Gadgetory

what's up everyone Jays two cents here and before we know what this summer heat is going to be upon us so that's why today I'm gonna take some of my best water cooling advice cram it into one video to try and make your next water cooling adventure an easy one today's video is sponsored by audible.com slash Jays two cents and if you've got a busy lifestyle like me you probably don't get to read books as often as you probably should that's why odd Wells perfect because I can listen to my favorite titles while multitasking and building systems like this or just driving tuned from the studio and I am a huge fan of the self-help session I need all the help that I can get but I would be checking out the book the power of habit that way I can make better habits in 2018 in an effort to improve myself this new year now you can get a free 30-day trial membership as well as a free book that you get to keep forever by heading to audible.com slash Jays two cents the link is in the description below or just text Jays two cents - 500 500 but the best part is members get a free book every single month that you get to keep and it never expires so what are you waiting for better yourself and 2018 by heading to audible.com slash Jays two cents or text Jay's two cents - 500 500 we're going to talk about a few things here on a very high level and some of my tips when it comes to each one of these subjects were in talk about radiators fans - being mixed metals coolants and just some best practices when it comes to your water cooling loops so whether or not you're a seasoned veteran or a beginner go ahead and check out this video because you might actually learn something who knows maybe you guys will teach me something that happens often - lets go and talk about radiators because I've got a very simple method that I use when it comes to sizing my radiator there's a lot of things you could talk about in the radiator this thickness there's length there's width right there's sounds we talk about something else here but I digress the radiator is the most important part of your loop this is the only thing in your loop taking heat out of it sure you can have the best block so you can have the best pump you can have hardline and best fans but if you have a terrible radiator then you're not doing yourself any favors and efficiently removing heat from the system same thing could be said for having an under sized radiator in your loop your blocks take the heat from the component your radiator takes the heat out of the loop that's how it works it's really simple so what I like to do is take about 120 millimetres or that's 120-millimeter fan worth of radiator per component so if that wasn't there we just had a 120 this is why you see 120 is being used all the time on CPUs and all in one water cooling loop powered GPUs because a single 120 30 mil rad is usually more than enough to handle a standard component and even a little bit of overclocking now when you start stacking components in your loop and adding more GPUs or more CPUs or Joe sometimes I guess you have a dual process the dual processor system but in my case over here we've got two GPUs and we've got a CPU monoblock which means it's also touching the VRMs which get very hot so it's much more than just a CPU being heated or cooled by that mana block over there what I would typically say is a 240 millimeter worth of radiator per component that's to 120 millimeter fans if you're gonna be overclocking so that means in this system right here based on my own logic it would look like I'm a little bit undersized because we've got two GPUs a CPU and vrm it's four components so ideally I would want for 240 millimeters worth of radiators but that's where thickness comes in because adding thickness increases the surface area or the amount of fins thin density that the radiator has which increases its cooling capacity now that's where the debate of thickness versus length comes in whereas the diminishing return where's the sweet spot 120 millimeter fan size and 30 mil thickness is pretty much the standard what I'm using over here are 40 mil thick radiators which is actually adding a decent amount of surface area so this system even while overclocked has more than enough cooling capacity but there is a diminishing return you go all the way up to the 60 mil thick rads or even those 80 mil monster rads it becomes the point where you're gonna have a huge pressure drop across the radiator where the amount of fans that are the air that's being pushed through is slowing down dramatically through those radiator fins which is where you would then need push-pull and that's a whole different topic so keep it simple 120 millimeters per component if not overclocking 240 millimeters per component if overclocking and you want to make sure you have plenty of headroom now that segues us perfectly into fans as fans are gonna ear to hear two main stats you're gonna hear static pressure and you're gonna hear airflow optimized both fans are gonna move air the difference is how these fans are going to react when you have resistance in the airflow so for instance you've got a radiator here and you've got a fan the fan has to push air through these fins now these fins are lined up straight they're not angled or anything like that but if you've ever seen air come off of a fan it does not blow straight up it goes out in a cone shape so what's happening is the air coming off the fan is having to straighten itself back out to go through those radiator fins and that's creating resistance and the thickness of the radiator determines how much pressure drop there's