How large should my radiators be?

[P1nnacle]

Like the title says, I'm interested in knowing how many radiators and at what size they should be. I'm looking at cooling an overclocked LGA 2011 chip (not sure which one yet) and 4 R9 280Xs running at full load 24/7. I'm expecting power consumption to be 1200W normally and 1500 Peak. I'm looking to keep everything at around 50C.

Don't worry about budget, just give me an idea as to what you would choose.

 

[faalin]

a rule of thumb is a 2x120mm for a cpu and add another 120mm for every addon.


So in your case
2011 = 240mm
4 R9 280Xs = 480mm

since your overclocking I would bump the 240mm to a 360 and a 480 for the gpus.

I run a 2600k @5.4ghz and 2 gtx 580's @1000mhz with a xspc rx480mm and 2 xspc rx360mm rads. no issues of heat at all.

 

[P1nnacle]

a rule of thumb is a 2x120mm for a cpu and add another 120mm for every addon.


So in your case
2011 = 240mm
4 R9 280Xs = 480mm

since your overclocking I would bump the 240mm to a 360 and a 480 for the gpus.

Is that taking into account needing to cool a full load 24/7? What I need to be sure of is that I don't run into a build up situation that shuts the computer down.

 

[faalin]

yes that will work for a 24/7 setup.... just know that you will not be able to keep your cpu under 50c with any watercooling setup while overclocking. Ive only been able to do this once and that was during the winter and I ducted an open window right to the side of my case where I had 2 danger den gtx480 rads running 2 loops, one for the 2 580's and 1 for my cpu, cpu was a i7 950@ 4.8ghz @20c on full load.

 

[P1nnacle]

yes that will work for a 24/7 setup.... just know that you will not be able to keep your cpu under 50c with any watercooling setup while overclocking. Ive only been able to do this once and that was during the winter and I ducted an open window right to the side of my case where I had 2 danger den gtx480 rads running 2 loops, one for the 2 580's and 1 for my cpu, cpu was a i7 950@ 4.8ghz @20c on full load.

You seem to be contradicting yourself, you're saying you have an overclocked CPU @ 20 C but I won't be able to beat 50C?

 

[faalin]

yes that will work for a 24/7 setup.... just know that you will not be able to keep your cpu under 50c with any watercooling setup while overclocking. Ive only been able to do this once and that was during the winter and I ducted an open window right to the side of my case where I had 2 danger den gtx480 rads running 2 loops, one for the 2 580's and 1 for my cpu, cpu was a i7 950@ 4.8ghz @20c on full load.

You seem to be contradicting yourself, you're saying you have an overclocked CPU @ 20 C but I won't be able to beat 50C?

if you reread it I said I ducted my window to the radiators so I was pulling sub zero degree air into them making my water super cold. I don't think you want to do this for everyday use as my room felt like the windows were open during the middle of winter

here is the side of my old case, ran 16 scythe ultra kaze fans in a push pull on the rads

 

[P1nnacle]

Ok, that makes more sense. I'm going to have a lot of cooling in this build, a minimum of 3x360, maybe 4x360. I'm just trying to scope out what other people think would be "appropriate".

 

[manofchalk]

For a loop like that, I think the more relevant question is how many rads can your case support :lol:
For that loop, deck the case with as many as you can I think. 3x360 or equivalent seems right to me, you can always do the TDP calculation if your unsure.

 

[P1nnacle]

Yeah my case is custom built, and was designed to be expandable, I could put 20 Radiators in if I was so inclined.

 

[schmuckley]

I would choose an evaporative cooler.Cooler temps,less cost,more effective.
http://www.overclock.net/t/406256/the-official-bong-lovers-club-56k-fail/0_100

 

[4Ryan6]

Yeah my case is custom built, and was designed to be expandable, I could put 20 Radiators in if I was so inclined.

Wow with that much room you could duplicate my setup and get it all in one case, so what is this wonderful case?

 

[P1nnacle]

Yeah my case is custom built, and was designed to be expandable, I could put 20 Radiators in if I was so inclined.

Wow with that much room you could duplicate my setup and get it all in one case, so what is this wonderful case?

Jeebus, I like your setup, maybe I should think about trying it. I'm using a custom U2-UFO from MountainMods, You can buy platforms to expand and add additional components (the stock case couldn't hold 20, in case I wasn't clear).

 

[4Ryan6]

That is a nice case, I had my eye on one of those for my setup but then I decided to go with a 2nd case to house all the cooling instead.

The peltier cooling is allowing the CPU-Z validation of a 3770K Ivy Bridge that most are delidding and still cannot reach 5ghz and that's 24/7 stable and the CPU is not delidded.

 

[P1nnacle]

That is a nice case, I had my eye on one of those for my setup but then I decided to go with a 2nd case to house all the cooling instead.

The peltier cooling is allowing the CPU-Z validation of a 3770K Ivy Bridge that most are delidding and still cannot reach 5ghz and that's 24/7 stable and the CPU is not delidded.

Wow, that's pretty good. I'll have to keep an eye on peltier.