Dual Radiators, worth doing?

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Just planning out a new system (probably wait for the Conroe chips to come out). Anyone with watercooling experience help me out with a couple of questions?

I have a new Yeong Yang YY-0420 Server Cube sitting here and there is plenty of space for components. I was thinking of having 2 rads, one at the front of the case and one at the rear. As they are partitioned away from the motherboard section anyway, would a second rad make a lot of difference?

Also, would it be best to have one rad for the processor and one for the grapics, or both of them spreading the load of all the components? :confused:
 
Soldato
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won't make any difference. just use a 120.2 rad for both cpu and gfx. if you want to add northbridge and hdds and ram, then make another loop. but you are best off using 1 loop with just 1 120.2 rad :)

daven
 
Soldato
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I'm going to have to partly disagree. Surface area is everything with rads.

If you want to use two, make sure they are plumbed in parallel.

Having said this, the actual difference in using two rads vs one is going to be in the region of a couple of 'C. It depends on your heat dump.

Up to you how important every last 'C is :D
 
Man of Honour
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dual rads only make minute difference and add a lot of extra restriction as rads are very restrictive, if you want tow rads then have two loops thats the best way in my opinion
 
Soldato
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ichabod crane said:
dual rads only make minute difference and add a lot of extra restriction as rads are very restrictive, if you want tow rads then have two loops thats the best way in my opinion

Rads aren't restrictive! Where did you hear / read / test that?
 

VoG

VoG

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ive used 2 rads in the past but only as 2 complete, sealed loops. as in 2 waterblocks/pumps/rads/T-lines. did it whilst i was thrashing my DC opty/X1900XTX to within an inch of there lives.

currently got my opty & X1900XTX on a stormG5/DD Maze4 into a single ThermoChill PA120.3, works a treat. ;)
 
Associate
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Heat dump will also depend on whether you plan to OC at all.

The larger surface area of RADs will also mean you are able to turn your RAD fans down slower and hence quieter. A single 120.3 should be enough for almost ANY loop though. They are huge!
 
Wise Guy
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You know, some people talk utter poop on a stick on this forum.

Two identicle rads will always cool better than just one, because they are giving you twice the surface area, and in heat disipation, surface area is king (Hence why aircoolers just keep getting bigger and if you want to run passive watercooling, you need a h00j rad)

you can replace 1 rad with two, reduce the airflow and STILL hold the same temps, if not better. My radbox uses two heatercores and 2 120mm fans running at 5v, you can hardly tell it's on (ask the dog, he took about an inch off his whiskers on a fan the other day) but before i added the second rad i NEEDED the fans on 7v to get decent cooling power and had to switch to 12v if i wanted to stress the thing on hot days. Now 7v keeps my water at 1°C above ambiant temp, 5v gives me 1.4°C above ambiant and 12v gives me ambiant. so 5v it is unless i'm being silly (and blowing up PSU's and motherboards!

Running them in parallel gave slightly worse temps than running them in series, but only 0.7°C water temp at 12v, slightly more at lower voltages but i can't remeber what they were exactly.
 
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Bundles said:
Running them in parallel gave slightly worse temps than running them in series, but only 0.7°C water temp at 12v, slightly more at lower voltages but i can't remeber what they were exactly.

Heh, that's interesting! I would have thought parallel would be better (albeit by the sort of figure you mention - ~ 1'C)

What sort of heat dump have you got do you reckon?
 
Wise Guy
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Jimbo Mahoney said:
What sort of heat dump have you got do you reckon?

I'm running a prescHOT 3.0gig at 4.2gig @ 1.6v, a 9800pro at 505mhz @ 1.9v(iirc)

The CPU alone must be pumping out a good 170w at least (a stock one does 105w) and the gfx card pumps out more heat than an arctic cooler can handle.

Not in the know on what heat things put out tbh, i'm more focused on how to get rid of it, lol.
 
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