planning out a custom loop, could use some pointers!

[VeganJoy]

just doing cpu only for now but i plan on adding my gpu to the loop in the future and would like to plan for that as well. here's what i have so far:

 

- ek 420mm ce radiator

 

- ek velocity block for intel

 

- ek kinetic 300mm reservoir + d5 pump combo

 

everything is going into a phanteks p500a, likely onto a maximus xi gene. afaik i need fittings, tubing (almost certainly soft), and coolant. so here are a few questions:

 

- is primochill lrt advanced still the best clear plasticizer-free tubing? or are there other, cheaper options? 

 

- is the liquid utopia additive that comes with the primochill tubing bundle safe for use with my loop? i've seen some people get their nickel-plated blocks destroyed by it so i'm guessing not, in which case is ek cryofuel clear the safest option?

 

- is bitspower still considered the best for fittings that won't leak and that sorta thing? 

 

- how do i set up drain and fill ports in a soft tubing loop?

 

- what other things might be useful to consider putting in my loop, such as a temperature sensor?

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

I built my first loop in the Phanteks Evolv X. Pretty much the same internally as the P500A. Check out BabyBlu in my sig to see what I chose to do.

[VeganJoy]

4 minutes ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

I built my first loop in the Phanteks Evolv X. Pretty much the same internally as the P500A. Check out BabyBlu in my sig to see what I chose to do.

ayyyy i was hoping you'd respond lol. the evolv x and p500a are exactly the same aside from the front panel and some cable management stuff afaik. has the ek clear tubing held up without getting cloudy or clogging stuff up? and it looks like you bought a shit ton of fittings lol, are the barrows working well?

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

2 minutes ago, VeganJoy said:

ayyyy i was hoping you'd respond lol.

I'm flattered. 

 

3 minutes ago, VeganJoy said:

has the ek clear tubing held up without getting cloudy or clogging stuff up?

No clogging, but it's gotten a bit cloudy. Not too noticeable when the RGB is on, but I've thought about replacing it with something else whenever I do a thorough clean. I don't know what with, though.

4 minutes ago, VeganJoy said:

shit ton of fittings lol, are the barrows working well?

I can happily report that all of my shit ton of Barrow fittings have been flawless. Even after putting them together and pulling them apart again a hundred times trying to figure out the best layout. They were cheap and I think they look great so I tend to recommend them.

[Mick Naughty]

The premochill stuff is good enough. Not sure of a cheaper option as its already cheap and comes with stuff you would need to buy anyway. Add 89 cents and get a gallon of distilled water. Or by ek fluid for $20 and get their hose, price would equal out a bit. Never had an issue with my nickel blocks in any loop with either fluid/additive. 

 

 All name brand fittings are good enough. I tend to get ek 90 and 45 swivels are they are the color I want and then multi barb bitspower fitting for the hose as I stopped doing compression fittings. 

 

If your board supports temp probes or youre gonna get the little display, I would do so. Maybe add a visual flow meter. Just something to help show if the flow is impeded over time if you watch and learn if based of the percentage of the pump.

 

[VeganJoy]

2 hours ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

No clogging, but it's gotten a bit cloudy. Not too noticeable when the RGB is on, but I've thought about replacing it with something else whenever I do a thorough clean. I don't know what with, though.

I can happily report that all of my shit ton of Barrow fittings have been flawless. Even after putting them together and pulling them apart again a hundred times trying to figure out the best layout. They were cheap and I think they look great so I tend to recommend them.

26 minutes ago, Mick Naughty said:

The premochill stuff is good enough. Not sure of a cheaper option as its already cheap and comes with stuff you would need to buy anyway. Add 89 cents and get a gallon of distilled water. Or by ek fluid for $20 and get their hose, price would equal out a bit. Never had an issue with my nickel blocks in any loop with either fluid/additive. 

 

 All name brand fittings are good enough. I tend to get ek 90 and 45 swivels are they are the color I want and then multi barb bitspower fitting for the hose as I stopped doing compression fittings. 

 

If your board supports temp probes or youre gonna get the little display, I would do so. Maybe add a visual flow meter. Just something to help show if the flow is impeded over time if you watch and learn if based of the percentage of the pump.

 

since ive seen issues with the primochill coolant i'll just get the ek premix for ease of mind, and i'll get some primochill lrt advanced tubing as it seems to be the best for avoiding cloudiness and all that. a small number of people i've read up on said that their ek fittings would leak so i'll go with the barrows. i'll also make sure to get a 10k temp sensor and a flow meter. hopefully there's enough space in this case with the 300mm reservoir lol

 

also, i gotta remember to get one of those nice little pneumatic leak testers!

