how small is too small

[fishyphish]

Hey im doing my first build using a ryzen 9 3900x, and a evga rtx 2080 ti xc ultra. If i water cool it would i need to go with a triple rad or could I get away with a single rad?

[Hairless Monkey]

Water cool both? Will you be overclocking?

[MrSimplicity]

lol, you'll most definitely want a 360mm rad especially if your water cooling both in one loop. You'd also be better off getting 2 rads in the loop the second could be a 240 or another 360. 

[bowrilla]

A 280/360 is probably the bare minimum. Especially the Zen2 CPUs run toasty. Temps won't be great though or you have to accept pretty high noise levels. If your case doesn't have good airflow temps will suffer. On the other hand: you rarely push both GPU and CPU to their limits at the same time so it should work. It just won't be great.

 

Reading your post again ...

34 minutes ago, fishyphish said:

would i need to go with a triple rad or could I get away with a single rad?

What exactly do you mean with triple rad or single rad here? With triple rad people usually mean a rad with 3 fan mounts so 3x120 or 3x140 (rare). In this context a single rad means 1x120 or 1x140. The latter will definitely not be enough.

[fishyphish]

3 hours ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

Water cool both? Will you be overclocking?

It is a compact case. I am a semi truck driver, and I am building something compact enough to store in my truck so I can game on the road, and then be able to transport it home when I have home time. I'm still waiting on the parts to be delivered so idk how temps will be in the case with just fans but ive heard that the 2080 ti and the 3900x get toasty. On the case I am building i have room for 1x140mm and 1x120mm fans.

I was thinking getting AIO single rads for both fan spots. But being the novice I am with building computers I'm not sure if they would be able to cool the components enough. If they couldnt handle it, I'd build a custom loop that runs out of the case to an external triple rad instead. It wouldn't look as clean as I'd like, but I care more about the hardware and performance than the style. I'd rather go with AIO because they're just simpler to install.

Link to the case below

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07R4C2CJJ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_koGfFb5EPMH8M

[bowrilla]

Yeah, that case is not really meant for watercooling. There are small and portable cases that can be used with water cooling, but they are often boutique (like NCase M1, Sliger SM570, SM580 or Cerberus or maybe the Fractal Design Era. Though you will probably not get anything beyond a 240 rad into those cases, maybe (!) into some a 280. That's it. AiO coolers for GPUs are usually not a great solution so if you want to stick with AiOs I'd keep the GPU on air.

[fishyphish]

3 hours ago, bowrilla said:

Yeah, that case is not really meant for watercooling. There are small and portable cases that can be used with water cooling, but they are often boutique (like NCase M1, Sliger SM570, SM580 or Cerberus or maybe the Fractal Design Era. Though you will probably not get anything beyond a 240 rad into those cases, maybe (!) into some a 280. That's it. AiO coolers for GPUs are usually not a great solution so if you want to stick with AiOs I'd keep the GPU on air.

Thanks for your imput!

[For Science!]

3 minutes ago, fishyphish said:

Thanks for your imput!

If an Ncase M1 is within your reach, I can personally say that you can fit at least two 240 mm raidiators as updated in my build log below. It's super tight, but I don't think you can really get much more efficient in cramming cooling in a sub 15 L case.