Watercooling Kit Deconstructed
Raystorm CPU Waterblock
The Raystorm block consists of two parts, the base block assembly and the acrylic mounting plate. Even though only the CPU mounting plate is shown, the AMD mounting plate fits to the block in the same manner. The top of the block has a raised rounded-square inner section with the inlet and outlet holes with an outer lip on which the mounting block sits upon. When assembled, the top of the block and mounting plate form a flat plain.
The top plate consists of a CNC-machined clear acrylic body and a black aluminum top plate. The top plate sits in an indented grove in the top of the acrylic body so that the entire assembly sits flat when together. The acrylic body contains four 3mm LED holes in the middle of each side of the body. This give the block an edge-lit appearance with the aluminum top plate mounted.
The base block assembly consists of an upper black acrylic top and a CNC machined copper base plate. The top is held to the copper base plate with four flat-top hex screws and seals to the copper plate with a rubber grommet along the outer edge of the block's top.
The top of the block consists of the acrylic top and a steel injection plate. The injection plate sits just below the block inlet channel and accelerates the incoming water to increase pressure through the copper plate water channels. The injection plate is sealed to the inlet channel with a rubber grommet along the outer edge of the inner channel. That way, water is forced to pass through the channels in the copper plate to exit the block through the outer outlet channel. The injection plate itself sits perpendicular to the direction of the copper plate micro-channels.
The copper base contains a series of micro-channels through which the water is forced through to cool the block base plate (and the CPU in the process). The thin-finned nature of the micro-channels increases the surface contact area for the transfer of heat to the coolant. The inlet formed by the injection plate site perpendicular to the water channels, forcing water across all channels and out via both sides of the base plate's micro-channels.
The only downside with using a micro-channel design is the increase in flow restriction inherent in its use – pressure builds up on the inlet side because water flow is restricted by the micro-channels. While the water velocity through the micro-channels is increased, the flow rate over the entire system decreases because of the micro-channels.
X2O 750 Bayres/Pump V4 Reservoir
Pump impeller comparison
Courtesy of XSPC
Once the top is removed from the reservoir, you can easily see the arrangement of the pump within the enclosure. The top is sealed to the base chamber via a large rubber grommet running in a channel along the top of the outer edge of the main liquid chamber. Flow of the coolant through the chambers occurs as follows: liquid enters the chamber from the lower inlet port which is not directly connected to the pump, is sucked into the pump through the impeller chamber on the left side of the reservoir, and is pushed out via the outlet port which is directly attached to the pump outlet. The pump sits directly in the coolant and is sealed for full immersion operation. With the V4 revision X20 750 pump, XSPC updated the impeller design for better water redirection. The new impeller design forces the water up above the impeller resulting in higher pressure and flow rate when expelled via the outlet port.
The top of the reservoir is a rectangular nylon piece with underside ribbing for added rigidity and strength. The top is held in place by 11 black-colored flat-top screws. The fill-plug is black plastic with an outer rubber o-ring to ensure a solid seal between it and the reservoir top, minimizing air intake and coolant evaporation from the reservoir.
I love these bundled kits
I love these bundled kits from XSPC, but I’ve had terrible experience with these specific pumps. I had one die after about a year, the replacement was DOA and the replacement replacement makes inordinate amounts of humming noise when it first starts, but then quiets down.
All of their other products have been wonderful though! Waterblock, radiators, fittings, etc. I wouldn’t ever buy another pump from them (although the bay design is very handy!)
Seems better to just get a
Seems better to just get a H100i if all you need to do is cool the CPU. cheaper and more convenient.
With good sealed systems, I will only use a custom setup if I need to watercool multiple items and want to do a setup using multiple radiators (eg cooling the CPU, VRM, chipset, and GPU)
I wish they could make a compound radiator, eg a single 120mm radiator divided into 2 sections (essentially 2 separate radiators that are in a housing that can fit in a 120mm mount) this way I can do a neat setup of a 240mm radiator for the CPU, and 1 half of a single 120mm radiator for the VRM and the other half for the chipset, and finally another 120-140mm radiator for the GPU, and a good pump
One problem you run into with
One problem you run into with compound radiators is cooling ability. In the case of serially-stacked radiators, you get only about 1.5x the performance compared to a single radiator because of pressure drop – serialization doesn't work as well with radiators as it does with water blocks. With parallel radiators, you either need double the fans or fans with higher static pressure so that air can effectively pass through both radiators. In both cases, you are using air that has been heated up passing through the first radiator to get to the second.