going to be over that distance so that's why you have static pressure optimized fans fans that are designed to be able to just brute force the air through the resistance to be able to give you the least amount of pressure drop now what the main difference that you can tell in these fans is if you look at the fins right here you'll notice air flow fans have a lot more fins this is a Corsair airflow fan this is a static pressure fan from Corsair actually this one's a little bit in the middle it's not a straight up static op static pressure optimized fan it's kind of a middle ground you could use it on rads or a case but if you look you'll see they're much more fins they're much more angled and there's a bigger gap between the fins if you look at this radiator you can see there's a much smaller gap so what that means is the air once it goes through the blade has no choice but to keep going in the forward momentum whereas the gap in these blades once this hits resistance the air can kind of splash back out so that's why you hear the constant debate about airflow fans versus static pressure now usually the difference is minimal between them I've used airflow airflow fans on radiators for years because back in the day there was no such thing as static pressure optimized fans that was something water cooling made a thing so we just used whatever fans we had but at the end of the day if you're trying to get the most performance out of your loop then static pressure fans are what you want now one last tip regarding fans and radiators is the idea of push versus pull now push is where the inlet or open side of the fan is where it's feeding air from or pulling air from and pushing the air through the radiator so we're flowing in this direction pool is just the opposite the fan is the opposite side of the radiator pulling the air through the red first and then exhausting it out the other side the debate has been which one is more beneficial well the reality is it's about the same regardless the pressure drop is pretty much the same and you are really going to be hard pressed to notice any sort of difference in your overall temperatures and day to day use that's where push-pull comes in where you have a fan on either side so the pressure drop is less noticeable push-pull is something I usually reserve for radiators that are really thick like 60 mil rads because it's gonna take care of the pressure drop across the radiator otherwise you're just costing yourself a lot more money for a very very minimal difference in temperatures now you can't talk about rads without cleaning it's important to clean your radiators the process of building it involves a lot of stuff right a lot of solder flux all those tubes have to be soldered together the end tanks are soldered together and as much as the radiator companies and manufacturers clean them it's still a good process of a good practice to clean them yourself there's different types of products on the market this is Mayhem's Blitz Pro I used it with this build right here it takes about two whole days to get the radiators clean using this product but it's guaranteed to get it clean it comes with the pH tester to make sure everything is good so cleaning your radiators is definitely it's a must in my opinion otherwise you could potentially be playing with a disaster in terms of pH imbalance color changes and other things happening in your loop cleaning your radiators is super important it's best to do it before you build your loop and definitely between fluid changes you can't talk about water cooling though without getting into the highly debated topic of fluids something's happened over the last 20 or 25 years where water Cooling's really become a thing distilled water is no longer good enough I don't actually believe that what I'm saying is that when it comes to building a boutique system like this it looks beautiful and has all this flashiness just dyed water like this for many people isn't good enough myself included have a bit of a snob in that aspect but distilled waters honestly all you need you don't need anything more than distilled water it's pure it is or deionized water it's kind of the same thing you can add dye to this make it any color you want but if you're going to use this you need to make sure you use an anti corrosive or kill coil or something to keep growth and corrosion from building up in your loop water will water is life and life wants to live in your loop in the form of algae so you're going to want to use a kill coil or PT nuke or an anti-corrosive whatever the other thing is you've got these boutique fluids this right here is the Primo chill view it's obviously what I'm using in my my Green Hornet builder here so I decide to call it Green Hornet this right here is a kite type fluid that always causes debate you have those people are gonna say it's gonna fall out it's got a clog it's gonna build up in your system and that's a risk I'm willing to take because it looks cool and that's just part of being an enthusiast if it does do that then I'll be cleaning out the system and starting all over and that's the risk I take when I decide to go with these systems but if you kind of want to go in the middle you don't want to go with something potentially like this and you want to go with something better than distilled water then you look at something like a pre-mixed or a concentrate like the Mayhem's x1 X t1 primo Chile's got fluids XSP see all the water cooling manufacturers have their own brand of fluid typically they are distilled water base fluids that's hard to hold like that basically there are distilled