Originally Posted by
eth0s
The increased efficiency of the pump is a result of the changes to the total system characteristics. The change in efficiency is not "causing" anything to happen. Improved efficiency is a result, not a cause.
You were right to question the changes in dynamic pressure between the two loops (which you referred to as "flow"), since there is no pressure control valve. I kept looking for one, until i realized why this is such an ingeniously simple design for increasing flow. If this was planned, it is quite a feat of practical engineering. If by accident, then it is still a great design.
Here is what makes it an ingenious design, IMO: the key to the design is having the water from the two loops mix in the reservoir. The Reservoir is not acting like a radiator, it is acting like a pressure control valve. It equalizes the dynamic pressure of each loop before entering the pump. So it really doesn't matter if you load up one loop with 3 blocks and 2 radiators and have only 1 radiator on the other loop. The dynamic pressure (velocity) will be equalized in the reservoir. Now what this does is essentially double the size of the pipe (tubing) you are using. This is how the Typhoon 3 achieves higher flow, by essentially increasing the size of the tubing. To the pump, it still looks like one giant loop, just with a much bigger tube. The change in this pumping constraint shifts the pumping curve outward to the right, which gives you a new equilibrium point with higher flow overall. (I wish my photoshop skillz weren't so poor, so I could show you a pumping curve v. system curve graph, and illustrate what I mean. You will just have to draw one in your mind.) Remember without changing the size or speed of the impeller, the total head pressure of the Laing D5 pump will be the same, all that is changing is the system constraint, i.e., the total pressure drop has been decreased by effectively using a bigger pipe. The same thing would happen if you switched to 1" ID tubing (actually that would be an even bigger improvement). However, if you were to use double or triple the length of tubing in your two loops, as you did in the single loop, you would eventually cancel out the gains from the two parallel loops, by offsetting the gain of splitting the loop with higher pressure loss due to friction in the tubes. So make sure you use to two short loops to replace one long loop, for maximum benefit.
As for temperature, the system temp will eventually come to an equilibrium point since the water is mixing in the reservoir. Will this result in overall better temps for cpu and gpu? I don't know, it depends on the flow rate you get in each loop. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. But you will definitely get higher flow rates THROUGH THE PUMP with dual loops over a single loop, even though you still have the same head pressure. And it is the higher flow rate through the pump that increases the pumps overall efficiency (although it might decrease the pump's volumetric efficiency, since volume flow leakage would increase -- but, I'm not sure.)
Final Point: a car's radiator is designed to keep the car's engine operating in a specific temperature range. It is not supposed to get too hot, and not supposed to get too cold. Hence the use of a thermostat in the car's radiator. But in our computers, we want to get the temps as low as possible and as close to the ambient air temperature as possibe (or below if you use more exotic cooling). We can never be "too cold", so your analogy is inapposite.