Question What can expect from a custom water cooling

[Superlp12]

Contemplating my first attempt to do a full custom water cooling with parts from alphacool. I have a delidded 8700k with conductonaut applied between the die and ihs and between the die and the Noctua d15. Cpu is clock to 5ghz. Current peak temperature is 84C with ambient at 30C running the latest version of Prime95 set smallest with avx. Gpu is the Asus Strix 2080ti OC and is overclocked and temperature peak at 77C.
I plan to set up the loop going through first to the gpu and then to top radiator set to exhaust(push). Then to cpu block and then to front radiator set to pull(in). Both radiator will 360mm at 30mm thickness. Back top exhaust is noctua nf-f14 and radiator fan will be latest noctua a12x25.
My first attempt at custom water cooling and not too sure what I can expect if I capped fan speed at maximum 50%(most fan will be very quiet at this point). Comments from those who had actually done water cooling would be very much appreciated.

 

[lumineZ]

Your chip is alittle hotter than mine.

The loop I have for the CPU is a total overkill just because I want to be able to run with the fans off or at the lowest speeds it can go.

Its an 7700k delid with conductonaut same as you. Radiator I am using is a 480mm HardwareLabs Black Ice Nemesis GTX with 8x EK Vardar ER fans in push / pull.

Room temp now is 19 degree celcius and CPU is sitting at 26 celcius. Water temp is 23 celcius and the fans is not running. They dont kick in until the water temp is at 30 celcius.

At idle I normaly stay 2-3 degree over water temp and during gaming I never ever go past 60 degree. To go past that I have to run a stresstest with AVX and even then it stays in the midd 60s. Never ever does it go past 70 celcius no matter what I throw at it.

My CPU is running at 5.1 GHz.

at 5GHz like you my temps is about 10 - 14 degree lower than what I have posted here (exept for idle) since I run mutch lower Vcore. 5152 is the absolute limit for what my CPU wants to go so I keep it at 5100.



Hope this gave you some pointers.

 

[faalin]

First thing i would do is check your case air flow. Pull the side panel off and see if your temps get better.

My 8700k is delided at 5.1Ghz 1.36v no AVX offset and have yet to see it reach 80*c, My 2080 ti has yet to see anything over mid 60's and thats running at 2115Mhz core and +1700Mhz memory.

 

[rubix_1011]

The most difficult thing to express to people is that watercooling isn't necessarily silent, and in fact, can often produce much more noise, depending on your setup.

Running slow, quiet fans often means less cooling from your radiator from lower fan speeds (less heat being expelled, warmer temps, etc). This can be offset by running push+pull fans or by adding more radiator space. Conversely, running faster fans (usually with good static pressure) allow you to use less total radiator space.

Pumps should not make noise which would be heard over a standard case fan unless you are very close and focused on the unit. Loud pumps indicate air bubbles or cavitation, or can indicate worn bearings. Worn bearings are often the result of excessive/lengthy cavitation or a pump being run without coolant.

Loop order does not matter; the percentage offset is minor, usually less than +/-3%.

Gains can be seen by running multiple GPUs in parallel or even CPU and GPU in parallel, but GPU blocks are typically more restrictive, making parallel a favorable path over serial for graphics cards in a cooling loop, although argument can be made that CPU blocks with jet plates and diversion paths can also be rather restrictive. My next rebuild will likely include a parallel GPU+CPU length and even possible parallel connections to my dual radiators...still pondering that.

 

[grimfox]

On the other end of the spectrum. I haven't delidded and I'm using gelid extreme on a mostly stock 6600k. I did up the mult to allow 4.4Ghz. I also have a 1070 in the loop, again with a mild OC to 2ghz on the core. Basically just what I could get "for free" without messing with voltages.

