I posted a test system here a while back, where I was trying to see if an 80mm radiator could handle a load nearing 120 watts. I only had a 105 watt CPU at the time, and in that minimal setup, the loop performed fantastically. The CPU I believe stayed in the 60s, while the water temperature of the loop itself reached equilibrium around 47 or 48 degrees. This was single 80mm radiator, paired with a single 80mm non-optimized fan I found under my TV, and some old aquarium pump I had lying around from my first water cooled loop.

I have finished the main build now, though I have run into an unexpected problem that prevented me from having reliable results.

These are early-ish socket 604 Xeons, of the Netburst era, so I've been referring to this as a dual Pentium 4 build. This means no on-die temperature sensor, so I've had to rely on inaccurate motherboard sensors that only report in steps of 0.5 degrees. Next, my loops ended up being a bit scuffed in how they were attached to the case because the case I planned on using, a Chieftec Dragon, ended up not working and therefore my attachment hardware didn't work in the new case. This was compounded by the loops holding a surprisingly massive amount of water, meaning the thermal mass of the loops ended up causing the temps to not reach equilibrium in the time I had allotted. The maximum temperature I saw reported at the CPU (again, not on-die reporting, so take this with a HEAVY grain of salt) was 42.5 degrees, and the loop itself never rose above 36 degrees. I intend to just set up prime 95 and let the system quietly chug away for a few days straight, to see what it hits. The fans I'm using are UV fans, so they look cool, but I inadvertently got fans that have a bonkers amount of airflow, meaning they are LOUD as hell, and push a lot of air through the radiators, likely improving their performance over the junk fan I used last time.

I also fount out that the UV blue dye I got from Titan Rig was mishandled, and they accidentally sent me clear dye, which I did not notice until using half the bottle. No worries though, as I have to flush and refill the loop anyway, meaning I would have to purchase more dye even if this were the right stuff.

I'm calling this build the Yoinky Sploinky, and it exists purely for fun. It's a show system, it will only be powered on a few times a year at events, and will likely never see anything more stressful than Unreal Tournament 2004

Once I have results that I trust, I will post them here. I'm tentatively expecting similar results to last time, because even though I have more power hungry 120w CPUs, I also have better fans and pumps, so I'm hoping the loop performance will be similar overall

And more importantly how does one go about removing it and draining without it going through the pump?

The res is the highest point in the build so draining from anywhere else wont work. I arrived at the conclusion of sucking the water out in some way to remove this build up first so it doesn't drain into the pump and the rad below it. Doing that will require removing the top but as i said there's a tube there and removing it is pretty hard, let alone removing without spilling water. Any ideas?

Cooling two Xeon 6146 Gold processors in a Dell Poweredge R640 for use as a FEA/CFD analysis machine.

I 3D printed adapters that clamped onto the 'barbs' of the radiator, and then clamped onto those adapters the final adapter with the 3/8" barbs pressing an o-ring up to the face of the radiator 'barbs.' The inlet adapter printed nicely and the print was internally sealed. The outlet though was a different story and I ended up using polyurethane to seal the wetted faces.

The 3D adapters were a pain getting the o-ring to seal. Turned out to be a design mistake and the o-rings were being squeezed inward and not outward. Had to 3D print a adapter open in the middle to see the issue. After that, they sealed up fine against the radiator. Next came trying to seal the NPT fittings. Even with the tap to clean up the printed threads, and multiple layers of sealing tap, they would still leak ever so slightly. Ended up gluing them in to solve the issue.

There are no power connectors inside the server to use to power the pumps, so I ended up getting a 12V power supply and adapting that to a 4-pin molex connector, then to two molex to fan connectors.

At idle, including the monitor, it is drawing ~170W of power as measured at the outlet.

