Kai-o-ken x3!

[Player0]

Installed my third Black Ice Xtreme tonigh. Yep, the cube has three of them now. They are all hooked in series, and working great. I still need to hook up my third peltier, to get final results, but now my hot water temperatures are only 11c over ambient. Cold water temperatures have improved by 4c! Woo.

Will see how it performs with 3 peltiers active...so far great results.

I only have one more 70cfm 120mm fan working right now, so it wasnt a big increase in noise. I definately needed more cooling power for the summer months though. This should be enough. I could always get a fourth, but...I dont think I need to now.

[fredperry]

May I ask why in series? I've always heared that in parallel, you don't loose much of your flow, and it acts as one big rad?
Most dual/triple watercoolers with pelts use parallel instead of series. Ever tried it?

Series is a bit easier tho...;)

[DexterHolland91]

No, series works better. P0 can back that up with his personal testing I believe, it has to do with how much heat each radiator can take out of the water. He'll give the example, I'm too lazy. :p (won't you?) :D

[Player0]

Ive discussed this on this other thread here:

http://www.liquidninjas.com/bbs/showthread.php?threadid=150

Very basically, series works better, both mathematically and in reality. Even with very dissimilar radiators.

The arguement for Parallel rads is simple. Radiators are more efficient with a bigger temperature differntial between the hot water and the air going through the radiator. So sending hot water through one radiator makes it cool, so the next radiator isnt doing very much work.

That is certainly true if you only really needed one radiator to begin with. Me, I have hundreds of watts to cool, so I need dual radiators (or triple). So the water going through one rad, is still very hot going through the next rad, so they are still doing work.

Mathematically...two radiators in parallel only work as one radiator with twice the waterflow. It can handle 2x the wattage still, but will only provide as much cooling as one radiator. See the math in my other thread.

Two radiators in series, even though the second radiator does loose efficiency because its getting cooler water, DOES still lower temperatures further than the parallel radiators. The pure fact of this is: if there is water running through the second radiator that is above ambient temperature, the radiators working in series will cool the water more than the radiators working in parallel. That is not debatable :)

Now, there are conditions. Radiators in series restrain waterflow more. My Eheim 1250 pump has no problems with three black ice extreemes and the huge 72510 chiller hotblock.

I swapped my older systems around lots of times, and my serial temps were always better, before I came up with the mathematical proof for it :)

[DexterHolland91]

Pure genius... ;) :D

[kms]

heh heh this argument crops up on every forum :D i'm strongly in the parallel camp http://www.liquidninjas.com/bbs/showthread.php?s=&threadid=300 :)

[NorthernYankee]

I stronly in the "I have one Radiator camp":D

--NY

[kms]

lol, get the dremel out NY, go for two :D

[fredperry]

excellent info, gonna read the other thread some other day tho, way too much work at the moment.

[NorthernYankee]

I may have to soon I just got a seperate PSU and pelt all I am waiting for is the coldplate. but I think this Aquacoil should hold up with one pelt.

--NY

[Player0]

Def will NY.

Hehe, KMS...I wouldnt have gotten an addition 6c hot water temp drop using thes BIX in parallel, thats for sure ;)

[Player0]

NY, get a second aquacoil...id LOVE to get a non-partisan 3rd party to test this whole series versus parallel debate.

Ive had two aquacoils in series vs parallel, I know which one wins :)

[kms]

what size pelt & chip NY ? as P0 says an aquacoil should be well up to it, P0 i dont for a second doubt your observations are true as many variable are in play & each setup is very different, they are opposite results to most though. :) Bill Adams makes an excellent non-partisan 3rd party have a read of his write ups :)

[NorthernYankee]

If someone wants to lend me an Aquacoil to test with I will try it out.

KMS I just got a 226w pelt for my 2000+ it will run 1920mhz on straight water. I am hoping for 2 ghz with the pelt.

--NY

[kms]

these will help you work out your load,

http://computernerd.com/cgi-bin/thermalcalculator.cgi

http://www.benchtest.com/calc.html

i'll see if i can find the specs for an aqua coil, should be ok :)

[Player0]

One of the problems using the aquacoils in parallel was that only half of each aquacoil was being used.

I had 1/2" tubing in the entire system, and when the AquaC's were in parallel, I could feel that only have of each radiator was getting hot.

The aquacoil itself is two 3/8"-ish radiators hooked in parallel. By splitting the water from the 1/2" tubing, I was only taking advantage of one half of each aquacoil. I discovered this by accident, feeling one half of the aquacoil was very hot to the touch. The other half of the aquacoil (the second 3/8" radiator internally) was cold!! No water was flowing through it, because there simply wasnt enough water left over from splitting it from the 1/2".

You would need a 1" tubing with pump, etc...to take advantage of two AquaCoils in parallel.