water based fluids that have anti corrosive anti-growth agents that have been not like secret agents but they're in there keeping your loop healthy and you can buy them in premix colors concentrate or get it and clear and mix your own color like I did here now speaking of coolants and anti corrosive let's talk about aluminum and mixed metals yeah that's a topic that is obviously very debatable by many people don't mix your metals never mix your metals galvanic corrosion galvanic corrosion Cal Vanek corrosion you can hear it over and over and yes it is a very real thing it's science you can't deny it you mix metals and you don't treat the fluid you're going to get galvanic corrosion the best course of action is if you're gonna have a copper based loop like I have here or nickel plated copper then you don't want to add aluminum to your loop that means a Lumina fittings aluminum plugs any of that stuff now of course the anti corrosives are definitely going to help but why introduce the chance of galvanic corrosion that's why companies like ek have come out with these aluminum kits and what they've allowed to happen here is you get a custom loop level of cooling capability and performance at the cost of a copper's not cheap it's a precious metal so prebuilt assists the loops like this come with everything you need the fittings which are aluminum the blocks even the GPU block you have a GPU block version I did a review on that the fans the plugs the jumper this guy right here to power up your power supply to turn on your pump to bleed your system it all comes included so these are definitely worth checking out but one thing I want to point out though is when people tend to freak out that the idea of aluminum and copper mixed in the same system all of your a iOS that are that are using a copper base are mixed metal all of the ASA tech radiators are aluminum your Corsairs and all the other brands out there using ASA Tech are running mixed metal a iOS the difference is they're sealed you're not going to be having to deal with it or service it and they have specific fluids in them to reduce and nearly eliminate the chances of galvanic corrosion I want to kind of wrap things up here with tubing because this is a part where a lot of people kind of get hung up do I want to go with rigid tubing do I want to try and deal with bending this stuff it looks cool but do I want the headache or do I just want flex tubing alright just hook everything up and it's flexible and I have to worry about how things line up what are the pros and the cons well the pros to flex to me like I just said is there's there's cut it install it you're done right it's got these locking collar fittings that you could put on there or you can get cheap barbed wires and even use zip ties or hose clamps if you want this is much easier to work with obviously but the downside to soft tubing is it almost always clouds over time even though the fluid manufacturers do the best they can to try and keep that from happening you get manufacturers like primo chill with an LR 2 LRT tubing that's designed to not leach plasticizer plasticizer but what do you think makes this flexible right so it can leech and turn cloudy that's something that just is almost guaranteed to happen with soft tubing we've been pretty fortunate around here to not have it happen a whole lot we've had soft tubing on the test bench now for a couple of years I've changed it once in that time but it's hard to get any sexier than ptg or acrylic hard tubing but it's got a lot more work involved you gotta measure it you gotta bend it you cut it you've got to buy extra tools a heat gun if you're gonna use a jig of some sort or just eyeball it like I do this is a lot more work but the end result is usually very very pleasing I mean it's one of those things where you have to determine whether or not you want simplicity and function over well just pure sexiness in my opinion or you can go with glass tubing like I did over here this is my second time doing glass tubing and it's not the hardest thing in the world it's definitely one of the more nerve-wracking ones because you know to glass but then I see my glasses it's not going to stain it's not going to leach plasticizer and it's always going to be extra shiny if you kind of look at this tube up close right here you can see it's got some scratches on it it's kind of cloudy it's just never gonna look as good as glass but there's that but when it comes to heart tubing though I highly recommend p/e TG because you can't do what I'm about to do with acrylic this is just a standard PVC cutter from cobalt so what is that is that Lowe's or Home Depot Lowe's okay it doesn't really matter it's just a blade and because this is technically a soft plastic wear acrylic if I tried to do this it would just shatter but you can mark where you want to cut and then just cut it's just that simple and you can use the same thing to cut your soft tubing as well so it's a simple tool that cost about 10 bucks that can take care of well a lot of a lot of tasks anyway guys that's why we're go ahead and wrap up this video I will do more of these throughout the summer as I hear people complaining and kind of asking me questions I'll make videos based on obviously viewer feedback but these this is just some of my tips when it comes to putting together your loops and kind of shopping and knowing what is what and I hope this has helped you guys if it if you think it helped somebody make sure you share it thanks for watching today's video if you're new around here subscribe and as always guys I will see you in the next one you