An experiment in more efficient water cooling

[Draknour]

I dont have the means to accurately test this but the science is sound. I intend to to

1. Add more radiators to an all in one cooling system
2. Move my radiators outside my case to improve over all efficiency. 
3. Attempt to copper hard pipe my now exterior rads and have them connected to my case where i will have either disconnects or mounted unions.

My current build (please forgive me did not see the video why cheap video cards suck before i started shopping.)

• Case is an Apevia X4 Dreamer
• Mobo in an Asus 970 Pro Gaming/Aura
• My CPU is an AMD FX 4100 3.6 ghz
• For Ram I have Kingston HyperX 8gb Savage 2133
• My GPU is a XFX Radeon R7 2400 4 gb
• Water Cooling by UpHere Technology All-In-One 120mm
• Powered by an EVGA Semi modular 850 BQ Power Supply
• And finally Storage is a 250gb Samsung SSD evo for my Windows 10 pro and an old sata HDD at 500gb

Right now my mb will oc up to 4.1 mhz without tweaking but my ram is acting odd and not working at capacity. My moniter is a Hisense 18" widescreen tv keyboard is a yardsell dell basi mechanical keyboard and my mouse is a logitech performance MX wireless with no noticable lag.  I have a Raijintek 280 allinone liquid cooler i picked up for 43 that i plan on using for parts for this build. My case has 3 holes for hoses on the rear and i will use 2 of them. I will install mountable connectors at these points and then hard pipe to the 120 radiator. I will the leave the 120 radiator and go to the 280 radiator. From that radiator i will return to the other hard point connecter. I plan on using copper tubing outside the case and red silicon inside the case. I already foresee a problem with the connections on the radiators. Both of them have their connections on only one side. I plan on eventually replacing all of this allinone junk. Ok i guess the whole idea with the all in one stuff is a flop but if i use radiators with connections on opposite sides it should be doable. Use 2 of my 5.25 bays as a resivour and mount the pump on the bottom of the case. Has anyone done anything like this with radiators outside the case? Science says that should cool off the inside of the case by reducing infrared from heating inside the case. Also what about the copper tubing. Would it be easier to get fittings for the turns i need with slight bends to align or is there a practical way to make those tight bends i want. 

[Skiiwee29]

in theory it sounds ok, but no offense, but your system is not worth all the time, money, and effort to do that on... 

[Enderman]

Yes plenty of people have done external case watercooling, just look up "external pc watercooling" on google or google images.

Copper tubing won't help much because the surface area on the pipe is very little compared to that of a radiator.

 

3 minutes ago, Draknour said:

Right now my mb will oc up to 4.1 mhz 

How did you overclock your motherboard?? Do you mean your CPU?

 

And are you using a CPU from 1985 or did you mean to say GHz?

[Draknour]

Your right. As it stands it is not worth it. But with enough cooling, better video cards another ssd in raid and a 8350 I believe i can hvae cpu speeds at a stable 5.2 or more. Especially when i figure out how cool the backside of my cpu.

 

I meant ghz and all i did was set my mobo on performance and it idles away at those speeds. From my understanding that is why my ram is not working at 2133 instead it is at 1600 (800 x2 i believe but am not sure)

 

Reason for copper is one a permanent radiator system and 2 some thermal loss and finally 3, you can petina copper into alot of cool effects. I love the look of blue copper. 

[TonyKramer]

I don't mean to divert the thread, but with the money you'd be spending on a watercooling setup, why not just get Ryzen. I had an 8350, which was a microwave of a processor that I could only get to 4.4Ghz. I now have my 1800X at 4.5Ghz, Doesn't sound like a difference, but the 52% improvement in Instructions per Cycle makes a huge difference. 

But if you still want extreme water cooling, I currently have a setup where my 1800X and two FirePro W9100s are cooled by a 350GPH Fountain Pump submerged in a custom enclosure connected to four 240MM rads. I'm looking at full load temps of 40C CPU, 38C GPU in a 24C room. 

[Draknour]

There is an evil scientist in me saying think how much better if you put a 200x200 radiator on the door muahahaha

[SPG]

going to be honest, you should save your money get a new mobo, cpu and gpu, because there is no point in buying anything in the am3 socket anymore, especially since ryzen exists.

[Draknour]

If my bulldozer 4 cores work at 4100 ghz without tweaking i imagine 8 cores could do more. The 9000 series may have a headstart and a lower voltage but they are not robust enough from what i have read. Also ryzen is not alot of bang for the buck i have less than 700 in this system so far but ryzen would add 1k between new ram, mobo and cpu for negligible improvement at this time. Later when ryzen gets better and prices come down some i may switch.

