Mixing tubes with different ID in a custom open loop water cooling system

[Morgoth97]

Hi,

A bit of background:

I'm currently revising my water cooling system, it has one major flaw; no drainage valve. 

And hence I've decided to improve upon this and create one to ease maintenance over the years. 

The system currently uses 12mm ID hardline tubes and my proposed solution requires the tubes to enter a very tight area and the skills needed to bend the hardline tube to that specification is beyond my skills. So I've decided that soft tubing would be more suitable. I do have 9.5 mm ID soft tubing at hand and was wondering if it was okay to incorporate that in the loop.

Thanks in advanced,

Morgoth

[ninbura]

Unless you have some weird pump situation going on this should be fine.

You're moving such a little amount of water in a computer case and pumps typically have more than enough headroom / pressure that you'd have to do something pretty crazy to restrict the flow enough to affect anything.

 

A slightly thinner ID really shouldn't hurt anything.

[W-L]

5 hours ago, Morgoth97 said:

Hi,

A bit of background:

I'm currently revising my water cooling system, it has one major flaw; no drainage valve. 

And hence I've decided to improve upon this and create one to ease maintenance over the years. 

The system currently uses 12mm ID hardline tubes and my proposed solution requires the tubes to enter a very tight area and the skills needed to bend the hardline tube to that specification is beyond my skills. So I've decided that soft tubing would be more suitable. I do have 9.5 mm ID soft tubing at hand and was wondering if it was okay to incorporate that in the loop.

Thanks in advanced,

Morgoth

It's not a problem mixing different sized or types of tubing for convenience, as long as the fittings are appropriately sized and designed for each type tubing

[Christophe Corazza]

6 hours ago, Morgoth97 said:

I do have 9.5 mm ID soft tubing at hand and was wondering if it was okay to incorporate that in the loop.

 

I'd say tubing size is all about users aesthetics and how the layout of the tubes will be. The additional resistance to fluid flow is minimal when you decrease the internal diameter of your tubing. So going for some 9.5 mm soft tubing in your 12 mm hardline build is perfectly fine.