If you have two indendent chambers sitting side by side, you would effectively half your cooling performance in either loop because you have half the amount of space for the water to flow through as well as half the amount of surface area for heat transfer from water to air.
The reason I would like a
The reason I would like a split radiator, is to cool lower heat components e.g., the chipset and the VRM’s.
Mainly trying to make use of 3 top 120-140mm exhaust fans, as well as a rear 120-140mm exhaust fan, with no stacking of radiators, to cool the CPU, and GPU.
Will a powerful pump be able to handle a setup like that?
Should be without issue. In
Should be without issue. In my main system, I have a Swiftech MCP-35X DDC pump running the following with good flow maintained:
XSPC RX360 radiator
Magicool 140 radiator
Koolance CPU-360 CPU water block
XSPC Razor GTX 680 full cover water block
Well, i can not recomment bay
Well, i can not recomment bay res’ at all. It’s alyways a pain in the … to fill them. and my xspc res is just bended from the pressure of my D5. If you want a save costum watercooled system stay with aqua computer, EK and bitspower fittings. I just had way too much trouble with ofer brands.
Well they could. entrga do
Well they could. entrga do here in Brazil … certainly buy one
I’m looking at graph on
I’m looking at graph on Koolance.com stating that at a temperature delta of 15°C their 2x120mm 18-FPI aluminum radiator dissipates anywhere between 400 and 1000 Watts ( depending on the fans and coolant flow rate).
The delta they’re referring to is the one between temperatures of the coolant entering the radiator and ambient air not the CPU and ambient air.
Considering that their radiator should perform roughly similarly to the one being reviewed and considering how high the deltas were for the reviewed processors ( neither of which consume anywhere near 400 Watts ) does that mean that the temperature of the coolant in no point in the loop rises to 5-10°C above that of ambient air ?
The radiator in question : http://koolance.com/radiator-2-fan-120mm-18-fpi-aluminum
The graph is under the ‘specification’ tab.
The koolance graphs measure
The koolance graphs measure coolant temperature only over time which can be used for theoretical radiator performance. It tells you how well the radiator will cool the coolant flowing through the loop, which equates to how effective the coolant can absorb heat (the cooler the coolant, the more heat it can potentially absorb from the waterblocks). However, this does not tell you how the entire system will perform.
The graphs in the review attempt to show you what type of performance you will get with the system against CPUs in various situations – a stock Ivy Bridge, an overclocked Ivy Bridge, and a stock Haswell. The delta is a measure of the actual temp – ambient temp, to give you an idea of what the temperatures would based on your rooms ambient temperature (you simply take the reported numbers in the graphs and add it to you ambient). Its more of an absolute working system temperature for the kit than the numbers that koolance reports.
Make sense?
I don’t see any strengths in
I don’t see any strengths in this xspc wc setup compared to the thermalrights silverarrow except for sound levels.
but does lower snd lvls for xspc equal a plus if the cons are possible:
1. leakage & dmg to components.
2. cost of pump going bad vs fans.
3. $150 xspc vs. $90 thermalright arrow
4. arrow few deg cooler
i’d only give it gold award if it was fools gold
you can use non conductive
you can use non conductive liquid still shit
Any chance of you guys doing
Any chance of you guys doing a review with the Arrow coupled with a fan you consider to be noiseless (or at least near the noise of the xspc) so we can see how good it compares to the others with less noise? It seems like you guys should throw in a reasonable air solution (fan I mean) to show how much difference there is between it and the one that drives you out of the room 🙂 Maybe I missed it if you’ve already done that. But it would be nice to see the great heatsink with a less noisy version in every review. One fan tested for the crazy people or people with headphones and the other less noisy version for the rest of us.
If you only lose a few degrees doing this water seems pointless for most (I own a koolance, so it’s not that I hate water, just curious how noise free fans work with the best heatsinks). I always see reviews with the worst fan, which I’d never buy 🙂 I’d buy the monster heatsink to avoid the need for a noisy fan but get decent results (maybe that’s just me).