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I like the use of the Hdd to sneakify the cables Toad, very ingenius man :)
Tool continues to play it fast and loose, screw the hoses and wires heheh
I know one day something will snap in his head and he'll go cable crazy, no need to rush him into it :)
Moto
 
Few months back I made a thread regarding W/C I've always wanted too - well finally decided to pull the trigger I decided to go with the Swiftech H220, I also bought a new case to accommodate the H220 wanted something smaller than my old Thermaltake Armor + Full Tower and more radiator friendly , decided to go with the Fractal Design Arm Midi R2 got it on sale at NCIX for $67 shipped while it was on sale!

Don't mind the cables at the bottom since my PCP&C 750w PSU is older and isn't modular, I have a ton of cables I'm not using just hanging out at the bottom.

20130604_210403_zps53e0f583.jpg
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Enjoy,
Orlean
 


I'm enjoying it so far, although I have never had my hands on any other product due to me being new to W/C but from I can tell it's a good quality unit. I've been following the Swiftech H220 Owners Club thread at overclockers.net where Gabe the CEO and Bram a customer support rep for Swiftech have been fairly active on posting there in regards with any problems people were having even going along cross shipping units that called it quits on owners especially since some early production units had debris in them during the manufacturing process causing the pump to stop working., which I thought was great to see - giving me confidence in there company's customer support.

So far knock on wood mine has had no abnormal noise. But I think I'm going to reseat the CPU block and reapply TIM again I tried the line method for the first time per Swiftechs manual instead of the pea method and used the Tim-Mate that came with it instead of the Ceramique 2 I used before. Although there is a difference in temperature over my Hyper 212 Evo I feel it could be better. In addition when swapping everything over I left the CPU Block/Pump mounted on my motherboard and possibly while moving everything around the block moved introducing air bubbles to the TIM.

The only thing different between both these readings is the case it was in, the cases dust filters on top of my new Arc Midi R2 are restrictive I feel. I temporarily installed the H220 in my full tower while I waited for my Arc Midi R2 to arrive, I had to lay the Radiator on the bottom of the case since this was the only place I could put it.

Both tests were using Prime95 Small FFT's for 18 minutes at 75F ambient, same overclock and voltage settings were used of course.
Pump Speed at 1550RPM
Radiator fans are running at 100%

CM Hyper 212 Evo @ 4.2ghz 1.100v Thermaltake Armor + Full Tower case



H220 @ 4.2ghz 1.100v Arc Midi R2 Case Midtower


Now that I think about it maybe a 6c difference on the hottest core is not that bad.

I tried 4.5ghz at 1.240v temps got up to 72 on the hottest core but the computer blue screen on me 3 hours into Prime95, so I'm going to have to tinker with it some more to figure out a sweet spot.


As far as future expansion, I wanted to get my Asus 7870 under water as well but since its a mid range card my only option is a universal GPU cooler with some sort of active air cooling for the Memory and VRM's this would of course require an addition radiator most likely another 240 in the loop.


 
The system needs a better pump and radiator to work right, if you had the intention of water cooling both the CPU and GPU, but you already have a CPU solution right? so do you intend on making this into a GPU block loop only?
 
ok so a total of 360mm for rad space, and I would not use the little pump but that is only my opinion.
what fans will you get for the radiator?
any thoughts of paralleling your system?
will you be adding this to your build log?
thanks for your time.
 

Not using the pump, using the D5 Alphacool VP655T that is in my loop! :)
Fans for rads are currently Corsair SP120's
Paralleling? :O
Of course! If I buy it...
 
You guys are being too critical of the pump, I would consider DDC's to be about on par with D5's. They just more head pressure than flow rates, vice versa for D5's.
Paralleling, if you have done high school physics and learnt about electricity its basically the same with water-cooling as it is there.

........................./-> GPU1\
-> Splitter......<................-> Splitter -> Rest of the loop.
.........................\-> GPU2 /

In this scenario, you get 1/4 the flow restriction as you would if you just had the GPU's in Series.
 
Nice work man, welcome to water-cooling 😀.

The tube that's going from the pump to the front rad, attach that to the top of the reservoir and have the tube going into the bottom of the res come off the pump exhaust.
Might need to use some angled adapters to get it done, but if it works then you'l have much less tubing crossover and reduce the length.