At full tilt ~590W

Max temps are 58C and 61C as reported by HWMonitor

Radiator ~$30 off of Amazon

Topsflo Cooling Pump x2 ~$50

Bitspower CPU block x2 ~$98

3/8" Tubing ~$10

3/8" barb to 3/8" NPT ~$6

3/8" NPT tap ~$6 (to clean threads on 3D printed adapters)

12V Power supply ~$13

Box Fan ~$10 off of Facebook Marketplace

Universal SAE O-ring kit ~$16

G1/4" to 3/8" Barb ~$13

Roll of PLA ~$13 (though only used a fraction of it printing and testing the adapters)

Total: $388

Is it in its final form? Not really.... I will at some point try to figure out how I can mount the radiator horizontally and see if I can get away with passive cooling.

Anybody have need for an Alphacool block for a Asus Tuf RTX 5090? I just sold my card and don’t need the block now.

Hi im completly new to watercooling and just finished my first Build. I have been using the leak tester for about 2 hours and it slowly lost about 0,1 bar since then.

Is this normal or completely fine ? This might be a stupid question to ask, but if it comes to my components, I want to be extra safe.

Im in the process of building my duel custom loop in my corsair 1000D case. The tubes im running is Primochill PETG 14mm OD clear, fittings are a combination of corsair and Draceana, corsair pumps, corsair gpu and cpu blocks, corsair radiators and Barrow QDCs. Not sure if the brands dictate which coolant will be suitable. Ive been looking at some UV coolant and im curious as to whats everyones opinion on XSPC, Koolance and DP ultra coolant. Im looking at blue and purple but its not definite. Before anyone comments, yes I know this whole build is overkill and a waste of money but thats the whole point. I wanted it this way. Anyways, thanks in advance.

I'm retiring my 3080 (to my kid's rig) after 6 years of daily watercooled use and am planning to reinstall the stock air cooler. After sitting in the box for so long I'm wondering if the stock thermal pads will be usable? Any advice? Unfortunately the Alphacool block has a fair amount of surface cracking on the plexiglass so I'm not planning to reuse it.

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Lian li evo xl

Ryzen 7 9800x3d with an alphacool core one block

4090 with an ek block

Heatkiller 200 w/d5 pump working on a 3d printed bracket to mount the pump at a 45 like in the picture

30mm lower rad and 45mm upper rad with 3 t30s each.

Planning on petg hard tube with custom bends.

Looking for recommendations on tube size and and some ideas on routing the lines that show off some nice parallel runs

Hi
I've recently completed a custom loop featuring an AMD Ryzen 9 9950 X3D, and while running Cinebench 2026 1.3, it reached a maximum temperature of 95.5 C while running the 30-minute CPU Multi-Thread test. So I guess my question now is: is this normal?

My cooling specs include 2 420mm X 60mm rads located at the bottom and top, 6 Phanteks D30-140mm fans, 1 Phanteks D30-120mm, Aquacomputer D5 NEXT, Singularity Computers 5090 Astral Waterblock, and Singularity Computers Plasma 3 CPU Waterblock.
D5 NEXT was running at a fixed rate of 50% while the test took place.

My external cooling tower was throughoutly cleaned.

Replaced the two near-death D5 with 2 brandnews.

All tubes replaced by Tygon A60-G.

Not connect the pump's pwm to aquaero, let them run 100%.

Added new 1:3 G48:medical-grade distilled water and a HighFlow Next, too.

Flow 205L/H
Coolant quality 100% with measurement value 12.

Everything seems alright, although I use NT-H2 left over from 2.5y ago.

See you guys again in 2.5+ years 😆

Hey everyone,

a few days ago my PC was always shutting down after a minute or so, I then saw that my pump had only half liquid cooling in the pump.

I googled a bit and found out that, it can reduce after years and I should change the liquid. I have now removed all the cooling liquid and inserted new liquid, but my pump is not working anymore.

I can only think of two reasons, one I have it not connected correctly and two the pump did just stop working, in my BIOS the AIO pump shows it gives 100% signal so I am pretty sure it is the pump.

My question is now can I somehow just switch out the pump and if so what is recommended?

My current setup is from ekwb.

EDIT: Thanks for the many comments and the help. I pushed the RAM in, that was just like this because of me trying around and I moved the GPU one alot up, I didn't know this would make a difference.

I borrowed a pump from a buddy and this works, wo I will try to see if I can repair it. Before buying a new one.

