in watts below 300 watts dissipated per radiator with fans of 600-2800 rpm (in a single-fan setup; push/pull would allow some leniency here; perhaps a RX360 and an RX240, instead).

    Granted, TDP and determining our delta-T isn't an exact science, but it gets us pretty close. It's a bit more tedius to calculate CPU overclocked wattage; however, here is a great calculation to help CPU overclocking and estimated TDP:

    OC Wattage = TDP * ( OC MHz / Stock MHz) * ( OC Vcore / Stock Vcore )^2

    [TABLE=width: 760]


    [TR]

    [TD]
    Quote :

    Example:
    Intel i7 2600k
    3.4ghz (3400mhz)
    1.25v
    95 watts TDP

    For this example I will use a relatively average overclock voltage of 1.35v to reach 4.5ghz (4500mhz)

    OC Wattage = TDP x ( OC MHz / Stock MHz) x ( OC Vcore / Stock Vcore )^2

    OC Wattage = 95 x (4500/3400) x (1.35/1.25)^2

    OC Wattage = 95 x (1.3235) x (1.08)^2

    OC Wattage = 95 x 1.3235 x 1.1664

    OC Wattage = 147 (which is exactly what was calculated by the PSU calculator for overclocked CPU watts on this chip)
    [/TD]

    [/TR]


    [/TABLE]

    *This is all very complicated and can be hard to understand. You will likely need to do more reading then what I can provide here. I do have a general rule that you can read about in the Rad section of this guide that can make all this complicated stuff unnecessary.
    [h=2]For more information please refer to overclocker.com Guide to Delta-T in Water Cooling[/h]
    [h=2]http://www.overclockers.com/guide-deltat-water-cooling/[/h]
  23. Like
    Gmac got a reaction from YetiCake in Water Cooling 101 - A good place for newbies to start   
    Water Cooling 101
    I have been reading a lot of posting in this sub-forum and am seeing a lot of the same questions. So I figured this forum need some basic guide to water cooling. My basic idea is to take a ton of information on the internet and condense it down to as short and simple explanation of Water cooling. This should be a good starting place for most people. You will need to much more research than just this to be a successful water cooler.

    I have spoken to a Mod and this should be made into a sticky soon.

    My goal with this guide is to be of a FAQ than more of a building guide. Try and explain everything that has to do with what goes into a custom water cooling loop. I am trying to make a guide that will work well with Linus's water cooling videos on the NCIXcom Youtube channel. Trying hard not to cover what he has but make sure nothing is missed.

    So welcome to my Basic Noobies guide to water cooling. Please feel free to comment or post with your ideas of what I could add or change.

    So why do we water cool? Why would you want to stick a tank of water in a box of very expensive electronics?
    This is a question that gets asked a lot on the forum and I thought one of our members summed it up best;

    From our own MdX MaxX;
    “It's not just about temperatures, but about noise. With water cooling, you can run fans at much lower speeds and lower noise levels than you can with air cooling and achieve the same temperatures. Especially for GPUs, I mean GPU fans get loud. Plus you have the benefit of cooling everything you want in the same loop.

    And "good enough" isn't what enthusiasts strive for. Sure, multi-hundred dollar loops aren't necessary. An NH-D14 or Silver Arrow is "good enough." But being a PC enthusiast is much more than having a "good enough" rig. Most people here would have much lower-specced PCs if they only wanted what was "good enough" for them.

    Also, it's fun. Building is fun. Taking on [such] an intensive project is a thrilling challenge for a lot of people. You get to really absorb the experience rather than putting together a system in 2-3 hours and then you're done.

    And lastly, water cooling loops are freaking gorgeous. I mean look at them.

    I would just add that for most of us that use water cooling is more than getting the best performance out of your rig. For most of us it is a hobby. Once you get started it is hard to stop. You always want to try something new or add something to you loop, or even multiple loops.
  24. Informative
    Gmac got a reaction from Owltiger57 in Water Cooling 101 - A good place for newbies to start   
    Useful links
    For a more in-depth understand of what it takes to be a successful water cooler I have compiled this list of links to read. (I will keep this up to date as I can.)
    A list of other peoples Stickies
    http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/26...ing-read-first
    http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/27...cooling-sticky
    http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?202394-Information-Guides-amp-Reviews-Tests-amp-Galleries
    http://www.overclock.net/t/766479/wa...e-for-beginner
    http://www.overclockers.com/forums/s...d.php?t=628092
    http://forums.extremeoverclocking.co...d.php?t=355358
    http://forums.extremeoverclocking.co...d.php?t=354844
    http://www.overclock.net/t/226970/up...ential-threads
    Stores(US) **If anyone would like me to add store for other counties just get me a list of them**
    http://www.dangerden.com
    http://www.petrastechshop.com/
    http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/
    http://www.jab-tech.com/
    http://www.performance-pcs.com
    http://www.frozencpu.com/
    Stores(U.K)
    - http://www.specialtech.co.uk/
    - http://www.watercoolinguk.co.uk/
    - http://www.candccentral.co.uk/
    New Zealand:
    www.computerlounge.co.nz
    ****A lot more to come. Still working on it***
  25. Like
    Gmac got a reaction from Ben Bibedorf in Water Cooling 101 - A good place for newbies to start   
    Fans
    This is a pretty simple subject but is often overlooked. You really just want a fan that matches the size of your radiator that is SP (static pressure) optimized. Just like water pumps, fans have to be able to push air through a restrictive area. CFM ratings do very little to help you pick a good SP fan. I have added some Fan round ups but as time goes on they will become out of date. So a quick Google search will help you pick fans you can afford, that match your style and color theme, and will work well in a radiator set up.
    http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?261778-120mm-Fan-Testing-on-an-MCR120-Radiator-Round-6
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/6391/120mm-radiator-fan-roundup-part-2-fan-harder
    http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/331629-28-cooling-roundup-2012
    *Note- People always asks if your fans should push or push, or both push and pull. The quick answer is push and pull perform very closely and push/pull will always give you better performance. Linus did a good video on it and can be seen here:

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