 

On 4/10/2017 at 0:01 AM, SPG said:

going to be honest, you should save your money get a new mobo, cpu and gpu, because there is no point in buying anything in the am3 socket anymore, especially since ryzen exists.

Right now not much can use the extra 4 cores and ryzen is not robust enough. In time the cost vrs ability will come down enough to make it viable. And I hope to  have a case that can handle the worst heat it can throw at me.

[Mick Naughty]

I did the whole extra external rad thing. Didn't do anything. 

 

Seems like a lot of work for such such a small rig. 

 

 

[SPG]

15 hours ago, Draknour said:

Right now not much can use the extra 4 cores and ryzen is not robust enough. In time the cost vrs ability will come down enough to make it viable. And I hope to  have a case that can handle the worst heat it can throw at me.

wait for the cheaper cpus, I'm not saying to get a 1800x
but your current cpu (and everything else on am3) will bottle neck any half decent gpu. If you want to spend $700+ on a custom water cooling loop for literally no reason, be my guess. Custom is not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. 

[Draknour]

I just got a Raijintek all-in-one triton 280 to replace my UpHere all-in-one 120. I was thinking about mounting the rad on top of the case on the outside with the fans on the inside. Then I planned on using copper to hardpipe to the case itself and then use tubing from a fitting that is passing through the case to cool everything with. Then I realized my case is not deep enough nor is it wide enough to do this nicely. Now I am considering drilling 2 holes in the top of my case that correspond with the fittings on the 280 radiator. That would put them slightly into my top 5.25 bay. I eventually plan on adding in a 2 slot reservoir. Since i have no idea how this would line up I am gonna bench the idea for now. Since I managed to get stable OC at 4.3 GHz on my AMD FX 4100 I may consider selling the system and starting from scratch.  who knows matbe I'll start with a case with enough room on the backside that i could run a GPU heatsiink sitting on a thermal bad and add that into my cooling loop

[atomicus]

1 hour ago, Draknour said:

I just got a Raijintek all-in-one triton 280 to replace my UpHere all-in-one 120. I was thinking about mounting the rad on top of the case on the outside with the fans on the inside. Then I planned on using copper to hardpipe to the case itself and then use tubing from a fitting that is passing through the case to cool everything with. Then I realized my case is not deep enough nor is it wide enough to do this nicely. Now I am considering drilling 2 holes in the top of my case that correspond with the fittings on the 280 radiator. That would put them slightly into my top 5.25 bay. I eventually plan on adding in a 2 slot reservoir. Since i have no idea how this would line up I am gonna bench the idea for now. Since I managed to get stable OC at 4.3 GHz on my AMD FX 4100 I may consider selling the system and starting from scratch.  who knows matbe I'll start with a case with enough room on the backside that i could run a GPU heatsiink sitting on a thermal bad and add that into my cooling loop

 

It strikes me you're approaching this whole thing backwards when you should really be focusing on building a more powerful system, because throwing money at watercooling what you have is really a complete and total waste in respect to what you will gain in a performance sense. Unless your ONE AND ONLY interest is watercooling and you have zero interest in performance or the capability of your system.

[AnonymousGuy]

All of my systems use external watercooling.  Even the storage server with a dual core pentium is plumbed to a 240 rad (cause I had the parts lying around anyways).  Don't use hard line like copper or PVC.

 

I tell everyone external is the way to go.  Aesthetically internal is better but no one is going to care how sleeved and tidied up your build is anyways.  You gain the ability to simplify plumbing in the case and to have an arbitrary radiator instead of having to pick a radiator that will fit.

[Draknour]

I am getting a stable 4.3 ghz system for under 700 dollars.

51    amd 4100

40    shark 750 watt power supply with blue led fan

49    uphere all in one 120mm all in one water cooler

81    kingstom 8 gb ddr3 2133

107  asus 970 pro motherboard

56    xfx radeon r7 240 4gb

83    samsung 250 evo ssd

72    apevia x-dreamer-4 blue case

538 with the main things so far.

I used the 500gig hard drive from my old system to bring over the OS and since I had the room I went ahead and added in the old dvd-rom I had.

to clean things up and make them look better I added

12    icydock dual 2.5 ssd 1x3.5 hdd to 5.25 bay

7     10 thubscrews

9     5 black pci slot covers dust filtering

4     30 black zip ties

so for a total of 560 dollars I have gotten a system that performs well and looks good. in time I plan on upgrading my processor and adding in more ram another ssd and a larger hdd along with some serious graphics. of course all of that would cost me another 1000 dollars if not more.

btw i have since upgraded my psu to an evga 850 semi modular and a raijintek 280 all in one for 106 dollars still keeping me under my budget.