10mm tubing

RainbowR · May 22, 2013

Hey I'm looking forward to watercooling my rig I'm going to install this weekend. Right now I have everything I need but I have some second toughts about my tube preference.

I went for 10mm(5/16 I believe) OD tubing, I like the looks of small tubing on the 1/4 fittings:

(I will eventually get blue tubing for the 6mm ID tube)

Those are both 10mm OD tubes but the blue one has 8mm ID and the clear tube has 6mm ID. Obviously, the 8mm ID one can't really make tight bends and I will keep an eye one that. Might aswell use the thicker 6mm ID tube for flexibility.

Is it even possible to have diffrent ID of tubing in a loop?

Also, what do you think of 10mm tubes? Should I change them with bigger tubes while I still can? I don't really like those big 1/2 tubes at all tbh.

Things of note:

Not going to achieve master overclocks with my 3570k, mostly mild overclocks like 4.2/4.4ghz.

I plan on getting a waterblock on my MSI HD7950 (ref. 7970 pcb) to master overclock this instead. So the 8mm ID tube will come in handy?

Ghost · May 22, 2013

Firstly please use empirical system for tubing. It is much more commonly used than mm to describe tubing.

Secondly 3/8 (10mm) tubing is very thin. I would say its too thin to use as tubing for a water cooled loop. I personally use 3/8 1/2 tubing and I would say that's the smallest I would go. Kinking is an enormous issue with thinner tubing especially as the wall of the tube is now much thinner. Any bend and the tubing will start to flex and constrict.

RainbowR · May 22, 2013

I found this post on another forum that tells tube size doesn't impact temperature drops at all.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?147767-The-impact-of-tubing-sizes

Maybe the fast water flow rate(due to smaller size) makes up for the thin-ness of the 3/8 tube? I don't know, but that diffrence doesn't really convince me to go with thicker tubes.

I will keep an eye on tight bends and might even add the thicker 3/8 tube when necessary.

Ghost · May 22, 2013

I never said it affected temps.

One of my friends once used thin tubing in his loop. One of the right angle fittings on his cpu block twisted when an air bubble went through it and because of the thin tubing the fitting twisted. Bear in mind it was a cheap loose fittings. But anyway, the fitting twisted downward and because the walls of his tubing were so thin it kinked. Then water flow stop going past the CPU block so the block itself heated up causing the fittings and the tubing to heat up. This made it kink even more and completely stopped the flow of water.

If he hadn't caught it in time there was no doubt the tubing would have completely melted.

The lesson I learned from that event was to always use good fittings and thick tubing.