 

just a few more questions: 

 

how should i do drain and fill ports with this soft tubing setup?

 

when i do get a gpu and block, is it usually ok to put them in parallel rather than in series? parallel looks really clean but it might not give enough flow to one of the parts, idk

 

what should i do to prep the loop before actually filling it up? i'll be flushing all of these parts (especially the radiator) with tap water, then i'll run a bit of distilled through em. is there anything else i should do with the tubing or something?

 

lastly, @HairlessMonkeyBoy why did you need so many fittings? 

 

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

11 hours ago, VeganJoy said:

hopefully there's enough space in this case with the 300mm reservoir lol

Where do you plan to mount it? Like mine on the front rad? How long is your GPU? Mine is a long boi at 305mm, and with a 30mm Rad, 25mm fan plus the reservoir, the GPU would absolutely not fit if it wasn't mounted vertical. There's maybe 15mm of overlap, but I'm not near it right now to measure.

11 hours ago, VeganJoy said:

i'll also make sure to get a 10k temp sensor and a flow meter.

I appreciate the ones I have quite a lot.

11 hours ago, VeganJoy said:

how should i do drain and fill ports with this soft tubing setup?

For the fill port, I have mine routed up to the Evolv X's fill port. I used a pass through fitting and plug to close it. It connects to the top of my res with a 4-way splitter. Really you don't need anything like that, though. You can just use one of the top ports of your res to fill the loop. Get one of those fill bottles to make your life easier.

 

For the drain port, I have mine connected to the inlet of my pump/res combo (I use the top port of the res as inlet). That connects to a ball valve and then to the tube which goes down to connect to the drain port of the Evolv X with another pass through fitting and plug. Again, you don't need anything like that. Just a ball valve and a plug connected to a T or Y or splitter fitting will do the job. But you'll want an extra length of tube to thread into the ball valve or pass through fitting when draining.

12 hours ago, VeganJoy said:

when i do get a gpu and block, is it usually ok to put them in parallel rather than in series?

I've seen it done parallel many times and it seems to work fine. Putting the blocks in parallel reduces the restriction of the loop overall, so maybe that helps a bit with the flow through each block.

12 hours ago, VeganJoy said:

what should i do to prep the loop before actually filling it up? i'll be flushing all of these parts (especially the radiator) with tap water, then i'll run a bit of distilled through em. is there anything else i should do with the tubing or something?

I flushed my rads with distilled water that I heated on the stove. You should also flush the tube with distilled water. I think there was some dust or something in mine, and it's still in my loop (not causing any problems, though)

12 hours ago, VeganJoy said:

lastly, @HairlessMonkeyBoy why did you need so many fittings? 

Hahaha, nobody needs that many fittings. I just wanted things to be routed nicely. I could have done the same loop with far fewer, but Barrow fittings are cheap, and I got them on a deep Black Friday sale, so I went all out. lol.

[For Science!]

Barrow over EKWB fittings? 2020 is full of surprises! 

[VeganJoy]

5 hours ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

Where do you plan to mount it? Like mine on the front rad? How long is your GPU? Mine is a long boi at 305mm, and with a 30mm Rad, 25mm fan plus the reservoir, the GPU would absolutely not fit if it wasn't mounted vertical. There's maybe 15mm of overlap, but I'm not near it right now to measure.

oh damn, i didnt even think about that, was mostly worried about height. guess i'll find out soon enough. hadnt planned that far ahead, i don't even know how i plan on mounting the res in the first place lol

 

btw, when i had a 9900k and 9700k a while back, i couldn't get either to go past 3600mhz on ram. mobo was a maximus xi hero and ram was 2x16gb b die. you figure i'd see better results on this xi gene that i've got now? and would an 8086k be worth considering at ~200 bucks? looking at chips to stick in here with 2x16gb b die but i don't wanna get gimped again by weird stuff

 

42 minutes ago, For Science! said:

Barrow over EKWB fittings? 2020 is full of surprises! 

i've read a few reports of ek fittings leaking sometimes, but nothing bad about barrow's so far. what do you use?

[Mick Naughty]

1 hour ago, For Science! said:

Barrow over EKWB fittings? 2020 is full of surprises! 

Surprise to me too. 
Always hear less about new or lesser used companies and then it somehow makes them sound like good quality. 
 

