Broad Questions to Liquid Cooling a PC

[Sandraudiga]

I am planning, in the next 6 months or so to have my own custom designed case built for me by Epic PC, which is the only custom pc creator I have found in Australia to date. I am sure there are more, but my googlefu has failed me and they seem pretty on the ball. I figured if I was going to design a case, I might as well plan ahead and make sure the design is liquid cooling friendly as it is something I have wanted to do for awhile. As a novice though, I thought my friendly neighbourhood experts would be a good choice for great advice. I apologize if the questions seem strangely out of order, as I am researching and drawing up parts of my case as I write this post.

As I understand it, the typical water cooling loops is as follows:

Starting at the reservoir which is connected to the loop via a pump. This pump, obviously, pumps water through tubing to the block in question, then into the radiator to cool down, and back into the reservoir.

Assuming at its most basic level this is correct, I have a few questions regarding components and their limitations.

1. I am thinking of liquid cooling at least my GTX 680 and i5-2500k, but what is the purpose of liquid cooling the motherboard?

2. Liquid cooling ram, if you have no intention of ever overlocking is a bit pointless, yes?

3. I have imagined cylinder reservoirs, but should I have a single larger cylinder and make a loop that includes both the GPU and the CPU or separate smaller cylinders and separate loops? While I am sure that having separate loops for each makes it more effective, would this require two pumps and two radiators and therefore significantly increase the cost?

4. Also, if liquid cooling the motherboard is a good idea, could I have a single loops to cool all three and still have it effective, or again would it be better to have separate loops?

5. I assume most radiator's do not come with the required fans, so in the case of larger radiators like the Black Ice GTX 560 radiator, it would take 4 140mm fans and the entire thing mounted in the case so it intakes air from outside the computer case?

6. Is it possible in a loop to have reservoirs in sequence, like say reservoir 1 -> reservoir 2 -> pump -> block/s -> radiator -> reservoir 1 etc? Would this require a far more powerful pump or would a high end pump be able to do this comfortably assuming it can be done?

7. What I am picturing in my head is one or two horizontal cylinders, depending on what would be needed, in sequence vertically if 2 are needed, with a good sized 4 fan radiator above them to cool the GPU, CPU and optionally the mobo. Even rereading that I am not sure it makes sense, so something like this:

OOOO <- Fans and rad
(----) <- Cylinder res
(----) <- Optional second res

There would be a clear window showing this, just big enough for the rad and res's, with the pump outside of window.

That's all the questions I can come up with at the moment. Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Ian

[Nab]

1, there is little to no point in watercooling your motherboard.
2, Yes, it's pointless.
3, For Watercooling a single CPU & GPU a single res+pump should suffice.
4, See 1.
5, If you buy the Rad separately, i.e not in a WC kit it usually will not come with fans. Yes, you should take air from outside the PC and push the cold air on the RAD.
6, There is no point in more than 1 res in a simple loop.
7, not really sure what you're asking.

[Sandraudiga]

Thanks for the quick and painless reply. Went back and reread 7, and to be honest I have no idea what I was asking either. I hope I simply was expanding from 6 and put the 7 there afterwards thinking it was a new question, but I'd put money on the fact I simply lost the plot for a few minutes.

[ati87]

My understanding that in general watercooling is more of a gimmick, but at the same time also dangerous since a leak could destroy your computer.