Water Coolign My Editing Rig

R

Richter Video Equipment

Well-known member
Although I've built tons of high performance editing systems, this will be my first water cooled rig. So, my cpu and gfx run a little warm. Most people would think its fine to have an i7 running stable @55c when oc'd by .7 ghz, but I want to push it a little more. I'd also like my temps to be in the 40's. This is an editing computer but also a gaming computer.

So here's my specs:
I7 950 CPU (OC'd)
Dual GTX470's (OC'd with stock cooling)
12 gb of ddr3 1600mhz ram
7 caviar black hard drives. (6 in raid for editing/gaming, 1 OS)

How much water cooling power do I need? Most radiators dont seem to have a rating. Some rate in btu and others in watts. When i convert btu to watts its 3 times as much cooling for the same size rad. i don't think this is right. I was thinking of getting dual 5.4 gpm pumps for redundancy which would split into 4 legs. One for each gpu, one for cpu, and one for mobo, drives, & ram. I dont want a series loop because i would essentially be trying to cool my gpu's with hot water.

Any recommendations on a radiator. I'd like to mount one on the back of my case with 4 120 mm fans. I'd like to have the fans run slow and quiet but want superior cooling. Any recommendation for water cooled hd's that doesn't cost 50 bucks a drive? Also i think i have a good water block for the 470's, but if anyone has favorites, let me know.
Thanks,
Cody
 
Just remember stability is WAY more important than a 1% increase in performance. Test your system under load for a long stretch before doing any paid work on it.
 
my buddy just watercooled his rig thats darn near identical to yours. Il get him to write a list of what he got and il pm you.

He got amazing results for the amount he spent which il admit was a decent amount (no $100 cpu coolers) but not in the extraordinary range.

Water cooled hd's and ram is a gigantic waste of time and money and with 7 drives will make it darn near impossible. Please forget about that aspect of it. Serious waste, there is zero point. Im running 7 black drives in my system as well with just 2 120mm blowing over them. Not a problem in 3 years. Same thing with the ram. Trust me on that one. Not to mention 7 drives = 14 more water connections you have to make.
 
I've been running a water ncooled rig for two years now. I have my CPU and GPU cooled which has kept my system very stable. I cheated a bit by starting with a used Thermaltake LCS case. I really liked the radiator being built into the drive bay, the two fans serve double duty of cooling the liguid and the drives ( I have 6 drives including two 10k raptors )

I added DangerDan cooling blocks for the CPU and GPU. Then I removed the cooling tank from the stock Thermaltake pump and instead extermally mounted a DangerDan storage tank on the back. It is a high capacity tank and is clear plastic so I can see the coolent level and I can add coolent without opening the case up, very important consideration.

One thing I considered when building my system was an external radiator, what some of the gamers use is the heater core from an automobile, they flow well and apparently transfer heat very well.

I am running an intel 9650 overclocked at 10%, modest, but I use the machine as both a multitrack music recording studio and my video editing workstation so it gets a heavy workout when running.

Feel free to ask any questions you might have.

Best, Harry
 
cheapass said:
Just remember stability is WAY more important than a 1% increase in performance. Test your system under load for a long stretch before doing any paid work on it.
Click to expand...
I always thoroughly test GPU and CPU at the same time. I know most test separate, but I had a system crash once because cpu was fine by it self, but the added heat from the GPU caused problems.

Jeremy_Sawatzky said:
my buddy just watercooled his rig thats darn near identical to yours. Il get him to write a list of what he got and il pm you. Thanks
Water cooled hd's and ram is a gigantic waste of time and money and with 7 drives will make it darn near impossible.
Click to expand...
I'm concerned with all the hoses and a rad over the back my air flow will be limited. They will probably be ok though.



Coach56 said:
One thing I considered when building my system was an external radiator, what some of the gamers use is the heater core from an automobile, they flow well and apparently transfer heat very well.
Click to expand...

i was thinking about that but, i'd rather something i can mount without to much modding to the back of my case. i also wanted it to look good and heater cores look ugly lol

Coach56 said:
Feel free to ask any questions you might have.

Best, Harry
Click to expand...


Thanks for all the input guys,

My main question at this point it what radiator is the best preforming rad that is a 4-120 fan rad.
 
ok here is the list my buddy sent me - il just copypaste what he wrote me on fbook

XSPC RASA RS360 universal water cooling system. 1 single 140mm radiator. and 2 EK gtx580 gpu blocks. With that im getting idle/load 28/58 for a i7 930 at 3.8ghz, 30/47 for stock 570's. And now with the cpu at 4.2ghz 32/63 degrees. And 2 570's oc'd 200mhz at the core(932mhz) 33/55. System is pretty quiet. I can even turn off all the fans when not doing hardware stressing stuff and the comp is almost silent. I got all my stuff at frozencpu.com. If he is looking into something more high end, he should have 2 seperate loops for the cpu/gpus. So 1 pump, resovoir, rad for the cpu. And 1 pump, rad, res, for the cards. I am all on 1 loop and i am quite happy with mine. If you have any more Q's let me know

there ya go!
 
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