Never had any fitting fail, just like lotto I guess. 

[For Science!]

1 hour ago, VeganJoy said:

 

 

i've read a few reports of ek fittings leaking sometimes, but nothing bad about barrow's so far. what do you use?

I think with EK they just have a wider userbase, and so more novices mess things up (my opinion, no data to back it up). I've used fittings from EKWB, Alphacool, Bitspower. As Mick says above, my opinion is also any fitting from a reputable company (including Barrow, in my opinion) is a decent choice. My comment would be to get tubing from the same company as the fitting to maximize compatibility to minimize chances of a poor mate

[VeganJoy]

3 hours ago, For Science! said:

I think with EK they just have a wider userbase, and so more novices mess things up (my opinion, no data to back it up). I've used fittings from EKWB, Alphacool, Bitspower. As Mick says above, my opinion is also any fitting from a reputable company (including Barrow, in my opinion) is a decent choice. My comment would be to get tubing from the same company as the fitting to maximize compatibility to minimize chances of a poor mate

fair enough. btw, almost forgot about quick disconnect fittings. those sound useful, are they any good and not prone to leak or anything?

[For Science!]

14 minutes ago, VeganJoy said:

fair enough. btw, almost forgot about quick disconnect fittings. those sound useful, are they any good and not prone to leak or anything?

Unless you have a particular use case in mind, I don’t think they’re worth it (I.e. if you need to ask whether you need or not, you probably don’t). A well placed drain port will negate its purpose for regular maintenance so in my limited brain power they could be useful for....

 

1 : external radiators

2: test benches, I guess

3: Reservoirless SFF builds

 

[VeganJoy]

4 minutes ago, For Science! said:

Unless you have a particular use case in mind, I don’t think they’re worth it (I.e. if you need to ask whether you need or not, you probably don’t). A well placed drain port will negate its purpose for regular maintenance so in my limited brain power they could be useful for....

 

1 : external radiators

2: test benches, I guess

3: Reservoirless SFF builds

 

makes sense. i really dunno how a drain port at the reservoir would be the best location but i'm having trouble visualizing everything anyways lmao. so lets see, for fittings i need:

 

- 2x male to female compression fittings for the cpu block, plus 2x right angle ones to make it look nice

 

- 2x male to female compression for the inlet and outlet of the reservoir, plus maybe right angles or 45 degrees to look nice

 

- 4x male to female compression for the gpu block if i put it in parallel, plus angles and stuff

 

- 2x inline rotary fittings for the flow meter and maybe fit the temperature sensor there too. maybe also make that the drain port? 

 

anything dumb that i missed?

[VeganJoy]

On 12/15/2020 at 7:17 AM, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

Where do you plan to mount it? Like mine on the front rad? How long is your GPU? Mine is a long boi at 305mm, and with a 30mm Rad, 25mm fan plus the reservoir, the GPU would absolutely not fit if it wasn't mounted vertical. There's maybe 15mm of overlap, but I'm not near it right now to measure.

btw, is it possible to mount a res+pump combo horizontally? or does it need to be vertical?

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

9 hours ago, VeganJoy said:

btw, is it possible to mount a res+pump combo horizontally? or does it need to be vertical?

It's doable, but it will make your life more complicated since you will no longer have full access to the ports on top of the radiator for filling. You'll just need a fill port somewhere.

 

For fittings, this was my thought process:

 

You need as many compression fittings as you have blocks+rads+res+other * 2. And at least 1 more for easier filling and draining. Then a couple extra if you want peace of mind incase any are faulty.

 

Get rotary angled fittings, and get a couple extra. Get a few various size (5mm-15mm) male-female extensions to help make things line up nicely. I also found the adjustable "SLI" fittings to be very useful. There is one in the upper left of my profile pic that allowed me to easily connect two of my rads with fittings only, and another under my flow meter that allowed me to easily get things pretty square over there. In a pinch they double as male-male rotary fittings...

 

Anyway, those are my thought.

[VeganJoy]

11 hours ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

It's doable, but it will make your life more complicated since you will no longer have full access to the ports on top of the radiator for filling. You'll just need a fill port somewhere.

 

For fittings, this was my thought process:

 

You need as many compression fittings as you have blocks+rads+res+other * 2. And at least 1 more for easier filling and draining. Then a couple extra if you want peace of mind incase any are faulty.

