Thinking of switching back to water... for those with custom loops...

Serephucus

Would some of you be so kind as to see how this goes:

If you've got pump and fan control, can you see how hot your system gets if you turn the pump and fans off?

The reason I went to air is the the pump noise being on started to annoy me* but it was a 12V D5, so without PWM I couldn't turn it off completely. I know a system with D5 on 1 and no fans spinning will stay perfectly cool, but I dunno what it's like with no pump.

My gut feeling is that it'll get too hot, but I've sold my of my water cooling gear at this point, so I can't try it out.

Any help would be hugely appreciated!


*being annoyed by a D5 one 1 should give you an idea of just what a noise freak I am. :P

game4it70

Turning the pump off is a bad idea even with fans still going.I had a loose connection on my D5's molex ages ago and temps shot up very quickly.Without any flow the temps will rise to much berfore the rads even help.
I use realtemp so i had it set for the alarm to sound at over 75c which it did after 5 mins of gaming.

You had your D5 coupled to the res so that wont help with it vibrating.
I run my pump separately to the res and have it sitting on a shoggy sandwich.Even with running it like that i can still hear the pump unless i run it at just over setting one on the dial.
I found even with that speed it really made very little difference temps wise to running at 5.

deceit

I've two d5's running at 5 in my rig, once you put them onto the sponge and don't directly connect them to the res they are really quiet. At setting 3 I could not hear them at all even with my ear 50cm away.

Serephucus

Sorry, should have mentioned that I was talking only about idle. I don't expect this to hold up under any sort of load.

I did have my D5 mounted on about 2 inches of sponge, but why would a pump coupled to a res make it more noisy? Surely having something that heavy would make it vibrate less? (or at least, at a lower frequency)

game4it70

Imo coupled to the res means it can still resonate through the case via res mounts.

As for at idle i still don't think it would work.You could use pwm or a fan controller to turn most of the fans off when idle.
I'm very fussy about noise too and started using these fans so i can turn them off when idling.They are very quiet and move a good amount of air.I'm going to replace the rest of my GTs with them soon.I could lend you a couple of them to test if you like.

Serephucus

Hm, my res and pump weren't coupled to the case though. They were both sitting on sponge, connected only through tubes.

Thanks very much for the offer. There are actually a few fans I've wanted to look at recently. Namely EK's Vardar line. It's a real pity there are no decent 140mm options though...

game4it70

Maybe the sponge was a bit to dense or you had a iffy pump?
Was it ever ran dry at all?

They do a 140mm variant of that fan i linked.

Serephucus

It was a few layers of spare sound dampening material I had. Thin layers of rubber type stuff in between fairly soft sponge. Might try something better.

The pump had run dry for a couple of seconds on a few occasions. Nothing major, probably didn't help though.

If there's one thing I've learned from SPCR it's that you can't assume all variants of a given fan will perform the same. I've seen lots of cases of 120mm fans being great, and their 140 versions being awful (and visa versa). I'd love to know what you think of them in comparison to GTs though, especially at lower (6-1000RPM type) speeds.

Figures: I want to get back into water right after Specialtech closes. :P

..Brian..

Humm, I have my D5 attached directly to a rad which is attached directly to the case. It's PWM controlled but I have it running at 100%, ~3500rpm and sitting less then 50cm away I can't hear it at all! No sponges or anything. Just using the mounting kit that came with the pump.

Serephucus

Do you have any other fans going, or much background noise in the room / house?

game4it70

Serephucus wrote: »

I'd love to know what you think of them in comparison to GTs though, especially at lower (6-1000RPM type) speeds.

Figures: I want to get back into water right after Specialtech closes. :P

I can get them to run at 350 rpms on a fan controller (haven't tried mobo pwm yet) when i'm idling so they are totally silent.My GTs get down to about 450 rpms but there is a slight motor noise from them.

As for static pressure i've not been able to do tests to compare yet but they seem to move a decent amount of air.

Noise is very subjective though,alot of people would call GTs silent running at say 1000 rpms.I would call them quite noisy at that speed.I have my pc in the bedroom soon silence is important to me.

As slow as the deliveries where with Specialtech they had great stock and used to be the first place i'd use to get gear.:(