Hydro X System Only for GPU

Hello everyone,

I need a little bit of help on choosing the correct parts for GPU water cooling. I already have a Corsair AIO and pretty happy with it so I'll only need a GPU water block, radiator, reservoir and related tubings etc. Since this will be my first watercooling operation, I am a little lost on the parts that I need to order. Could you please look at the list below and advice any missing or wrong parts in there?

1x XR5 140 Radiator (PLanning to set it up on my rear exhaust with LL140mm fan)

1x Hydro X Series XG7 RGB 2080ti

1x XD5 Pump/Reservoir

1x Hydro X Series XT Softline 10/13mm ID/OD Tubing

1x Coolant

?x Fitting/Tubing (Not sure on this one. How many I'll need only for GPU and which ones?)

My case is Corsair 680X and already have 3xLL120 and 3xLL140 fans and managing them with one hub and a Lighting Node. I know will need a Commander Pro and will get that as well; but with this setup, I am literally using all System Fans (PWM) on my motherboard. So just a little bit lost on fan, pump and radiator management part. What will I need exactly if I don't have any fan slots etc. or where do I need to plug the components?

Also, what do you think temperatures would be with 140mm radiator and LL140 fan? Main reason for the change is my current EVGA RTX2080ti Black is literally taking off in games and generate a lot of sound. :) So I would like to avoid that while decreasing the temperatures.

Thanks in advance and it's great to be in Corsair ecosystem. :sunglasse

Hello GregX. Much appreciated for the detailed info and sorry for my late reply.

It's great to hear that my GPU temperatures will decrease substantially. It seems to me that the list was 95% correct and with the compressions you added I'll be ready to build, thank you again. Since my plan is to use vertical GPU mount, I might need that pair of 90°/45° adapters like you said. Also, since I have no idea how to build one, I am pretty lost on ball valve as well. Where it should be or can I put it on XD5 without any problem etc. Corsair's configurator doesn't recommend one and I read here and other forums that one should have a valve for an easy drain.

I checked the documentation for 680X and have some questions in mind. I think instead of going for 140mm radiator, I might get the 360mm one for being a little more futureproof in case I want to add a CPU block. The problem is, I already have my H100i PRO RGB setup on top and there might not be sufficient space for me to put 360mm radiator to the front. Also in the documentation, front fans seems as exhaust and I want to build put it as intake.

Here's the setup I currently have. Imagine that there'll be 2 more intake fans on the bottom.

Now the question is, whether I can reverse my H100i and its cables to the other side to save some space for my front 360mm intake radiator. I do plan to mount XD5 on this 360mm radiator as well by the way since it looks pretty awesome and don't want to hide it on the secondary chamber. :) It seems like when GPU vertically mounted, there might be a possibility.

Thanks again Greg for your patient and elaborate answer.

It's pretty much settled I think, I now know what to get and have a plan in mind for the setup.

Only question right now is that since I am not a resident of the US, I'll try to get everything else on my next visit. Seems like Corsair has couple of resellers like Microcenter; however, when I checked their website, couldn't find any fittings under Corsair brand, only other brands like EKWB, Barrow etc. available. So I'll try to combine Corsair products with EKWB fittings since they're much easier for me to reach in my hometown. Would these parts listed below be interchangeable? If so, I'll go with that road and complete the setup:

Compression Fittings

Corsair Hydro X Series XF Compression 10/13mm (3/8" / 1/2") ID/OD

EKWB EK-ACF Fitting 10/13mm

Angled 90° Fitting

Corsair Hydro X Series XF Hardline 90° 12mm OD Fitting Twin Pack

EKWB EK-AF Angled 90° G1/4 Nickel

Ball Valve

Corsair Hydro X Series XF Ball Valve

EKWB EK-AF Ball Valve (10mm) G1/4

T Splitter

Hydro X Series XF Rotary Y-Splitter

EKWB EK-AF T-Splitter 3F G1/4

Thanks,

Thank you for the heads up Greg. I added them to my wishlist and will check later since the seller is 3rd party and not Amazon's itself.

Thanks for all the help, I'll let you guys know if I can handle the project. :)

One last question that comes to mind after a little brainstorming with friends. :)

Like I said, initially was planning to go with one 360mm radiator due to my lack of experience on the matter, however setting up a 280mm radiator on bottom seems much more easier to handle. (No need to remove front panel etc. while mounting 360mm.) So I may go with a 2x280mm on top/bottom for both CPU/GPU. Or with a 360mm front and 280mm bottom combo.

How much the difference would be you think? If surface area of the radiators matter, seems like I would get more or less -%5~ difference if I go with a double 280mm radiators instead of 360+280 combo.

