Custom Reservoir questions.

[Trik'Stari]

So I've been looking at alot of different water cooling parts and I was thinking of building my own reservoir at home (I am more than well enough equipped to do so) out of sections of 2 inch transparent pvc pipe and I was wondering:

 

Can you have more than one return line to the reservoir on a water cooling loop? It would run like this in order:

 

 

                       Cpu--------------------------Radiator*------>Reservoir

1. Pump------>Gpu(s)-----------------------Radiator*------>Reservoir

                      ram,chipset,etc ------------Radiator*------>Reservoir

*Each radiator would be seperate. Remember this is hypothetical so assume anything from multiple large radiators to a couple 120mm radiators

 

I dont think I would need to worry about pressure because the Idea I have would have alot of water sitting behind the pump in one large   |___| shaped section of tubing about 2in diameter (clear with either pvc elbows or if I had the money machine'd blocks with acrylic windows and some sort of rotating spinning thingy in it)

                       Inlet                                  Inlet

                        _|_                                   _|_

                         |  |                                    |  |

                         |  |                                    |  |

                         |  |__________________|  |

                         |_____________________|

                                               |

                                          Line(s?) to pump(s?)

 

 

 

I think:

A. It would look cool

B. It would have alot of water behind the pump, which would ensure good pressure (no cavitation)

C. I would look badass with the inlets being small diameter pvc (or flexible tubing for that matter) with 3 little holes drilled in it for a triple stream drizzle looking thing

D. Also with machine'd corners with acrylic with something spinny or glowy would look badass as well.

 

 

Just looking for y'all's opinion's, this is all hypothetical at the moment. I have never built a cooling loop and dont want to put alot of effort into a flawed design. I do have experience in doing things with pvc that it wasnt intended for (firing potato's, batteries, lightbulbs, balls of duck tape which will break a window >.>, and in one instance a bowling pin.

 

Edit: also with a little modding, it would be relatively simple to put more return lines between the two verticle sections.

[helping]

It's a flawed design, splitting the output of the pump into three channels sounds like a terrible time, let alone two channels.

 

The differences in restriction will cause higher flow in one area and next to no flow in another.

[Trik'Stari]

What about seperate loops with seperate pumps all sharing a massive reservoir? @helping

 

BTW your Avatar always makes me laugh.

[helping]

What about seperate loops with seperate pumps all sharing a massive reservoir? @helping

 

BTW your Avatar always makes me laugh.

It could work but it's almost always more inefficient in terms of total thermal displacement.

[Trik'Stari]

It just seems like having it all in series lowers the total thermal capacity of the system to me, because the heat from each heat source would add to the total average of the coolant. wouldnt it? @helping

[spwath]

It just seems like having it all in series lowers the total thermal capacity of the system to me, because the heat from each heat source would add to the total average of the coolant. wouldnt it? @helping

Why not just have seperate loops with seperate res's?

 

I think 3 pumps into 3 different thjings with 1 res would work quite well tho.

[Trik'Stari]

Why? Because reasons lol. No but seriously, it would just be for baller custom bling status. A 2inch transparent custom reservoir and a good supply of fittings, tubing, and scientific grade glass tubing (the kind you can bend with a simple propane torch) and I could build a sweet looking setup. Boone goes for the mad scientist look anymore lol.

[Trik'Stari]

^but no one goes for the mad scientist look anymore. Edit not working cuz I'm on my phone

[helping]

It just seems like having it all in series lowers the total thermal capacity of the system to me, because the heat from each heat source would add to the total average of the coolant. wouldnt it? @helping

Yes and no, because you lose the potential of each radiator that isn't in a certain loop. The inefficiencies of two loops are additive, in addition (though it's not that big of a deal) to extra pump heat adding to the thermal or heat "floor," so to speak.

 

In a separated loop, if all componenets are under stress at the same time, the temperatures will likely be pretty close and the performance penalties are negligible considering how much easier and less costly series is. In addition, when your components are under uneven workloads (i.e. the majority of the time) you lose the benefit of the area that is segemented to the other loop.

 

If you have restrictive blocks you can probably overcome that by having two pumps in a series.

 

The most I would go with is two pumps and parallel loop with GPU/CPU+VRM separated, and I wouldn't even bother water cooling the RAM. A single pump running a parallel loop is a nope. I do think they have pumps with more than one outlet, but those are fairly exotic and probably not well suited for a PC envionrment.

 

Most of what I know is from reading rather than doing, so you can wait for opinions from @Ghost or @B NEGATIVE if they aren't inconvenienced.

[Ghost]

The problem with one pump powering 3 loops is the flow will be split differently due to different restrictiveness in the blocks.

 

Water flows past all the components fast enough that the temperature doesn't increase much with each components. You can expect, maybe a 5C difference in extreme examples. I've seen about that between input and output of a 9 fan external rad after the loop had been running idle for a while at a low pump speed setting and the rad fans had just been switched on.

 

Basically, an extreme case. You should look at the loop as an average temp because that's all the matters. Sharing a res means the average temp will be the same anyway. The only way you can have two average temps is with two separate loops.

 

The only time parallel flow works and makes sense is in GPUs because they are identical blocks with the same restriction so the flow between them is theoretically identical.

 

If you want multiple pumps in a loop then redundancy is more important.

[Trik'Stari]

@Ghost would there be any advantage or disadvantage to running two or three loops off of the same reservoir? Each with its own pump.

[B NEGATIVE]

One pump powering 3 loops just wont generate enough flow..unless its an Iwaki...

 

Have one res for 3 pumps will...

 

A.Make it a nightmare to bleed.

B. Cause serious turbulence issues.

C.Will bring no performance.

 

Single loops are really the best way to maximize radiator efficiency,multi loops are for quad or 2CPU systems and even then,they are not really necessary. 

[Trik'Stari]

None of this is for performance or cost or whatever. Just asking if it will function. Its more for aesthetics' than anything else.

[Trik'Stari]

Also, would baffles deal with the issue of turbulence?