 

Get rotary angled fittings, and get a couple extra. Get a few various size (5mm-15mm) male-female extensions to help make things line up nicely. I also found the adjustable "SLI" fittings to be very useful. There is one in the upper left of my profile pic that allowed me to easily connect two of my rads with fittings only, and another under my flow meter that allowed me to easily get things pretty square over there. In a pinch they double as male-male rotary fittings...

 

Anyway, those are my thought.

thanks for the tips! last question, also pinging @For Science!: i got this ekwb CE 420 rad but someone has some HWLabs GTX 420 Xtreme Gen 2 Radiators. theyre a lot thicker and seem to be really dense with the fins. would that be worth using over the ekwb CE? i saw a good comparison but it's for the successor to the xtreme gen 2 which has less FPI, and i cant find out if the old one is better than the successor: https://www.xtremerigs.net/2016/02/25/hardware-labs-nemesis-280-gtx-radiator-review/6/

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

Higher FPI tends to provide better maximum cooling potential, but requires a higher static pressure, and therefore typically a higher fan speed.

 

Lower FPI is better for systems that are geared toward silent operation and lower fan speeds.

 

EK actually has some good resources to learn more about the different parts of a cooling loop.

 

https://www.ekwb.com/blog/radiators-part-1-thickness-fpi/

[VeganJoy]

1 hour ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

Higher FPI tends to provide better maximum cooling potential, but requires a higher static pressure, and therefore typically a higher fan speed.

 

Lower FPI is better for systems that are geared toward silent operation and lower fan speeds.

 

EK actually has some good resources to learn more about the different parts of a cooling loop.

 

https://www.ekwb.com/blog/radiators-part-1-thickness-fpi/

yeah i was gonna use push pull with noctua ippc-2000 fans at decent rpms, not sure if its worth that much over just push on the CE though. i have plenty of the ippc fans available and that fat hwlabs rad aint but a few bucks more than the ekwb from this dude so idk

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

9 hours ago, VeganJoy said:

yeah i was gonna use push pull with noctua ippc-2000 fans at decent rpms, not sure if its worth that much over just push on the CE though. i have plenty of the ippc fans available and that fat hwlabs rad aint but a few bucks more than the ekwb from this dude so idk

In that case go for it. Those fans, especially in push-pull, should be able to handle that HWlabs rad no problem. HW Labs rads are great, much better than EK rads for sure. Just be careful that the width will fit in the P500A. I had to go with the HWlabs L-series in my Phanteks Evolv X because the HWlabs GTS version is too wide at 153mm.

[VeganJoy]

1 hour ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

In that case go for it. Those fans, especially in push-pull, should be able to handle that HWlabs rad no problem. HW Labs rads are great, much better than EK rads for sure. Just be careful that the width will fit in the P500A. I had to go with the HWlabs L-series in my Phanteks Evolv X because the HWlabs GTS version is too wide at 153mm.

oh damn, it does look like that'd be too wide. might be tempted to mod my case there too.... why are those rads so wide?

[For Science!]

1 hour ago, VeganJoy said:

oh damn, it does look like that'd be too wide. might be tempted to mod my case there too.... why are those rads so wide?

Since you're doing soft tubing its not as tight, but here is my drain port to give you an idea about how you could do it.

 

T-fitting, male-to-male fittings coming off the radiator, ball valve, and an angled fitting with a stop plug. When its time to drain, I attach another fitting with soft tubing onto the plugged fitting, then open the ball valve.

 

[VeganJoy]

2 hours ago, For Science! said:

Since you're doing soft tubing its not as tight, but here is my drain port to give you an idea about how you could do it.

 

T-fitting, male-to-male fittings coming off the radiator, ball valve, and an angled fitting with a stop plug. When its time to drain, I attach another fitting with soft tubing onto the plugged fitting, then open the ball valve.

 

*snip*

yeah i'm planning something like that; are you doing pull-only on that front radiator?

[For Science!]

2 minutes ago, VeganJoy said:

yeah i'm planning something like that; are you doing pull-only on that front radiator?

Its actually push-only, so its a front exhaust. I have all my radiators on exhaust so that the heat is thrown directly out of the case instead of reheating the internals. the rear fan is the only intake of my system, and I have 5 fans rotating quite slowly that scales with fluid temperatures.

[-Strelok-]

Personally I would avoid EK radiators, they don't seem great performers and I would suggest another brand. I'm partial to hardwarelabs but here's a pretty good roundup of radiators. It's for the 280MM, but will roughly translate to other sizes. https://www.xtremerigs.net/2016/02/21/ek-coolstream-ce-280mm-radiator-review/5/