Your loop order doesn't matter. The fluid will flow too fast for any one section of the loop to collect too much heat. Speaking from experience I would make sure that you design the loop to allow for easy filling and easy draining. The easier it is to service the more likely you are to keep on top of it and not run into problems with corrosion or contamination. Don't use fancy fluids. Clear or a translucent color. I tried the Vue stuff, which was super cool for about a month, and then it flattened out and then fell out. Stained all the tubes and left a decent amount of junk in the blocks. I flushed it and cleaned it all and switched to a standard dye, since the blocks were already stained. I would have switched to straight distilled water otherwise.

I do recommend a fluid temp sensor and a fan controller like the commander pro. Set the fans to respond to the fluid temp, not individual components. CPU package temps are not very stable so you can get spontaneous revving from the fans as they ramp up for a momentary load. Or if the particular game is GPU heavy and your fans will be oblivious to it's suffering. It's so much easier to set fan curves in iCue than it is to set these up in the bios or your motherboards software. That said I only know of asus Qfan, which is ...not great. It's also easier to change things on the fly. IE I set up a second set of curves for when I'm folding and not home. Or when my AC went out in the summer.

My system is set up in a standard 750D (not the airflow ed.) and runs mostly silent with only a 280 ek rad with a pair of corsair ML140's. I didn't like the EK vardar fans, I felt they were too loud. Their minimum speed was quiet high if I remember right. You only really have 40-100%, where the MLs will be fine all the way down to 20%. Set lower and you can get cogging, where the fan will wiggle back and forth without actually moving any air.

I don't know my core temps off hand. I'd say under load the CPU only hits 55 and similar for the GPU. I've never seen fluid temp over 36. Even running F@H for several days in a row. That said I typically only run F@H over the winter when my house temp is down to 65F/18C while I'm at work and that's with my quiet fan profile not 100% fans. At 100% fans with the front open fluid temp is within 2-3C of ambient.

Buy high quality parts and think about your loop carefully to make sure you have everything you need on day1 of your build. If you don't have something order a good one and wait. I was short a 10mm spacer so I overnighted one from amazon. The plating was different and it fused to the EK fitting I was using. It was still copper/brass, like the rest of my loop but the plating was different enough that it fused. I had to replace both the spacer and the fitting.

Custom loops are as much of a hobby as building PCs. And the cost can really add up to be about the same as a small PC, especially when starting out. Treat it that way.

 

[Phaaze88]

Simple version:
1)It's expensive; best viewed as a hobby
2)The gpu - especially Nvidia's, benefits more from liquid cooling than the cpu does
3)If you try to approach it from a performance-only view, prepare to be disappointed, as the costs will far offset the gains - back to point #1.

 

[rubix_1011]

Yes, custom watercooling was almost a requirement long ago if you wanted to overclock - air coolers were very primitive compared to how well they perform today. Most mid- to high-end air cooling can keep up with AIO cooling and custom liquid cooling in some instances. I've tested it...it's true.

Custom watercooling is much more a hobbyist venture than anything else at this point, but there are cases where you really need a big loop to cool massive overclocks or to work on record-setting benchmarks....unless you have LN2 or some sort of chiller (also see: chilled watercooling).

I do it because of the hobbyist approach and also because it looks damn cool. I also love the challenge of putting big watercooling into small cases.

 

[LordVile]

A

Contemplating my first attempt to do a full custom water cooling with parts from alphacool. I have a delidded 8700k with conductonaut applied between the die and ihs and between the die and the Noctua d15. Cpu is clock to 5ghz. Current peak temperature is 84C with ambient at 30C running the latest version of Prime95 set smallest with avx. Gpu is the Asus Strix 2080ti OC and is overclocked and temperature peak at 77C.
I plan to set up the loop going through first to the gpu and then to top radiator set to exhaust(push). Then to cpu block and then to front radiator set to pull(in). Both radiator will 360mm at 30mm thickness. Back top exhaust is noctua nf-f14 and radiator fan will be latest noctua a12x25.
My first attempt at custom water cooling and not too sure what I can expect if I capped fan speed at maximum 50%(most fan will be very quiet at this point). Comments from those who had actually done water cooling would be very much appreciated.