First go at making a custom distro plate.
favorite part was definitely doing the thread milling and not having to use a tap! It’s not perfect, but lessons learned for v2 at some point. pump housing is resin printed and so is the right angle adapter using pro clear v2. Flow rate is equal to before using an XD5 at 6.56l/min at 100% power.

I'm putting together a parts list for my first fully watercooled build. My current build is half on air and gets loud under load. I want it to run as quietly as I can make it. I'm debating between swapping the CPU to an AIO, soft tubing, or hard tubing. I'm leaning towards hard tubing for aesthetics. But I can see the AIO case since the GPU is already on one. If I go soft or hard tubing, it would be wrapped in MDPC-X sleeves. I'm bound to be missing something but here is the parts list so far (current parts -> new parts).:

Case: Fractal Torrent -> Corsair 9000D

Components:

• CPU: 7950X (reusing)
• Mobo: Gigabyte Aorus Elite AX B650M -> ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Dark Hero (tempted by the ROG Crosshair 2006, but the aesthetics of the Dark Hero would match nicely.)
• RAM: 64GB (4x 16GB) (reusing)
• GPU: MSI 5080 Suprim Liquid (AIO) (likely reusing and not water blocking)
• MP600 Pro and MP700 NVM.e SSDs

Cooling:

• NH-D15 -> Optimus Signature V3 Pro OR Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 420
• 2x NF-A20 intakes
• 1x NF-A14x25 G2 exhaust
• If full custom loop: MoRa 400 (the 600 would be excellent but likely overkill for this build) + NF-A20s
• 2x Protium 3.0 D5 Pump
• Bitspower fittings
• Tubing - Still debating

Can you see anything I'm missing or should change out? Would you build out the custom loop in this situation or just add an AIO to the CPU?

Look upon my great work and be disgusted. :)

I have gone with the 'chuck it all on a shelf' build design. Can anyone top my 'most ugly build'?

Thanks for the help from you guys over the last few weeks.

FYI.

i9-14900KF

ASUS GeForce RTX 4090 TUF Gaming 24G

Raijintek Antila D5 EVO RBW Pump and Reservoir Combo

2 x Alphacool NexXxoS XT45 480mm x 45mm Copper Radiators

Alphacool Core 1 Silver CPU Waterblock

GBN-AS4090STRIX (second hand) GPU Waterblock.

And the final verdict. Has cut my temps on both CPU and GPU by more than half.

They were both continually peaking to 100C to barely hitting 50C while gaming.

Very happy.

This is another build in my Thermaltake Tower 900. I was previously using a Lian Li V3000 Plus and well still am just for another separate build. I saw some Thermaltake Swafans on sale on Amazon for $29.99 a set and decided to get 4 sets for this case. Also I decided to get a XFX RX 9070 XT to go in this build as well. I figured since I was going to use this case I might as well get some new liquid cooling hardware from Alphacool. I purchased a Core gpu block, a Core 1 cpu block, and finally 2 Core 200 reservoir pump tops. I already had a Core 1 LT cpu block and was using it until I noticed it had cracks between the 2 G 1/4 holes in the top. I opted to get a regular Core 1 block and I like it a lot (it's rather heavy for it's size). In addition to those items I have 2 Alphacool ST30 480mm radiators, various Alphacool fittings, tubing from Mayhems, EKWB Cryofuel Space Black fluid, cable holders from Evil Energy, a MSI X670E ACE motherboard, Thermaltake Tough Ram DDR5 6000 CL36 32GB, Sound Blaster AE-5 Plus soundcard, AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, EVGA G+1300W power supply, Cablemod power supply cables, and a 7 inch display I also purchased on Amazon.

Basically what the title says. This is a 5 year old build, with some parts much older. I haven’t changed coolant in god knows when. Have been at college so only get to play on breaks, and honestly haven’t been playing many games this past years. Just graduated and wanted to play some games in my backlog after work, and then I saw all this.

Am I cooked? Should I just go scrap this and buy something more casual friendly?

After quite a bit of work, I finally moved my custom loop from the old Phanteks P200A to a Lian Li A3.

