Dual Athlon w/c HELP

[Redbud]

A friend of mine has a Tyan Thunder dual Athlon MP board cooled by two very loud Swiftec w/ Delta's. I convinced him that a water cooling rig would eleminate the need for any fans in his system.

I had water cooled my rig though mine is a single processor one. I told him to buy the following:

2 Maze 3 Waterblocks
Enheim 1250
Black Ice Extreme Radiator
Artic Silver 3
10 feet of 1/2in tubing

I ran the tubes like this:
Pump --> Rad --> 'Y' splitter --> 2 waterblocks --> 'Y' splitter --> Pump

When we set it up and fired up the beast one cpu climbed from 35-48 C the other went all the way up till 55C and was still climing steadily before we shut it down. I have checked the mountings, retightened, re-gooped, yet still no avail.

The water kit is now sitting in his closet- I look like a fool because I made him spend $250 on a water cooling system he cant use.

Can anyone here with a dual water cooled system give me some tips? Is the radiator too small? The tubes two big?

Thanks in advance.

[lechumbl]

Hi Redbud,

First, :D :D WELCOME :D :D to LN.

Secondly, I have a single block system, so won't be much help.

I think Player0 has info that will be useful.

I recommend that you still use fans for drawing in cool air and fans to extract hat air.

See my sig for pictures or go to Photo Gallery from Home Page.

Take care......

[Player0]

Redbud, welcome to the board.

You did have fans on the radiator right? I recommend two 120mm fans sandwhiching the BIX radiator. I use a couple Sunon 69cfm 120mm fans. They are medium level in terms of noise, but really do a good job of cooling. Much better than those deltas for sure. If you really want less noise, use a couple Panaflow L1a fans, 40cfm or so. You wont get as much performance, but it should be adequate.

If you want even less noise, use two BIX radiators. This will give you a large boost in cooling power, and you can get away with less fans. But, you will need fans of some kind.

As for the waterblocks, I suggest using stronger springs than what DangerDen provides. Check your local hardware store for them. The stronger compression will give you better temperatures on your CPUs. I dont recommend using the nylon bolts either, try steel, just make sure to protect the motherboard from the steel bolts with some plastic spacers (you dont want anything to short).

Were you sure to clear out all the air bubbles? Were you using 1/2"? You want 1/2" ID tubing everywhere EXCEPT after the Y. After the Y, you want 3/8" ID tubing going to both of your mazes. This will help keep air out of the waterblocks, and increase the water speed, improving performance. Get some 1/2" to 3/8" reducers.

[dicki]

hi red, and welcome to the boards :wavey:

i strongly recommend against the use of the y splitter... run everything in series, you will end up with one cpu a degree or two hotter than the other but you avoid all problems with balencing the flow rate between the 2 paths.

in my experience whenever a splitter is used in a water cooling system even though it should be better in theory (see the post on dual rads in this forum) in practice one path flows quicker than the other so you end up with a hot half and a cold half. if you have everything in series you don't have this problem and even though the system won't be at it'smost efficient it will work which i generally find to be much more important ;)

dicki

[Player0]

The important thing about using a splitter is that you use smaller tubing after the split (1/2" down to 3/8"), and that you use equal lengths of tubing on each half of the Y. If both sides of the split are exactly the same length, then you should get equal flow on both.