fast or slow

[71 (Bryan)]

so im building a chilled water setup for my pc basically its just a regular watercooling setup with an inline chiller, so my question is will it work better if the water goes slowly thru the loop or faster as most water coolers suggest

esit: and another thing, im gonna be using the dtek fuzion on a quad core, would i still need the quad nozzle if the water is chilled? is it better off with or without it?

[Scarlet Infidel]

Faster is always best for heat transfer.

Though of course, to get faster flow you may have to use a pump that dumps more heat into the water, so try to balance this.

[71 (Bryan)]

so basically the water will get cooler with faster flow ? leaving out the fact that a faster pump will dump more heat in the loop

[Scarlet Infidel]

Yes, the water should get slightly cooler in the chiller and cool the CPU slightly better at the water block with increased flow. I doubt it would be hugely dramatic though.

I'm looking at using a Dtek db-1 pump on the cold side of my chiller as opposed to the popular DDC pumps. The reason is that the db-1 uses 6w and the DDC uses 18w. So even though the DDC is more powerful, I think the decreased heat from the db-1 will compensate. Also the db-1 is quieter and cheaper to buy/run.

I would still use the Fuzion nozzle.

[Stigma]

Faster is better, but the faster the circulation the less extra efficiency you get. In other words, when it comes to flow it is fine to just get a pump that is good enough. As long as it is actually circulating any faster than a snail, there usually isn't any real point in making it go faster since the added effectiveness will be so small.

The only thing more circulation will do for you is make the difference between the coldest and the warmest part in your loop less. If the circulation is really slow, then the water will start to build up heat before it gets back to the chiller/radiator. This slightly warmer water will absorb the heat from the cooling blocks slightly slower than the coldest water. If you have a fast pump then you effectively shorten the thermal bridge between the cooling blocks and the chiller so it becomes slightly more efficient.

To recap, in short: Don't kill yourself over flow. As long as you actually have enough pressure to make the water circulate, it is probably fine as it is. I would never buy a high-flow pump over a high-pressure pump.

-Stigma