Do I really need a electronic flowmeter for my new watercooling setup+other question.

[wasserkool]

Hey guys, i am about to make my final purchase from alphacool for my watercooling gears to get my new box setup before Xmas.

I am shopping around on Alphacool and saw this:
http://www.alphacool.de/xt/product_info.php?products_id=1174&cPath=5_270_56

It is a electronic flowmeter that is attached to the T-balancer. From the description it does not say whether it will actually measure the flow rate?? Maybe I am not reading it properly..

The T-balancer have several user-programmable safety features like auto shut off if the flow falls below certain threshold or if the water temperature rises to certain degrees.

My entire watercooling loop is powered by 2 Laing DDC pump in series for redundancy and fail-safe. I've read horror stories in other forums where someone's pump failed and the coolant boiled and wrecked the entire computer..

There will be some serious hardware in my watercooling loop which includes the AMD X2 4800, two 15000RPM SCSI drives and two ATI X1800XTs.

Is that flow meter worth the purchase as a safety precaution? I am just worried about pump failure lol or i guess the water temperature sensor should do the job? I mean if both pump failed, shouldn't the water temp rise really quick and the bios or the T-balancer shut the computer off?

Oh and finally, I guess a north-bridge waterblock is useless correct? The standard passive heatsink should be ok even for overclocking?

thanks everyone for your help so far!

[Gimmpy224]

yea temp sensor would work just gotta set it up to something high ish for water, im going to set mine to 50 once i setp my loop up.
BUT you wouldnt need something like that programable flow sensor, you could get once of those that sits in the bay drive or wherever that has a little metal fin in it that spins as the water runs over it so you can see it flowing.

or you could save even more money and just make your own with a few pieces of acrylic and put like a needle glued down with apoxy with a piece of string on it so you can see the flow :) but thats just a little idea.

[Bloody_Sorcerer]

NB waterblocks are useless.
Flowmeters are useless except for high-accuracy review benches.
Your system will shut itself down of overheating (your processor will first, probably)
Also, water temp will rise quite slowly, because of water's massive specific heat.
So in my opinion, you're probably just being a bit paranoid :)
if these were TECs, on the other hand, I'd promote any and all safety precautions, cause they can burn your house down.