A massive headache?

Haven’t done custom WC myself as soft tubing looks horrendous and hard tubing requires too much money and is a nightmare to service. you won’t be running significantly cooler than a 360mm AIO which isn’t much better than the D15 you currently have. You wanna spend 100’s for more noise, more failure, stress it brings for less than 10 degrees?

Not much performance benefit either for the extra 0.1GHz you might squeeze out. But then again I wasn’t dumb enough to spend money on a post Zen intel chip

 

[rubix_1011]

So, basically you're chastising someone for not agreeing with YOUR opinion?

Interesting hot take.

 

[Superlp12]

Appreciate all the feedback so far! Now for someone who has not done a custom water cooling before and to call those who uses intel chips dumb, that’s real dumb and uncalled for.
What spur me to try water cooling was the original wish to achieve low noise with low fan speed and at the same maintain steady gpu clock speed and the internal of the case cool. The 2080ti when stress dump tons of heat ! I had no issue with cpu temp and more than happy with the D15(they are very quiet).The idea of a full loop was a after thought. A full loop will make the internal spacious and prettier to look at and hopefully a few degrees cooler.

 

[Phaaze88]

the original wish to achieve low noise with low fan speed

Whether you can achieve this really depends on some things:
1)Fan quality. The pumps are, for the most part, the same.
2)Radiator thickness and fin density.
The thicker the rad, the more 'umph' the fan needs to push or pull air through.
Fin density, FPI, or Fins Per Inch: Rads with lower FPI, for example, 16 and below, are ideal for low rpm fans or settings, as they do not restrict air as much.
Higher rpm fans blowing through these do just fine, but not significantly so, and will produce more noise.

Rads with higher FPI - over 16, are geared towards performance. The air resistance is greater, and thus needs stronger, faster fans or settings for the best results - of course, this means more noise, but if someone is going this route, then they're not too concerned with that.
Lower rpm fans and settings do not do as well with these units - not terribly so, but just not optimal.

The 2080ti when stress dump tons of heat !

Aye. At least when the gpu is liquid cooled it doesn't have a chance to dump it's heat into the case to be absorbed by everything above it...
The cpu cooler is right next to case exhaust fans, so this doesn't normally occur.

 

[1LiquidPC]

Nice thread going on here. Lots of great input overall. Working on a maintenance cycle/leak test from coolant flush as we speak Regarding original OP questions, what are your overall goals and budget? Are you interested purely based on performance, or looks/hobby perspective? Regarding temps and noise, there is always a balancing act on here. For rough ideas for comparisons for watercooling interests, my 9900K will be in mid 70Cs range in Blender, ect, and gaming in 60C depending on ambient last I checked. 2080Ti will max around low 40C range lately(just recorded in RDR2 w/ GPU-Z for 1 hr max of 39C), and boosts with no additional OC settings to about 2012Mhz in some gaming. Didn't feel a need adjust GPU settings for my needs. Radiator capacity is 960mm combined, radiator fans set about 1200rpm, case fans at 900rpm, and pumps at 2100rpm.

 

[Superlp12]

Thanks for the further feedback. This is an awesome community! The Noctua A12x25 is about the best fans you can get. Awesome airflow and high static pressure. Very confident it will have absolutely no problem pushing air through the 360 radiator with a specified fpi of 12 even at low rpm..
As mentioned, i have no issue with the cpu temperature and noise as the D15 is very quiet when the fan speed are capped at 900rpm. Just occur to me that with the hot air from the gpu out of the case, the cpu by itself may drop its temperature by a few degrees. At the of the day after reading through the feedback, i most likely stick to the original plan of building a loop for the gpu alone.
Cheers to all who have contributed . Will report back when I get the loop up and running.

