C.E.L.C. (Custom External Liquid Cooler) - 'I have a dream"

[smicha]

PS. Yesterday I had a disaster - old phobya died and water started to leak. 2xd5 simply destroyed this shitty radiator. Tomorrow I am receiving a new 560 Hardwarelabs Black Ice rad. On one airplex 480 I still am able to render with temps around 50C on 4 gpus.

Out, that sounds scary..it's good that it was Your bottom rad =) how did You notice?

P.S. That copper rad is impressive! You still keep same OC at those temps?

I redesigned the loop so wanted to get rid of air bubbles quicker and started to change d5 speed - slowing and speeding it up. So under these pulses phobya broke and I heard some leaking noise. My new uv mayhems coolant has typical smell so I felt it immediately and unplugged the cable out of a PSU immediately.

A good lesson is that it's much better to have inlet on top of a reservoir and outlet at bottom - air bubbles are out quickly (instead of inlet and outlet both at bottom of a reservoir).

50C is at 50% of d5, 46C is at 100% of d5. With OC 52C on one 480. Crazy stuff. But fans have to be set to 100%.

[rappet]

Good lesson, Smicha!!
Thanx for sharing.
This makes me stronger in the idea of having pump, reservoir outisde case... less leaking cnahce on hardwar.e parts in case.
I planned a drain at lowest point in the case though, simply because it is lowest.
The fill will be outside then... must the fill (in reservoir). be higher then the rad?
I have seen configs with parts/tubes higher then the fillpoint?

Nice to see this thread growing =) I just assume that "other guy" to blame was the one now writing =p sorry, it is addictive..but we said that earlier =DDD

yep.... that's right... you are to blame too
And yep, the journey of learning is already addictive... so the actual build must be a real kick then

greetz,

[smicha]

The fill will be outside then... must the fill (in reservoir). be higher then the rad?
I have seen configs with parts/tubes higher then the fillpoint?

greetz,

No. My 480 is above the res.

PS. Don't be scary about leaks - coolant will not burn you computer. Simply dry it out.

[sikotik13]

As smicha mentioned (sorry about the rad, by the way, glad you still have good temps!), the only real positive to having the res at the highest point would theoretically making it easier to bleed air from the system. Of my four radiators, two are above the reservoirs (1 per loop), and they do have a tendency to trap air within them, but cycling, and rocking the case works to get most of it out pretty quickly. It is super addicting as well, and I am already budgeting for some fixes I need/want to make to my loops. Kind of reminds me of some American guys with cars, there's always something else to tweak and improve that leads to another thing to tweak and improve

Sadly having to replace my car has cut into this budgeting significantly, but c'est la vie.

As a result though, I am considering doing an external loop for my gaming computer, at least temporarily. My brother-in-law recently did some upgrading to his systems, and as such, I have most of the required components to do the conversion, including waterblocks for everything but the processor, and doing an external loop would save me the cost of a watercooling-friendly case, since mine has grommets built in for such. The addiction grows... Welcome to the fun

[rappet]

...
For now my biggest headache is how to get the tubing inside the Corsair 780T case... from the backside where the tubes entry to the in and out of the parallel multi linked 3 sli cards.
..

Quote is from top post on page 5.. Anyone has a wise words about that?

[rappet]

And what about this... Look at this 'superman' bending tubes in wanted curve.


Ain't that a good idea... Using a tubedcurved thre times instaed of using three fittings!?
Or is there a downside?

[sikotik13]

The conversion to hardline (hard acrylic tubing) is my next planned project for the rendering computer. Realistically, the only immediate benefit is appearance, so far as I can tell.

The learning curve is basically zero for flex tubing, as long as one accounts for places needing tight bends that may kink, whereas hardline requires accurately measuring all of those angles and curves to bend and cut appropriately. There is also some amount of skill/practice required to do the bending accurately, and not mess up the tubing. I gather maintenance may be slightly more problematic as well, but I'm working on a few ideas to ease the process personally.

It appears, comparing prices, they are pretty much comparable, as long as one omits the tools needed to work with hardline (which are pretty much the same as the ones for piping, albeit specifically sized, plus a heatgun). Hardline pipe is slightly more expensive, but less fittings (the largest cost if many bends are needed), kind of evens it out.

That said, it pretty much seems to be individual preference. I could make my flex tubing work, but I think it would look better to redo both loops in hardline, and require less fittings, which I consider possible points of fault. I could just add a few more fittings for my "problem" bends, but I don't like where they would need to be, from a purely aesthetic point of view, as well as the above point-of-fault potential.

[rappet]

Thanx for sharing sikotik13.
A complete Hardline toolkit is 130-150€...

I wonder what curves can be mabe easily with the soft tubes... Is there some 'rule' curving?

[sikotik13]

With the soft tubes, it's more a matter of ensuring you maintain a certain radius to prevent collapsing/kinking.I have a few pieces that are just slightly too short, which leads to minor distortions at a few points. No significant impact that I can see, but for as expensive as everything in this case is, it looks tacky, and I worry about it regardless. Soft tubes will eventually harden, and hard tubes will eventually degrade. There really is no deciding factor other than personal preference and desired expenditure, at least from what I can gather. It's kind of like the kids with their console wars, both do the same thing in ways that are basically identical in end result, but each camp swears theirs is better for X reasons. Personally, having run my loops in soft tubing, I wish I had just gone with hardline, but I'm sure there are others that have done the opposite. My brother in law has no qualms with soft tubing whatsoever, but agrees with me that hardline can look better. I've even seen some systems with soft tubing that I thought were hardline, it really is just sort of however you want to put it together. You could even mix them, should you so desire, though that would necessitate even more planning for where your conversion points would be and what hardware you need where, since they are generally incompatible fitting-wise.

[ChrisVis]

This thread is..so good =) don't stop this discussion Guys =)

Chris, that watercooled expander is simply the best piece I've seen so far,
no "needless bling", just heavy duty machine! Inspiration to say the least!

Hi glimpse,

thanx for your kind words.
Yeah, it still rocks, for almost 3 years now. Had to clean the reservoir and to renew the water once (some weeks ago), because there were growing some kind of transparent organic algae inside, that really had an impact on waterflow and cooling (although I had water additives in, but maybe it growed in a time, I didn`t use the turbobox that much).
I bought a port for a water faucet in my kitchen, to connect it to the tubes and blew water with pressure through all cards, the rest I cleaned by hand. After that I put destilled water back in an did some cleaning loops, then refilling the whole system.

I am excited about what is coming out the next 2 years. GTX 980 ti might be a nice Performance/Budget workhorse nearly to come and be a good performer for the next 2 or 3 years.

It is really a pity, that the new Turbobox is almost 1000 bucks more expensive... its really a nogo now... 2300€ I think. But for Titans or other GTXes with 6GB VRAM or more you definetly need the better bandwith for fast scene transfers for large scenes.
I`d really like to know, if it is possible and how it performes, to add another turbbox to my system, even it might be stupid.
But that might not be happen, unless the future brings, that money doesn`t count anymore *g*.
I might also build another PC-System with all my knowledge and the mighty useful experience of the other watercoolers here. It is really nice to see that octane hardware community growing and helping each other to build up world class high performance render rigs.

Cya,
ChrisVis