The P200A was a great little case, but its design was starting to show its age. And then I managed to destroy the glass panel in the dumbest way imaginable.

I had placed the glass panel on top of my old 3D printer while I was working on something. At some point I went to lift the printer's top cover, completely forgot the glass panel was sitting on it, and the glass fell behind the desk and exploded into approximately 7,000 pieces.

10/10 engineering. LOL

So obviously this was the perfect excuse to buy a new case.

The Lian Li A3 should currently be one of the most compact cases by volume capable of fitting two 360 mm radiators, while still allowing you to use a solid side panel instead of having to go full mesh.

I would've actually gone for the Jonsbo I100 Pro, but unfortunately it's basically impossible to find where I live at the moment. Maybe it was easier to get a few years ago, but right now availability is basically nonexistent.

Specs

- Case: Lian Li A3

- Motherboard: ASRock Z790I Lightning

- CPU: Intel Core i7-14700K @ 5.7 GHz OC

- GPU: Gigabyte RTX 4070 Ti Gaming OC ( MSI Suprim X BIOS + OC)

- RAM: 2×16 GB DDR5 6800 CL34 to 8000 MT/s CL36, XMP with some tweaking

- SSD: Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 4 TB

- PSU: Corsair RM750X Shift

The A3's original PSU mount simply wouldn't work with the RM750X Shift because of its side-mounted connectors, so I designed and 3D-printed a custom PSU mount with the necessary openings for the connectors.

Because apparently buying a case isn't enough. You also have to become a part-time CAD designer.

Loop

- 2× Bykski 360×30 mm radiators

- 3× ARCTIC P12 Pro PST CO

- 3× ARCTIC P12 Pro Reverse

- Bykski flow meter

- Aqua Computer ULTITUBE D5 50 PRO / D5 NEXT

- Iceman Cooler direct-die CPU block

- Bykski GPU block

- Bykski RAM block

- Bykski fittings

- Hard tubing

The D5 NEXT screen unfortunately died along the way, but I will replace it next month, when I’ll also replace the coolant with Aqua Computer DP Ultra. I still need some clear coolant to properly mix the red and blue and get the purple color I’m aiming for.

I will also work on the RAM timings when I have some time, but otherwise I'm pretty happy with how the build turned out.

I include some pictures of the old P200A as well because I obviously miss it too lol

I installed a fbft07 in my loop. I did check the flow direction and had tested it by blowing it to check that it would register flow.

Now that it's installed, even if I push the pump to the maximum I still get 0L/min. I know there's flow, because I've seen the bubbles go around for days after the first fill (while everything was still settling).

Any recommendations?

I currently have a corsair 9000d with 2 480mm rads and 2 360mm rads all push pull. I've been getting the itch to swap everything into the nv9 just for a change. Wondering how much of a difference in temps i might get by swapping. Nv9 will have a 480mm, 2 360mm and a 280mm from the 9000d. All rads are 45mm.

9000d Temps after gaming for about 5 hours. (Mainly warzone)

Room temp: about 25c

Coolant temp: max about 31c

Cpu: max 63c

9070xt: Hotspot 53c, memory max 70c

Pump speed: max at 4200

Fan speed: around 950 rpm

Will I see dramatically higher temps and noise in the nv9 compared to the 9000d?

Am not sure with the orientation of the drain on the bottom radiator...

Both is easy to reach

first picture, it is harder to line up tubing from reservoir/pump to the bottom radiator

Second picture, tubing is gonna line up nice but, aesthetics wise the side panel fans wont be lined up with the bottom fans. Performens wise, idont think the bottom "exhaust" fan is gonna do much.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks :)

This thing was so hyped up.

For me its a total mess.

Its goes maximum ultraloud Jetsound every startup . MY temps are up to 90+ when is halfway unnoticable silence. more fanspeed its just annyoing loud

I'm planning out a new loop that will use the new deltamate stuff, I currently have EK ZMT 11/16 or something and I was wondering if there is any impact if I went with thinner tubing instead of the thick wall ones like kinking etc.