Can you replace the radiator of a closed-loop CPU cooler?

[Cameron_43]

I was wondering if this is possible? I am modding a power mac g5 case into a Pc and i have the motherboard tray i need but i want to put in a closed-loop water cooling cpu cooler as a fan cpu cooler would be too tall to fit in the case i think, and i only have 1 dedicated fan mount on the motherboard tray. it is an 80mm mount for a fan, i was wondering if you could swap out a 120mm radiator for example from a corsair h80i and put in a 80mm radiator.

 

[KeelinTy]

You can but not easily. Theres a high risk of breaking it.
If you have the right fittings for the tubing size, you can cut the aio tubing and take the radiator off. Then install the new radiator, and use tubing clamps depending on the fittings. After you install the new radiator, youll need to open the base of the waterblock where the pump is so you can fill it up

 

[Ecky]

I'm not sure where you'd find an 80mm radiator, and it would almost certainly perform worse than one of the inexpensive low profile coolers from Noctua or Cryorig.

I can't imagine your case not having room for this cooler:

 

[KeelinTy]

I'm not sure where you'd find an 80mm radiator, and it would almost certainly perform worse than one of the inexpensive low profile coolers from Noctua or Cryorig.

I can't imagine your case not having room for this cooler:

You can buy an 80mm rad online. Theyre easy to find if you google 80mm radiator.
But I im not so sure it would perform worse than those LP coolers. If its a high fpi radiator with a sp fan, it would be able to displace more heat than the small heatsink with LP coolers.
I would say its just more of a personal preference for the op.
But the modded aio would be less elegant since it would be chopped up and having metal tube clamps. If he decides to mod the aio, if he does it right it could possibly look cool.
But I believe that the aio would perform better than a LP cooler if he gets the right radiator and mods it right.

But theres a high risk at breaking the aio when modding it while with the LP cooler, theres not much of a risk involved.

 

[Ecky]

Be aware that in an AiO cooler, you also have a pump that's adding as much as 10-15w of extra heat to the coolant, which must be dissipated by the radiator, giving the AiO cooler a disadvantage given the same cooling surface. This added heat often disappears as background noise when you have large 2x120 or 3x120mm radiators, but is a larger factor when cooling area is less.

Anyway, there's no way an 80mm radiator would outperform something like Noctua's NH-L9x65, which has more cooling surface than most 92mm radiators and would probably end up being significantly cheaper too. It just depends on how much clearance there is for a cooler.

 

[KeelinTy]

I did some looking, you're right.

Yeah id recommend the NH-L9x65 cooler as Ecky showed. It would be alot easier, cheaper and perform better