The radiator looks like an OEM from Cool-Trek, similar to the one in my budget kit. The pump an eheim that has slightly lower specs than the Nirox P2800. The Nexxxos XP is a good high restriction block, but, kesian the pump, this block has as much restriction that competes with the Storm G4.
You can check alphacool's website for pricing.



BTW, i'd like to know... how many people are interested in Zerex/Valvoline Racing Super Coolant?

This post has been edited by MetalZone: May 5 2006, 07:32 PM

I don't know exactly cause I havent tested its performance myself. HydrX is useful for those who want UV reactiveness. But this is for those who want more serious coolants and don't want any of the HydrX's bling bling.

probably about the same price as hydrx for a 1 litre i guess. maybe cheaper.
see how la... donno whether wanna introduce anot.

This post has been edited by MetalZone: May 6 2006, 04:26 AM

well i'm sure u noe a lot of users if they use coolants they only use zerex/valvoline super racing coolants. both zerex/valvoline super racing coolants and redline water wetter are "rumoured" to produce slightly better temps, well thats at least what "some" tests say. How true, I don't know.

zerex and water wetter are no different as coolants. redline water wetter frankly its probably worse... it foams up too much and smells terrible and supposedly stains tubings more than zerex does. either way, neither should be overused (a small amount should suffice. the problem starts when some people think more is better or increases the thermal transfer), a common scenario why murkiness occur. zerex doesnt mention algae resistance however, but in any way, zerex still contains some ethylene glycol (which is poisonous and should keep algae at bay) albeit less than other fully ethylene glycol based antifreezes/coolants. At the end of the day, its all down to personal preference really. Some people use it as algaecide, some as a little bit of colouring (LOL its true some people do that), some against corrosion, (and zerex is supposed to reduce the surface tension of water). Whereas to some, distilled water and no more, no less. Well I know in our situation, zerex problably is useless to do anything other than to add some colouring to the water but some people still want to use coolants. I'm just providing an alternative to hydrx.

Good to hear that. Looks like I really have to coat even more epoxy until the outside. The test prototype didnt use that much epoxy either and it sealed well with no visible trace of epoxy on the outside. Can't trust that anymore LOL.

wah another leak
i'd better make sure the next pump's dont leak again with more abundant epoxy.
my own P2800, did some days back, didnt leak in the impeller, but quite easy to leak a little at the barbs thread. while putting the barbs on, or taking off, quite easy to unscrew the barb, hence reducing the silicone's sealing ability. wondering if tons of PTFE tape would be a better choice.

zahri, basically all forms of epoxy are waterproof when sealed well. i used bostik super steel epoxy on all of the nirox'es impellers. any good epoxy can do, including the 5mins ones, although 5 min epoxies have slightly less strenght.

This post has been edited by MetalZone: May 12 2006, 06:59 PM

silicone is only for temporary applications. for the impeller, epoxy is the best bet, seal it there forever once and for all. but for the barbs, you might not want to use epoxy coz then you wont be able to take it out anymore in case you wanna change next time. However, if you're already using 1/2" barbs, then its fine to epoxy it, unless, you're actually intending to use even larger tubing ID LOL.

eh, what happened to your Laing D4?

T-line is better than reservoir by a very tiny margin, and you probably won't be able to notice it at all.

This post has been edited by MetalZone: May 13 2006, 02:57 AM

owww... that was a nice pump though...


actually, on the question of temperatures, you cant trust mobo temps at all. so basically what we read from our mobo temps are just a very rough idea. they could be off typically by a massive 5 to 10 C. even pc temp sensors like the coolermaster aerogate II only have an accuracy of +-3 C. you'd need some high end fluke/omega/digitec sensors to be able to take accurate temp readings. will try to get some more accurate digital themometers in the near future to do some better testing/reviews.

This post has been edited by MetalZone: May 13 2006, 05:38 PM

Eheim 1260 3.7m head. Its a nice pump. just a little high on its power consumption at 65W (compared to other pumps from Laing, Iwaki and PanWorld which are pretty low but has high performance), but i wonder how's its heat dump like instead.

zahri:Eheim's are very reliable as well though.


btw, its not swiftech's, its a relabelled Laing
Laing is also a very good reliable industrial pump manufacturer.
Same goes to Iwaki and Panworld. The AquaXtreme 50Z is a relabelled PanWorld.

This post has been edited by MetalZone: May 14 2006, 05:15 PM

hmmm but 1250 only got 2.0m head. ur storm needs more than that.

i can get eheim pumps, but it wont be any cheaper than market price unless i order in quantity.

eheim 1260 is a good pump for the storm but mind u it aint cheap. its got 3.7m hmax. for storm's recommended 3m hmax and above to fully bring out its potential.

Cyber Aqua arrr... donno yet... will try ok?

ooo... so u're selling it eh. got storm adi sure la... haha.


ianho, how thick acrylic is that? and what did u use to cut it (particularly the centre part)? milling machine? dremel with grinder?