Would you have any comment on the matter? Pros and cons, temp difference maybe. And with negative pressure in mind, how would you set the fans for double 280mm bottom/top configuration?

I think 2x280mm is better than trying to combine a 360mm with a 240mm for the 680x. Using the 360 on the front will ultimately force you to put the radiator side against the glass and that is not exactly what most people have in mind. If you look at the threads here and here you may get some idea of the issue. Having the near twin 740 Air case, I didn't quite understand at first, but the slots on the top keep you from moving fans around all the way to back. With radiators you don't need all the contact points, but a 360 + 280mm top is definitely not going to fit.

On the positive side, a dual 280mm system is more than functional in this case and for that hardware and I have been running multiple variations of this in a 740 for the last two years. In the 740, I rather like running in reverse (front/top exhaust, bottom/rear intake), but the glass on the 680X makes that a lot less desirable. There are two choices more or less In order to preserve the front 3xLL120 intake look.

1) Standard front/bottom intake, top rear exhaust with GPU and CPU radiators top and bottom. In an ideal world the GPU radiator would be up top exhausting its heavier wattage and higher air temps out, the lower CPU wattage H100i on the bottom. However, that may be somewhat difficult or less desirable with the H100i hoses. It can be done, but it is user choice. For combined cooling systems (CPU + GPU) this actually works better than I expected. While you radiator exit air temp is likely to be in the 30-40C range, your motherboard and RAM are already this temperature, so you are not heating anything else up, except maybe an exposed m.2 drive. This is what I was running last with 2080 Ti and 8700K, 2x280mm top/bottom.

2) Front intake, top/bottom radiator exhaust, rear exhaust (intake or exhaust) -> This is what I started off with when I first got my Ti and I was still using an AIO. I did not want to dump my GPU heat into the case (that rad was bottom) and H115i Pro was top. This works fine, but ultimately I was disappointed in my GPU temps compared to my prior Titan X and I combined the loops. That made the CPU temps slightly worse, but I had room on both ends. I had some reservations about exhausting heat out the bottom and whether it would leave the area or become trapped. Even with all those ridges in the 740, the air would quite easily hit the surface and dissipate. I was getting into the upper 30s coolant temperature on the 2080 Ti 280mm radiator in Winter. Most 2080 Ti's have a +12-16C chip to coolant differential. That put actual GPU temps around 50C.

I was worried what that would mean for Summer, but the reality is you shouldn't care if your GPU temp is 50 or 54C. That is still 30C under what other people on air are dealing with. For the record, in the combined 2x280mm system I am able to keep in under 50C and the highest coolant temp I've recorded is 38C, but in a 29C room. 2x280mm is plenty.

However, if you are curious I built a 2x360 loop this Summer and moved the same hardware in. In raw statistical terms, a 360mm with three smaller fans has better surface area coverage than a 280 with 2 140mm with larger center hubs. You can see this is in the data at low speeds where the three fans will get more air through and offer slightly better cooling. However, as fan speeds increase the gap closes. So at medium fans speeds where you are likely to spend your load time, the gap is small. The difference between my two systems when playing the same games is around 1-1.5C at most. 1C of CPU or GPU temp is not something to get concerned about. A potential difference is the noise. In the data linked below, you will see things are pretty even at 1300 rpm. Of course, 3x120@1300 rpm is usually easier on the ears than 2x140@1300. My solution for that was push pull on the bottom radiator. You would have the space if you wanted to do it with some lower motherboard plugs the only potential casualty.

I own both of these radiators and they are of the same make.

280 GTS

360 GTS

Now while all this sounds like the 360mm radiator has a slight edge, I am getting ready to move back into the 740 and dual 280 top/bottom configuration. I just like the case better and decibels don't always tell the full story of sound. Performance differences are a wash outside of deliberate load testing.

Since you plan to use soft tubing, a ball valve is not really a necessity. Soft tubing by itself offers plenty of movement to allow draining of the system. If desired, it's a welcome addition to the loop. You can use any of remaining inlet ports on the XD5 unit to connect the drain valve. To do so, you will need 2 additional XF Copmpression 10/13mm fittings.

Can you elaborate on how to connect the drain valve to the XD5 with compression fittings? Does the barb on the fitting go into the valve? there is no o-ring on the barb side so won't it leak?

You can connect a compression fitting to the pump, with a short length of tube, then another compression fitting going into the ball valve.

In my system I used corsairs y splitter fitting screwed into the ball valve, with 2 compression fittings off that as part of the normal loop tubing.

If you want to connect the ball valve directly to the pump you would need a male to male fitting, which corsair doesn't currently offer, but bitspower makes one that fits the visual styling of corsairs fittings.