Enough radiators?

[BrightCandle]

You have enough radiators but the cooling performance of water cooling comes not only from the radiators but the pump and fans as well. A pump with a high flow rate and fans with high static pressure and CFM would be very beneficial to for your cooling performance as well as your ambient temperature.

 

:lol: these guys and their avatars. 

 

The general rule of thumb for water cooling is or was at the time of Ivy-Bridge, is/was one 120mm/ 140mm radiator per water block.

 

This simplication isn't any use when components can dissipate large amounts of heat.

 

The basic rule is actually a thick 120x120mm radiator with 800 rpm fans can dissipate about 130 W to a 10C water temperature. Given that you can add up all the heat in the loop, like the CPU and the GPUs and then work out how many fan slots you actually need.

 

4770k is 80W stock, 150W overclocked

290 is 300W

780ti is 250W

 

Total is therefore 150 + 300+250 = 700W

 

So how many fan slots are necessary? 700 / 130 = 5.3

 

What if you can't fit 60mm radiators but instead the more usual thin variety, well then the dissipation drops to about 90W (this assumes best in class radiators) so 700/90 = 7.7.

 

The Op has 6 medium radiators and I think he needs somewhere around 7.7, so a slight bump in fan speed to about 1000 rpm ought to do that for some cost in noise. Can't be done silently on those radiators but it can be done without compromising the CPUs overclock.

[Leonard]

I ended up reading the water cooling F.A.Q after this post. You could have just one 120mm rad for each major component, but if you want a quiet system you would go for at least 240mm per major component. Is that more correct?

Yes it is but for Haswell and the new R9 XXX series of GPUs which both run very hot i would use the second configuration which is the 240mm per major component. This is why you can also go the 140mm route if your case allows it. So that would be one 140mm radiator per major component. Why 140mm radiators you ask?.....well that is because 140mm radiators have mor surface area which is better for water cooling and with the hotter CPUs and GPUs it is best to have more than enough cooling power as there would come a time when you would want to OC your components.

 

Now remember also, that the radiators are just one part of the loop and you would want a pump with high flow rate and head pressure and fans with high static pressure and CFM to help the radiators perform at the peak capability.

[Easter_Bunny321]

tip: when mounting, put the 780Ti in the top slot. the nvidia ones will start throttling if they don't keep low enough temps. i'm not saying amd's wont throttle, but the nvidia cards start at lower temps...