This post has been edited by MetalZone: May 17 2006, 09:29 PM

LOL, well, since u saw my post at the case mods section, you can see that i was planning to make my res out of 8mm thick acrylic. talk about 2-3mm eh?


sounds good. do you know exactly what went wrong?
hope to see some pics when u do get working on it.
btw, what do u mean by "stripped nirox p2800"? dont tell me you actually hacked off the entire cover except the impeller part, leaving the bare epoxy block.

This post has been edited by MetalZone: May 18 2006, 11:18 PM

hollowbean,
those barbs are NPT or NPSM or G BSPP threading?
How did u tap the threads on the acrylic?
Got anymore of those barbs? I would like some Serious. 1/2" barb, 1/4" threading issit?

This post has been edited by MetalZone: May 21 2006, 04:03 PM

which ace hardware?
i've checked out the midvalley one b4. metal ones, they only got brass barbs, non-nickel-plated, and they don't have those with a wider base to allow an O-ring seal.

Cannot assume this way either.

Ok, i'm gonna go a bit deep here, so look at the design pics of the blocks to get what i mean.

The WhiteWater was designed in such a way that it is much more efficient for the water to exit the waterblock via two exits on either sides. It's design implementing an impingement plate jetting into the microchannels made its restriction high. And because the microchannels are in a straight path to either direction (because the inlet impingement is in the centre of the microchannel path) the water has to exit at both ends of the channels in order for this design to be efficient, hence its two outlet design.

The storm series implements a blind hole jet impingement design. water hits the tiny distruptor's at the centre of the cup, then hits the base of the cup, and then flows out around the jet. After the water passed through the jet impingement stage, its job is done, the water is still recirculating between the midplate and the baseplate, and has to flow out of the block. hence even if there's one outlet, it will still do its job well. Because of the tiny dimensions of the jets and the cup, this made the Storm series highly restrictive. But in order for this design to work well, you need high flow rates otherwise you're better off with a simple low restriction pin grid design or direct path.
The Storm G7 implemented a hybrid 2 outlet design by adding another outlet on the other side of the block, but instead of exiting to to another outlet barb, it is channelled back to the main outlet right before where the barb is. The new Swiftech Storm G4 Revision 2 then implemented this as well.
Performance gains (temperature wise) from this improvement is very minimal, because the main part of the storm design that works to extract the heat from the CPU is the jet impingement. However, this hybrid two outlet design allowed a little less restriction to the waterblock and less recirculating water in the area between the baseplate and the midplate.
And so, in general assumption for high restriction waterblocks, the lower the restriction (without affecting its heat conduction properties), the higher the flow rate, and the higher the flow rate, the better performance. However, the performance and flow rate gains are very small on the Storm design because anyway, the most restrictive part of the design is still the jet impingement, not the outlet design.

We cannot apply the Storm G4's (revision 1) single outlet design on waterblocks such as the WhiteWater because, lets say if you were to block one outlet of the whitewater block and only use one outlet, the water has no choice but to only flow out from one direction. Water that is stuck on the other blocked end cannot move and will be stagnant forcing all water jetting out from the impingement plate to go out from only one direction, hence severely reducing the waterblock's efficiency. You could apply a hybrid two outlet concept to the WhiteWater's design also however, but you have to make both outlets to have equal amount of restriction in order to maintain its efficiency. Fluid will choose the path with the least restriction and therefore, more water will flow to the path with the lower restriction, hence also reducing its efficiency slightly because the two exit design is still the core element of the whitewater. You could flow the exit water around the microchannels to one side of the block parellel to the inlet, but that also poses more restriction. So in the end, the most efficient design would still be two outlet barbs.

This post has been edited by MetalZone: May 24 2006, 05:19 PM

Continued,

Ok now on to the high restriction two barb blocks other than the Storm.
Two examples of this is the Alphacool NexXxos XP and the AquaXtreme MP-05 SP LE/Pro. Both of these designs implement an impingement plate to increase the velocity and of the water prior to hitting the pin grid array. Because this design implemented a pin grid array instead of directional microchannels, water exits on all sides on the pin grid. Again, like the Storm design, this is the stage where most of the heat is absorbed. Hence the water's job is done in absorbing the heat, and now has to exit the block. So also in this scenario, one outlet will suffice. Also like the Storm design, the most restrictive part of the design is again, the impingement pin grid array, thus having one or two outlets makes minimal difference. Basically, any waterblock with an impingement design will be significantly restrictive.

Now on to waterblocks that purely utilises surface area. There are plenty of examples of these, from the Swiftech Apogee, Swiftech MCW6000/5000 down to even the ThermalTake BigWater SE and Gigabyte 3D Galaxy.
All these waterblocks just use two barbs, one in and one out. This is because all heat absorbsion of the water takes place by just contact with the surface area of the waterblock. Hence, in very general assumption, the more surface area, the better its performance. Generally, waterblocks of these nature have low restriction. Thus high flow rates are not required for this design to work. Thus, on low restriction waterblocks, higher flow rates does increase its performance, but gains are minimal. A low restriction waterblock will perform better than a high restriction waterblock at very low flow rates. This is because high restriction waterblocks generally have much less surface area to begin with. But when flow rates rise, performance gains on high restriction waterblocks will rise significantly.

This post has been edited by MetalZone: May 24 2006, 05:17 PM