You may want to check the tube from the CPU to the top rad, looks like its a bit kinked to me.
 
Looking pretty good on the cable front Bro nice work, I'd flip that top rad round so the connectors are at the front of the case, that will help get rid of that looong run,
and try, Res>Pump>Front panel Rad>Cpu>Top Rad>Front Rad>Return to res
Bit of trial and error but you should neaten that up considerably, and the tubes to/from cpu, you can tie them together to hold them neater, if you do one in front of the other then you should only see one tube thickness from the picture taking viewpoint
nice work though as I said :)
Moto
 
I appreciate the tips! I will get some better tubing for the finished product. I got some 1/2"ID-5/8"OD tubing at the hardware store because it was really cheap so I didn't have to worry about messing up. Now that I got a feel for how much tubing I need and how it all works I will put in some higher quality tubing. I read that a couple people experienced fogging with this particular type of tubing. But at $.25/ft it was good for some trial and error.
 


If you're after CPU cooling performance you'd want to push through both rads then to the CPU and take advantage of their combined cooling capabilities to deliver to the CPU water block.

Especially with overclocking in the picture which I know you do, you need all the cooling you can get delivered to the CPU from the combined radiator cooling, it's like using one radiator as a pre-cooler usually the lesser rad, and the second for the main cooling before the CPU.

How you set up that loop has everything to do with end results unless cooling performance is irrelevant.

 
Cooling performance is paramount Ry! And you've got me hooked now, lol. I think you told me this would happen. Anyways, you guys will see from me again soon with an improved loop and hopefully astonishing results!
 

But there's only one block in that loop, does it really make a difference what order the loop is? The water always goes through two rads between cpu passes, regardless of order. Since nothing else produces heat (except a tiny amount at the pump) why would it matter where the rads are?

Maybe I'm missing something but that doesn't quite make sense to me.
 


The only cooling elements you have in a loop are the radiator or radiators.

The reservoir is the recovery component that collects and stores the coolant to always supply an even flow of coolant to the pump, it has no cooling capability by itself.

The pump circulates the coolant through the system and to a very small extent is a heat producer from the motor windings heating from voltage flowing through them, so the pump can benefit from cooling as well, but the pump does not need the most cooling.

The water blocks are heat conduction transfer elements to the water from either the CPU or GPU, so the cooler the coolant is when reaching them the cooler they can cool the component.

No matter how many radiators are in a loop, for best performance cooling they should be in series just before the CPU or GPU being cooled, the coldest coolant is exiting the last radiator.

The radiators looped in series progressively aid each other lowering the heat, they are pre-coolers each lowering the temperature a little more before it reaches the water block.

Many in the water cooling community do not water cool for cooling performance, they water cool for looks, they water cool because they can and various other reasons, and many don't even overclock at all.

I water cool for overclocking performance cooling period, I have no other reasons and have tested myself to discover the maximum cooling I could get from what I have invested my money in.

The coolest dependable coolant temperature is leaving the radiator that's an undeniable fact, so if you have one radiator or ten, they should all be in series before the intended to be cooled component.

When overclocking is brought into the picture it produces and extra heat load that IMO is what water cooling is all about, there is a difference regarding cooling performance sometimes as much as 3c ~ 5c in the way the water cooling loop is setup, but even if it was only a 1c solid gain by simply the routing it would be worth it regarding cooling performance.

In all honesty this is not rocket science, just logically looking at a radiator cooling loop should turn on the light bulb in the brain, but if that doesn't then try it yourself with comparative before and after temperatures, it's just a simple tubing reroute, tubing should have been your cheapest water cooling expense.

Radiator water cooling is totally at the mercy of ambient room temperature no matter how much radiator fin cooling area you have, you will never do any better than ambient, if your total cooling area is from multiple radiators, they need to be all working together to cool the intended component.

 
It seems like my loop is filled with really tiny bubbles. Is this normal or bad? If bad, how do I fix it?

Also, Ry. If I add a GPU block to the loop, should I keep my rads setup the way they are now? Res > Pump > Rad > CPU > Rad > GPU > Res?
 
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