Ok, I've watercooled before but not for years and I went for an external and extremely messy setup of enheim 1250 I think submerged in a cheapo plastic tub, couple cheap prototype rad's I got from forums but some decent blocks always got good temps with 2x120mm rads(back when the gpu wasn't adding that much heat to a loop). Making another external setup, probably in a wooden rad box, maybe cut up a small case to mount it all into.
I'm mostly looking for,quiet, decent overclocks, and I'm not going to spend £800 just to make it absolutely silent, just as reasonably quiet as you can get without driving yourself mad if you know what I mean.
What I wanted to ask was, how much is overkill in terms of rad size for a certain amount of cooling. At the moment its a quad phenom decent voltage just under 4Ghz, a 6950, but in the future at various times it will almost certainly be in an xfire setup so it needs to deal with 2 high end overclocked gpu's and also likely a Bulldozer in not too long.
Is 2 360mm rads, maybe MCR320's more than enough, would a third rad make a noticeable difference, planning on low fan speeds, 600-1200rpm, depends what ends up being hearable. Its not likely to end up too far from the computer, a metre at most I'd think and I'm considering quick connects for separating case from radbox though the biggest Koolance ones aren't killing flow much anyway?
Would 3x360mm rads be complete overkill even with silent fans or just about right for a xfire setup, my room tends to get pretty dang toasty in summer(south facing flat roof, side wall gets sun for half the day, hot water tank) so half the reason for the radbox is to be able to send hot air up the chimney or maybe out the window.
Would a D5 be more than enough pump for 3 rads and up to 3 waterblocks, would 2 d5's on lower speed potentially be a better idea for a bit of redundancy aswell?
Also anyone know whats seen as the best value rads in the UK(or cheap delivery to the uk)? Swiftechs at US pricing seemed the obvious choice but they aren't cheap in the UK. Would 2x480mm's end up better value/cooling/flow, or are 140mm rads maybe a better idea?
As for the D5 variable, is it a case of they are all identical no matter if its a koolance, or a swiftech or whatever else unless they come with one of the custom tops?
Lastly, I've seen skinneelabs review that puts the MCW60 gpu block as pretty damn competitive, I have a rev 1 version though, were there any big changes between rev 1 and 2 as I'm sure I would have had a rev 1. I still have mine lying around so could easily reuse that unless its completely outdated/outclassed by now.
Sorry for the long post.
EDIT:- lol, I used to post here a lot but I guess not so much since I stopped watercooling, my sig is a touch out of date :p
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