 

[Superlp12]

As promised, here is the detail of my completed full custom loop. I have finally decided to go full loop instead of just for the gpu. Along the way, i did redo the loop and change some components before arriving at the final configuration. This means flushing and refilling a couple of times.
2 x 360mm 30mm thick alphacool radiator
Phanteks Glacier C360i cpu block/conductonaut
Phanteks Glacier 2080ti strix gpu block /Fujipoly ultra extreme thermal pad/Kryonaut theremal paste
Alphacool compression fittings
Alphacool pump/rteservoir combo
Ek Duralclear soft tubing
Ek Cryofuel clear concentrate
Lots of distilled water
Ek leak tester
7 Noctua A12x25 fan
Both top and front mounted radiator were configured as pull input with one fan as back exhaust. The pump/reservoir combo unit is mounted outside the case right at the back. the input and output tube enters and exit through the opening below the gpu block. This make filling, flushing and bleeding the loop easier and safer. The Ek leak tester is a must have as it make leak testing so much quicker and surer. The loop tubing were configured to achieve minimal bend. The entire loop uses onlyabout 800ml of coolant.
All the Noctua fans were run at 1100 rpm which result in extremely quiet. The pump{VPP 775} were ran at full speed. The entire system were surprisingly quiet. From about 1 metre away, the only sound i can hear is a faint sound of water from the reservoir in a quiet room.
The cpu temperature drop by about 10 degrees compared to the Noctua D15
The gpu has a massive drop up to 24 degrees.
In other words this project meets all my objectives.
Hope this posting will help somebody out there. Questions and comments are welcome.

 

[rubix_1011]

GPUs normally respond very well to liquid cooling compared to their stock air coolers. I've seen some of mine drop almost 40C under loads (older Nvidia cards).

 

[Superlp12]

Will post a picture here once i figure out how to do it.

 

[Superlp12]

https://ibb.co/gF1336C

I think this is far from looking horrendous but actually look neat and pretty!

 

[Phaaze88]

https://ibb.co/gF1336C

I think this is far from looking horrendous but actually look neat and pretty!

3x front intake
3x top intake
1x rear exhaust
You've got too much intake though. Flip the top fans to exhaust.

 

[Superlp12]

All the fans on both radiator was set to pull intake as i wanted cool air to be pulled through the radiator. I have found that this configuration provide better cooling and it is so much easier when i need to dust the radiator. I have actually bought extra set of the Noctua fan to do push pull and tried all the possible configuration and found my current the most ideal. I think it works due to the efficiency of the back noctua fan in exhausting the hot air built up inside the case together various opening around the case. And running the fans at only 50% can avoid recycling of hot air around the opening.

 

[Phaaze88]

I have found that this configuration provide better cooling and it is so much easier when i need to dust the radiator.

Better cpu and gpu cooling under load, or just idle?

And running the fans at only 50% can avoid recycling of hot air around the opening.

You now have recycling through the top - the heat that is exhausted out the back then rises, and gets sucked back in by the nearest top fan.

 

[Superlp12]

Better temperature was based on under load when stress testing and gaming. I did measure the temperature of the intake side of the top radiator and the front radiator and found them to be similar. And when I set the top as exhaust it was significantly worst off as the hot air from the front radiator gets taken up and push through the top radiator.

 

[Superlp12]

https://ibb.co/64VHRGM

 

[Superlp12]

https://ibb.co/3FCKwnw

 

[Superlp12]

https://ibb.co/DtJzMTM

This was to clear the air bubble and foamy buildup around the gpu block. The fill port was left open taking care that coolant does not spill over. In between I did on off the pump a few times. It takes about 2 hrs or so to clear up the gpu block. I tilt the other direction(front down, back up) and repeat the process to clear air trap in the cpu block.

 

[Karadjgne]

Gpu to rad looks pretty stretched, I'd imagine there's more stress on the gpu input connector than is realistically healthy. Otherwise, it's not too shabby at all when it's lit up, and thats coming from someone who isn't all that big a fan of the RGB explosion.