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- May 24, 2023
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I seriously started considering building a custom watercooling loop for my computer, which with current 14900K and a 4080 I am thinking about getting would need to cool approx. 500W.
I decided I would like to know the approximate cooling power of the radiators, at this moment I am thinking about using two slim 280 rads or one slim 280 and one thick 360.
Since I do not have any configurable power supply and heating sources, I decided to measure the performance of the rad simply with a bucket, aquarium pump, and a tourist 500W water heater. I simply put a warm water in the bucket, let the rad cool it and recorded the temperature of the water at certain time points and then calculated average cooling power in these time intervals. Then I just let the water be warmed by the heater and waited for the temperature of the water to stabilise.
Here are some pictures from the measurement:
The correct measurement should first establish the self cooling of the system and then subtract this from the results, however I believe that this will not be worse than 20% difference and I adjusted the results with this coefficient. I am not looking for an exact lab measurement, just some ballpark cooling power numbers. There are also better ways to measure water temperature than with an IR meter measuring rad core.
Here is a calculation table and the results table:
The slim 280 rad with cooling water 10°C above ambient could have cooling power of about 200W, and with 15°C over ambient 350W. The control measurement with the tourist heater confirmed the cool down measurement pretty well.
With better fans (I just used some crappy case fans that came with my Fractal case) the performance should improve. I think I could get away with using two of these slim 280 rads, but I am still curious how the thick 360 rad will perform.
How important are the fans for the radiator performance, could for example Arctic P12 fans perform significantly better than the case fans I used?
Why is not the cooling performance of the radiators somehow specified by the manufacturers?
I had to buy the aquarium pump and the heater for this measurement and also spent few hours getting the things together and measuring it, so I hope this will be useful for somebody else than me as well.
I decided I would like to know the approximate cooling power of the radiators, at this moment I am thinking about using two slim 280 rads or one slim 280 and one thick 360.
Since I do not have any configurable power supply and heating sources, I decided to measure the performance of the rad simply with a bucket, aquarium pump, and a tourist 500W water heater. I simply put a warm water in the bucket, let the rad cool it and recorded the temperature of the water at certain time points and then calculated average cooling power in these time intervals. Then I just let the water be warmed by the heater and waited for the temperature of the water to stabilise.
Here are some pictures from the measurement:
The correct measurement should first establish the self cooling of the system and then subtract this from the results, however I believe that this will not be worse than 20% difference and I adjusted the results with this coefficient. I am not looking for an exact lab measurement, just some ballpark cooling power numbers. There are also better ways to measure water temperature than with an IR meter measuring rad core.
Here is a calculation table and the results table:
The slim 280 rad with cooling water 10°C above ambient could have cooling power of about 200W, and with 15°C over ambient 350W. The control measurement with the tourist heater confirmed the cool down measurement pretty well.
With better fans (I just used some crappy case fans that came with my Fractal case) the performance should improve. I think I could get away with using two of these slim 280 rads, but I am still curious how the thick 360 rad will perform.
How important are the fans for the radiator performance, could for example Arctic P12 fans perform significantly better than the case fans I used?
Why is not the cooling performance of the radiators somehow specified by the manufacturers?
I had to buy the aquarium pump and the heater for this measurement and also spent few hours getting the things together and measuring it, so I hope this will be useful for somebody else than me as well.
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