Water cooling rads question

[tonwin]

Hi everyone, it's been a while since I last posted but thought this would be the place to get some good adviceunk:
Anyway I'm about to venture into building my own gaming rig pc. I am going to water cool the CPU and I have 2 GTX 580s in SLi mode. I want to buy waterblocks for my 580s and water cool those too. I have a HAF 912 case, I am going to fit the 120mm rad/fan for the CPU cooling to the rear exhaust vent of the case but due to the case's limitations I can't fit a 240mm rad and fans as well to the top of the case for the water cooling of the two 580s. My question really is would another 120mm rad and fan be effective enough to cool both graphics cards as I would be able to accommodate that as well as the CPU cooling rad and fan inside the case

 

[Karnor00]

As a rough rule of thumb you generally want 120mm of radiator per component cooled, plus 120m extra. So for a CPU and 2xGPU's ideally you would want 480mm of radiator.

Now this rule of thumb assumes that you don't want to run the fans too fast (1200-1400rpm), might want to overclock your components somewhat and want reasonable temperatures.

What you are proposing is 240mm of radiator. So to get that to work you'd probably have to run the fans pretty fast (i.e. fairly noisy), and probably wouldn't have much room to overclock. It probably wouldn't offer much performance benefit over the standard air cooling. Of course you could always make it work by getting some extremely fast fans and accept that you'll be going deaf :walkman:

If you are confident enough then you could look into modifying the case to fit more radiators (or get a new case) or mount an extra radiator externally.

 

[tom_gr7]

personally I'd look at getting a new case, because you also have to fit in a pump, a res and loads tubing too.

 

[tonwin]

I was kind of thinking this would have to be the route to take (getting a new case).
I can wait a while to water cool the graphics cards as Im still spending the money on the new build for the water cooling of the CPU.
I'm going to be patient and get the new case (HAF 932 with windowed side panel) and continue with the build then.
Looking at the HAF 932 and it seems to have plenty of room to put rads and reservoirs in