Help Choose Water Cooling Kit, Pretty Please

[JAMALA0087]

Hi,

I am going to install a water cooling kit which I hope I can get to cool off an i9-9900k and dual GTX 1080 GPUs. I don't know if there is anything else I need to cool, but if there is then please let me know. I'm keeping the question brief and short so that hopefully it'll allow more time to help me choose a kit. 

 

I purchased Corsair H150i Pro, before I knew about water cooling, unfortunately, and therefore, if we can include the H150i Pro that's great, if not, then I will consider getting rid of it all together (I can't return it since it is already past Best Buy's return policy date).

 

So, as I said, I want to pick a kit that will cool my i9-9900k that is sitting in an ASUS Z390e Gaming Motherboard, and that has 2x Zotac GEFORCE GTX 1080's connected in SLI. There's exactly ONE PCIe distance between the cards right now which, if need be, can be shifted around (don't know why or how but the option is there) so that if the second card shifted down there would be a distance of TWO PCIe lanes distance between them. 

 

Any water cooling enthusiast that is generous enough to share with me what I need to do to water cool my system would be extraordinary. Keep in mind I may have missed a component that needs to be cooled as well so if I did please let me know.

 

Thank you

[DailyProcrastinator]

Are you looking to do a custom loop?

[JAMALA0087]

yes bro totally want to do a custom loop. I just barely got into overclocking etc etc and its been amazing but I've started to notice the obvious heat and learned water cooling is the only way to go! I was considering another AIO for the GPU cards, so I'd have one triple fan radiator mounted the front for the CPU AIO, then one single or dual fan radiator mounted to the top or the back of the PC. However, I want to use the hard acrylic to get one of those dope looking cooling effects that have the reservoir and the pump and then you use a heat gun to bend the acrylic (or however i'm still watching videos to learn entirely.

[DailyProcrastinator]

12 minutes ago, JAMALA0087 said:

yes bro totally want to do a custom loop. I just barely got into overclocking etc etc and its been amazing but I've started to notice the obvious heat and learned water cooling is the only way to go! I was considering another AIO for the GPU cards, so I'd have one triple fan radiator mounted the front for the CPU AIO, then one single or dual fan radiator mounted to the top or the back of the PC. However, I want to use the hard acrylic to get one of those dope looking cooling effects that have the reservoir and the pump and then you use a heat gun to bend the acrylic (or however i'm still watching videos to learn entirely.

You need to 'Reply' to comments in order for people to see them, this can be done by clicking the arrow icon at the bottom of a comment (Quote). Otherwise, people will not be notified of your responses.

 

I am certainly not an expert on custom loops, having only ever done one. But when I made my loop I bought EK parts, I know this is not the cheapest route, however, EK Cooling has a great tool to help you select parts and they have a great part selection. 

Check it out:  https://www.ekwb.com/custom-loop-configurator/

[Blai5e]

5 hours ago, JAMALA0087 said:

yes bro totally want to do a custom loop. I just barely got into overclocking etc etc and its been amazing but I've started to notice the obvious heat and learned water cooling is the only way to go! I was considering another AIO for the GPU cards, so I'd have one triple fan radiator mounted the front for the CPU AIO, then one single or dual fan radiator mounted to the top or the back of the PC. However, I want to use the hard acrylic to get one of those dope looking cooling effects that have the reservoir and the pump and then you use a heat gun to bend the acrylic (or however i'm still watching videos to learn entirely.

I have a custom loop encompassing a 9900k & 2 x 1080TI's using EKWB parts. When you mention acrylic, do you really mean PETG? If you're a virgin bender (no pun intended), you'll find PETG more forgiving (and less brittle) than acrylic. The trade off is that PETG is ever so slightly opaque (an ever so slight bluish tinge) compared to acrylic which is more the akin to glass in the transparency department.

