Water cooling loop order, GPU or CPU first?

[Perriwing]

I have looked at the WC sticky 2.0, but it never mentioned if I should cool the CPU or GPU first. I plan on building a new PC and thought about trying out WC.

My build:
-Maximus VI Formula [For the cross-chill heatsink as it supports WC]
-I7-4770K
-16 GB Vengeance Pro ram 1866 Mhz
-Asus GTX 780 OC, GTX Titan or ROG Poseidon [For the Air/WC hybrid cooling option]
-EKWB 480mm Coolstream XT or XTX [not sure which is better]
-Corsair SP120 Quiet edition fans
-EK-Supremacy - Acetal + Nickel
-Solid tubing
-Corsair 800D/900D

My questions:
-What should the order be? currently, its
res---->pump---->rad---->CPU---->cross-chill VRM heatsink---->GPU
-Which rad is better? between the two, as my country only has EKWB
-What type of GPU water block is best? full cover or GPU only?
-What res and pump do I need for a single GPU and CPU loop?
-To do a loop with solid tubes, what thickness must they be? As most guides use standard tubing.
-On EKWB CPU blocks, whats the difference between the acetal, nickel and copper blocks?
-Should I add the chipset or ram to the loop?
-Are there decent alternatives to distilled water? Most of it in my city is actually de-ionised even the batch from the school's labs.

I may have more questions as I come to understand more about WC, and before you refer me back to the WC sticky, I HAVE READ IT BUT THERE ARE STILL QUESTIONS WHICH I PREFER A DIRECT ANSWER FOR. Caps just to emphasize my point.

To those who respond, thanks for any assistance rendered. Thanks for the help.

 

[Buzz247]

I didn't know they had 90 male to male! I stand corrected lol

 

[Perriwing]

I've been talking to a engineer I know, he said that 90 degree fittings would have a detrimental effect on the fluid's speed and pressure, is it noticeable? will performance decrease greatly?

 

[manofchalk]

Short answer, yes it makes a difference.
But the difference is so small, that you would need 30 right angle adapters before it makes any noticeable difference, and even that's fairly insignificant.

Long answer.
http://martinsliquidlab.org/2011/01/30/fittings-and-elbow-impacts/

 

[Perriwing]

The article mentions, 40% more flow restriction but temperature difference is minor? How, the way I see it, it should be closer to 40% higher temps? I don't quite under stand what he is getting at?

 

[Perriwing]

And does that mean that as long as I have less then 30 elbow fittings, there would be no temperature difference?

 

[manofchalk]

40% more flow restriction on a CPU block (which is designed to be high flow, so already a low restriction) compared to a straight tube, not 40% less flow.
Also consider that his test bench is just a pump, that CPU block and a pressure gauge, its not too representative of an actual loop. In an actual loop, I think you wouldn't even be able to measure the difference.

 

[Perriwing]

@manofchalk My friend was suggesting that I should just stick to standard tubing not solid tubing. Right now, I'm slightly worried that having too many elbow fittings in a row would stack up to reduce the effectiveness of my loop as there will be alot of them in it.....any opinions on which I should use?

 

[Buzz247]

Solid tubing can be bent any shape, angle, soft or sharp you realize right? So whole loop can be done with zero right angles. Even so, if you have more than 12 in a basic loop (which has negligible impact), probably should be looking at component placement anyway. Bottom line - opinions are just that. If you aren't comfortable with solid tubing don't do it! Go with what you are comfortable with and will keep you happy down the road.

 

[Perriwing]

Problem is I like the clean look of solid tubing, but I'm not comfortable with bending the acrylic [had some trouble with heating strips and acrylic in the past]. So I prefer to use 90 degree fittings to align the tubes to the parts, hence the high of elbow joints.....trying to find out how many is too many.....on a side note, I may just go for the standard tubing if this proves too inefficient......

 

[thequn]

If you are building a piece of art which many people do….by all means add the fittings as needed for the cleanest possible look. Sure some extra fittings will add restriction, but it’s very minor. As the chart shows, it would take almost 30 each 90 degree elbows to add up to 1 degree in CPU temp rise. Half a dozen to get to aesthetic perfection is perfectly fine from an art priority perspective.

So don't worry about it.
I get that your friend in an engineer but in science most experiments end up contradictory to the established theory we because of unknown factors- in this case there only so hot your water will ever get. Because do to the radiator cooling it off your using as such the water temp never really changes.
In my system pump setting 1 and pump setting 5 on a D5 pump is maybe like 5 degrees in temps
Hell even when I had the pump clogged and it still was adding rumbling to the line keeping my temps low.
I would also like to note I am using a sub ambient system so my temps are normally 10-20 degrees below room temp.

 

[Perriwing]

Ok, thanks for the advice guys, I'll make my decision when the board finally comes to retail where I am, so I'll look into getting the parts first.

Thread closed