Mounting Radiators

The alternative to direct air cooling

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2grVe
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Mounting Radiators

Post by 2grVe » Thu Aug 11, 2005 3:17 pm

Morning everyone,

My Radiators are here, so its time to mount them...

I am going to decouple the fan when connecting it to the radiator. The question is, is it worth decoupling the radiator from the case or just hard mount the radiator?


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Everyone has been very helpful so I think its only fair to make a donation to this great site, not a big fan of pay pal so can I donate any other way from Europe?

clocker
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Post by clocker » Thu Aug 11, 2005 3:23 pm

I have always hard mounted the radiator.
Not sure what is to be gained by getting more elaborate as the radiator produces no appreciable noise.

pdf27
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Post by pdf27 » Fri Aug 12, 2005 6:16 am

clocker wrote:I have always hard mounted the radiator.
Not sure what is to be gained by getting more elaborate as the radiator produces no appreciable noise.
The radiator doesn't produce any noise, but it's hard to get a good decoupled fan mount so decoupling the radiator may be helpful.

In my case (PA160 mounted in the front of a TJ-06) I've cut out a section of the steel front equivalent to the size of the radiator air inlet. I've then drilled holes in the side of the radiator shroud, and used these to cable tie the radiator to some holes drilled in the case front. The gap between the radiator and the case is filled in with Neoprene foam tape. Seems to work reasonably well so far (can't be sure as I haven't got it running quietly yet - still on stock air) and is certainly as secure as hardmounting it. Actually, it was probably easier to mount it like that than bolting it in, given where I wanted to put the radiator and the position of the existing radiator holes.

2grVe
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Post by 2grVe » Sun Aug 14, 2005 3:00 am

I think for now hard mounting will do.. I like the idea with the Neoprene foam tape so ill try that.

Yet again Thanks everyone,

Just on the side, on the one hand I have read loads of guides saying its important that the radiator draws cool air in from the outside. At the same time everyone says you shouldn’t dump heat from the radiator into the system. Well, surely you can not avoid both?

pdf27
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Post by pdf27 » Sun Aug 14, 2005 3:53 am

2grVe wrote:Just on the side, on the one hand I have read loads of guides saying its important that the radiator draws cool air in from the outside. At the same time everyone says you shouldn’t dump heat from the radiator into the system. Well, surely you can not avoid both?
Ideally the air would come straight from the outside, through the radiator and straight out of the case. In reality, that's only going to happen if you're running a radbox.
To be honest I think these guides are rather overdoing things - when you think about a watercooled case, if you're cooling the CPU and GPU only that's still probably 90% of the heat generated inside the case. Hence, the remaining components aren't going to heat the case air up enough to noticeably affect your air temperatures, while the remaining components are rarely sensitive to heat so the slight temperature increase caused by the radiator (usually 2-3 deg C) won't matter at all.
All in all, just stick the radiator where it will get the most air flow (not the coldest), ensure that the air doesn't recirculate through it and try to minimise your tubing runs. Nothing else really matters.

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