New PC - upgrade, part 2
My EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 Hydro Copper 12GB arrived yesterday - and it looks perfect. (It's also heavy.) But unlike a normal air cooled graphics card I can't just drop it into my system. I need to order a whole bunch of parts first. Any water cooling loop will have the following:
- Blocks which attach to the CPU or GPU and transfer heat from the CPU or GPU to the coolant. This is built into the graphics card, but I might as well get one for the CPU too (in for a penny...).
- Radiators which transfer heat from the coolant to the air. While thicker radiators or ones with more fins will cool better (while requiring more powerful fans) cooling is mostly dictated by the area of the radiators.
- Fans to push (and/or pull) air through the radiators. Ideally you want to use fans which have high static pressure as the radiators have high air resistance.
- A pump to move the coolant from the blocks to the radiators.
- A reservoir to hold extra coolant so the pump isn't sucking air. The reservoir and the pump can be a combo unit.
- Tubing and fittings to connect everything together.
It's possible to buy an All-In-One (aka AIO) unit where the pump is integrated into the CPU block and the tubing between the CPU block and the radiator is permanently connected and pre-filled with coolant. These are often significantly cheaper than a custom loop, but there's no easy way to adapt an AIO to cool my graphics card.
My original plan was to use a 180mm x 180mm radiator and the existing 200mm case fan. However, the nice folks on r/watercooling advised against that plan. The current rule of thumb is to have at least a 120mm fan+radiator per 100 Watts of power/heat. So while the 180x180 radiator is 2.25 120mm equivalents that's not enough (even without a CPU block) because a 3800 can reach over 300W (!).
What else isn't enough is my 500W power supply. While this is an additional expense, I suspected the power supply was another source of noise. So I did some research and settled on the Corsair RM850X, it's supposed to be quiet and 850W should be sufficient.
But given I needed to maximize the radiator area I took the sides off of the case and did some measuring. Unfortunately I couldn't simply stick two 240x120mm radiators in the top as i have installed the glass panel there (to avoid gravity & feline related issues). And while the manual shows installing a 240x120mm radiator on each side, they would likely impinge on the motherboard. Instead I decided to go with a 240x120mm radiator in the bottom of the case (where there is a fan grill), and three 120x120mm radiators - one in the rear and one on each side but towards the front so the motherboard isn't in the way. The 120 rads are crossflow so the tubing basically makes a loop around the inside of the case and doesn't cross in front of the fans.
As I am Canada, my choice of retailers is fairly limited. Dazmode is the main retailer for watercooling gear in Canada. Fortunately they have a good selection and the house brand items are competitively priced, although a lot of the "name" stuff is pricy. But I ended up ordering the following (Canadian dollars, tax & shipping included):
C$ 76.53 240x120mm radiator
C$133.62 3 120x120mm cross-flow radiators
C$ 27.36 8' EK-Tube ZMT Matte Black 3/8"-5/8" tubing (the cool kids use hard tubes, but I'm about function not looks)
C$111.20 15 compression fittings these connect the tubes to the G 1/4 inlets on each component, 2 for each component plus one for a drain tube
C$ 45.47 5 90 adapters, I plan on using these to handle any connections which require a tight turn
C$ 38.88 T fitting & drain valve - you should replace the coolant once a year, having a drain valve makes it easier
C$101.68 HEATKILLER IV BASIC CPU BLOCK with a clear acrylic top so I can see the coolant
C$ 20.57 Arctic Clean Kit & Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut Thermal Paste
C$233.17 Corsair XD5 Pump + Reservoir Combo
C$ 69.94 5 Arctic Cooling P12 PWM PST 120mm fans
C$ 26.80 1L Corsair XL8 coolant
C$203.39 Corsair RM850X power supply
Parts Total: C$1,084.61
Graphics Card: C$1,490.00
Grand Total: C$2,574.61
All I can say is I really hope this makes my PC quiet as the upgrade (and I'm not even upgrading the CPU, that would be another C$400-500) is costing as much as the PC!
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