Loop finished. Pleased with temps.

[Michaeljcox24]

I'm about 3/4 of the way done now. Still got to put braided cable in and LED lighting for the block / res. Yes, I know tubing isn't very tidy by TTL standards but for me, as long as it doesn't leak, I'm ok with it for my first ever loop.

Been leak testing the past 6 hours with no PSU in the rig and everything seems fine. Just ran a bench on Heaven, and temps have dropped from 85C with the gainward coolers on, to 55C under water.

Had a couple of disasters along the way. The Alphacool L bend at the bottom leaked because I hadn't tightened it up enough. Had to dry the PSU out in the airing cupboard. When I re connected everything up after draining, I forgot to put the plug in the drainage port, and it pi**ed all over the desk when I was filling the res.

Still, it's my first ever loop, and you learn from these things. The first 12 hours you're on tenderhooks but once you get a feel that everything is water tight, it's immense they how quiet these w/c rigs are.

 

[dugdiamond]

nice
tidy up the gpu power cables and you have a winner

 

[Michaeljcox24]

I can see what TTL means about rad space though. In sleeping dogs cards are hitting 70 ish. Could have done with an extra 120

Even so. Main reason i did it was because of the noise. Thats vastly improved so im half happy.

 

[yassarikhan786]

Looking nice Michael. As Dug has mentioned the GPU cables could be a little tighter. Other than that its all good

 

[Michaeljcox24]

Ive got some red braided nzxt cables ive got to fit when i can get out of the house and face the snow blizzards to get some cables ties. I reckon it will look pretty dam decent for a first ever loop attempt once ive got it all done. This bad weather has been a godsend for giving me the time to get the loop right.

 

[airdeano]

specs please... signatures help, but can change and then the post isnt correct.
espeically what ingedients are in the loop.. a single picture is fine, but more details!

because i see three tubes comming off the GPU area thats not right, unless you
are running a dual loop? should be one SLI connector, a hose IN and hose OUT.
you got three hoses and dual SLI connectors.. me thinks the water isn't circulating
properly for the temps. or is that a drain line from the lower GPU card? if so, i do
not see that the lower card is being "forced" coolant too well. in the top, circulate,
and the exit and maybe the lower card gets cooled..
maybe to look into in the top, exit the front port into the front port of lower card
and exit rear port lower card. this way the coolant has to go through each card.
theramally, the card can boost or retard power from the temperature.

doubt another 120 would have helped that much tbh.

 

[Michaeljcox24]

The loop is supposed to be a version of that pic above.

Specs are D5 > 360 rad > 2500K> 140 rad > cards > back to D5

Cards are 580 3GB phantoms from gainward.

Can you draw a sketch of what your suggesting I should do with the cards please.

Oh and yeah, that bottom tube is a drainage port.

 

[airdeano]

yeah, i know parallel, but that drain line was confusing..

only thing about parallel is relying on resistance. you have pressure on both sides
of the GPU block, so the water-flow will always take the least resistance to flow.
if it finds that the first card is enough, it'll just flow the first and the second is
neglected because the pressure of the exit is less and wont travel downwards.
but say the foirst card get "gunked" the resistance level rises and now the second
card is getting better flow and the upper is "blocking" flow.
if you exit bottom card front fitting, then the coolant has to pass through at
least one well enough, as on top i figure it'll exit just after the first GPU.
serial.. in/out.. in/out dont have to rely on pressure/resistance.

my 580 SLI never broke 65° on full load @ 14hrs on 920/950 overclock on water.
on air easy 85° @ 85% fan control (couldnt go 100% on BIOS) for 2hrs.

what 360 radiator? EX? RX? overclocked CPU/GPU? you are under radded for sure
fans look to be AP-15(s)? where'd the 140 come from?
see what i mean on specs.. get 'em listed to limit/eliminate confusion, please...

 

[Michaeljcox24]

Rads are EX 360 and an EX 140

Fans in the top are gentle typhoon 1850's, fan on the 140 rad is a prolimatech.

Only change I think can be beneficial is to have the outlet from the parallel connection on the right hand side of the bottom card. What do you reckon?

CPU is overclocked to 4.5 @ 1.37V
Cards are on 875 @ 1.025 V

 

[airdeano]

you are under radded.. for overclocked CPU/GPU.
100% fan speed?

yes, reroute the upper (assuming its the exit) to the lower card forward (right) port.

in a perfect world the resistance should be the same in each card, but the exit pressure
is totally different (relies on next device resistance).

 

[Michaeljcox24]

Ok. Will open drain port, and unplug other side. Should just be a case of connecting new hose from pump to L bend.

So now the outlet back to the pump is the bottom card, and temps do seem honestly better. Whereas yesterday I was getting 70+, I just did a bench on sleeping dogs and it maxed at 59, which is a considerable improvement.

Ok so loop order and design done, now for the cabling. Bring on the boredom.

 

[Michaeljcox24]

Ok that's it so far. PSU has gone in, although I'm a bit unsure if it's enough for 2 580's (someone will have to help me out there). All cabling round the back is done, and the much needed NZXT cables have gone into the cards.

I like the Phobya SLI bridges, they add a nice metallic finish to the Nickel blocks. Although a massive, massive leap of faith when you first turn the pump on (and even now they look they they're gonna leak any minute) they're my favorite part of the loop.

All that is left to put in now, is the cpu block leds, and the bay res led. They would have been here today but we never had any post at work so I'm expecting them tomorrow.