 

Free Hints - buy more fitting than you think you need (you'll inevitably underestimate) and look into the more exotic fittings (double rotating 45° etc.) which can help with a difficult run. If you are performing complex bends, buy 2x the tubing for the inevitable mistakes and don't forget the appropriately sized silicon insert. Finally, don't forget a drain for your loop (run off a Y-splitter using a ball valve). I connect soft tubing (you'll need a correct size soft tube G1/4 fitting) off the ball valve and run it into a 5lt bottle.

[Mehmy]

11 hours ago, Blai5e said:

 Finally, don't forget a drain for your loop (run off a Y-splitter using a ball valve). I connect soft tubing (you'll need a correct size soft tube G1/4 fitting) off the ball valve and run it into a 5lt bottle.

If you choose to go soft tubing, then you don't need a drain valve, you can just unscrew a component and then undo the fittings on it over a bucket

[JAMALA0087]

On 3/3/2019 at 1:24 PM, JM21 said:

You need to 'Reply' to comments in order for people to see them, this can be done by clicking the arrow icon at the bottom of a comment (Quote). Otherwise, people will not be notified of your responses.

 

I am certainly not an expert on custom loops, having only ever done one. But when I made my loop I bought EK parts, I know this is not the cheapest route, however, EK Cooling has a great tool to help you select parts and they have a great part selection. 

Check it out:  https://www.ekwb.com/custom-loop-configurator/

FIRST OFF, thank you for pointing out that the "quote" means reply!!

 

SECOND, you are freaking awesome for pointing out the water cooling configurator!! I'm going to go through it now.

[JAMALA0087]

On 3/3/2019 at 7:20 PM, Blai5e said:

I have a custom loop encompassing a 9900k & 2 x 1080TI's using EKWB parts. When you mention acrylic, do you really mean PETG? If you're a virgin bender (no pun intended), you'll find PETG more forgiving (and less brittle) than acrylic. The trade off is that PETG is ever so slightly opaque (an ever so slight bluish tinge) compared to acrylic which is more the akin to glass in the transparency department.

 

Free Hints - buy more fitting than you think you need (you'll inevitably underestimate) and look into the more exotic fittings (double rotating 45° etc.) which can help with a difficult run. If you are performing complex bends, buy 2x the tubing for the inevitable mistakes and don't forget the appropriately sized silicon insert. Finally, don't forget a drain for your loop (run off a Y-splitter using a ball valve). I connect soft tubing (you'll need a correct size soft tube G1/4 fitting) off the ball valve and run it into a 5lt bottle.

I picked up about 80% of this since I've been watching videos, but DEF going to have some questions soon. haha. thank you!

[JAMALA0087]

On 3/4/2019 at 6:25 AM, Mehmy said:

If you choose to go soft tubing, then you don't need a drain valve, you can just unscrew a component and then undo the fittings on it over a bucket

AHHH this is good to know. im still trying to decide shoudl i go with a soft kit for first time, or go straight into hard tubing...

[DailyProcrastinator]

35 minutes ago, JAMALA0087 said:

FIRST OFF, thank you for pointing out that the "quote" means reply!!

 

SECOND, you are freaking awesome for pointing out the water cooling configurator!! I'm going to go through it now.

No problemo!

 

Yeah, it is a great tool, even if you don't get any or all parts from EK it will list everything you need so in that regard it is very helpful.

[Mehmy]

8 hours ago, JAMALA0087 said:

AHHH this is good to know. im still trying to decide shoudl i go with a soft kit for first time, or go straight into hard tubing...

I'd say go soft first time, then you can always "upgrade" to hard later on. With soft tubing you (mostly) don't have to worry about bends, so it's fairly forgiving 

[andrewmp6]

Have you checked to make sure you can get a waterblock for your gpus ?Not all cards you can get waterblocks for is why i ask.And what case do you have now ?

[Mehmy]

10 minutes ago, andrewmp6 said:

Have you checked to make sure you can get a waterblock for your gpus ?Not all cards you can get waterblocks for is why i ask.And what case do you have now ?

Zotac generally sticks with reference PCB's unless they're doing their mini cards