Warranty void with watercooling monoblock?

[SexyTerrorisT]

Hello first post!

Jump to last line if TL;DR

I am an old Asus and ROG fan. Been rocking asus boards since the P4C800-E Deluxe back in the Northwood Pentium days.
I am posting from my X48 Rampage Formula with a watercooled Q9650 oc to 3.84 Ghz with ocz 4x2bGB 1066 Mhz 5-5-5-15 DDR2 and GTX680.
This board has survived a serious leak : cpu waterblock leaked and dripped on northbridge and PCI slot! The P4C800 did not a minor one 😛
TIme to retire my RAMPAGE!

As you can tell i am a hardened watercooling overclocking nut!! I have now purchased my next ultimate build to last me a bunch of years.
The Crosshair VI Hero,
1800X,
4x8 gskill 3200 14-14-14-36-2N RGB kit (F4-3200C14Q-32GTZR),
960 Pro NVME,
EVGA 1060 SC,
Seasonic 850 Prime Titanium
I am still on 1080p 120Hz; waiting for proper 4k monitors @ 120+Hz with cards that can drives those frames). And an 60 cm rgb led strip :cool:
I have also splashed around 1k for top of the line EK watercooling equipment.(Sorry to betray you koolance but u need more sexy blocks)
All those will be shoved in a Obsidian 750D airflow edition with ton of fans.

1 last part remains. The dilemma is between a regular cpu waterblock or a full monoblock to also cool the VRMs. Will the Crosshair VI hero warranty be void if i install a monoblock?

Thank you in advance.

[JustinThyme]

Technically removing the heat pipes does negate and warranty, thats if you made it obvious.
Ive tried a couple of full cover blocks and they proved to be too restrictive to flow. Last one was an EK and two D5 pumps in series were choked down to less than 30L/h. Replaced with supremacy evo and im 130L/hr.

[Zka17]

Yeap, most likely the warranty will be gone... I would first try to see how the airflow is in the VRM area...
On a R5E10 the monoblock didn't do too much while trying it on a test bench (open setup)...

JustinThyme: just curious, how are you measuring the flow? Do you have any temp difference between the slower vs higher flows?

[SexyTerrorisT]

Thank you JustinThyme and Zka17 for you prompt replies!

I was suspecting that it would indeed void the warranty but that it would be hard to prove it. I am quite dubious of the added benefit of the monoblock would provide: VRM heat sinks are quite beefy and my case will be already providing a healthy amount of air and since JustinThyme says it adds a lot of flow restriction.
Which monoblocks did you use? Latest seem to not add a lot of flow restriction. Thing is i want to run the fans as low as possible to reduce noise. I want a lot of power but not sacrifice acoustics and run a turbine next to me.

I am also planning of using 2 D5 pumps in series. I got the EK-XTOP Revo Dual D5 PWM Serial. Bit disapointed tbh by the fact that the the EK-RES X3 Lite 250 that can be mounted on top does not mount completely vertically. I carefully chose all my parts to be high flow at the moment ;
-EK-CoolStream CE 280 (Dual) in front of intake in push-pull config.
-EK-CoolStream XE 360 (Triple) in push config
To monitor water temp I'll use two Phobya - HighFlow Temp probes 1/4" M / F - Black Mat which i will connect on bottom right of the mobo.
One will be placed after the water passes trough the 2nd rad and the other after before entering the 1rst rad
The plan of the loop is
Reservoir->Dual Pump unit -> Dual Rad -> Temp Sensor 1 (in) -> CPU Water block -> Temp Sensor 2 (out) -> Triple Rad
When GTX 1180 come to market it will be
Reservoir->Dual Pump unit -> Dual Rad -> Temp Sensor 1 (in) -> CPU Water block -> GPU Water Block 1 -> GPU Water Block 2 -> Temp Sensor 2 (out) -> Triple Rad
I was thinking of adding a flow meter as i had in the past (koolance INS-FM16 Coolant Flow Meter) but pump speed will be dynamically adjusted on temps and not flow rate. Since this time i will have 2 pumps in series for speed and redundancy and the motherboard and cpu have built in safety mechanisms I am not worried about pump failure.
My D5 kolance pumps has been running 10 years almost 24/7 and still has not failed me.
I see little value in this setup for a flow meter. Just added flow restriction and tbh none of those i have seen pleases me aesthetically.
I will only use EK-HD PETG Tube 12/16mm to reduce as much as possible flow restriction.

I want Power, beauty and silence. The only drawback is space since the 750 D is a Full ATX case.
Do you believe i should go for a monoblock or that i will lose more performance than gain any JustinThyme ? What held my oc back with my rampage X48 was northbridge and board temp rather than CPU temp. I know there isn't much to gain OC to be gained atm but i am confident than Zen2 will have more headroom.

[JustinThyme]

Zka17 wrote:
Yeap, most likely the warranty will be gone... I would first try to see how the airflow is in the VRM area...
On a R5E10 the monoblock didn't do too much while trying it on a test bench (open setup)...

JustinThyme: just curious, how are you measuring the flow? Do you have any temp difference between the slower vs higher flows?

This plugged into an aquaero 6 controller.
http://www.aquatuning.us/water-cooling/monitoring/flow-indicator/6146/aquacomputer-durchflusssensor-...

IM using two D5 PWM controlled motors through the same controller. Constant 12V and speed varies with PWM duty cycle going into this head




Yes there is a temp difference noted when doing anything intensive, idle not so much. With two pumps running full bore and all the fans running full bore my liquid temp would climb to nearly 40C after some time. I was pulling my hair out! Put the flow meter in and noted the low flow. Replaced the full cover with the supremacy evo and BINGO!!! Flow went up dramatically by more than 4x and liquid temp hasn't made it to 35C since (I can keep it lower but 35C is my max setting for Liquid temp). Even the most intensive thrashing of the CPU and GPUs the fans or pumps dont make it to 100%. For pump speed I set it to where they are the quietest for the most part and get twice as much flow with them at 40% than I did with the full clover block and pumps at 100%.

Here is a quick stress run no OC applied, 15min graphs you can see from minimum use to peak with both CPU and GPUs being stressed then note the drop off where the GPU stress ended. The rest is CPU at 100% only.



Then just a quick force to 100% on fans and pumps.

[Darth_Ender]

high flow rate will always cool better than low flowrate assuming the heat from the pump selection isn't a significant factor.

But yea, i'd assume if you start taking off pre-installed heatsinks and fans that you're taking responsibility if anything fails from then on. Would be pretty difficult to determine if a failure after that is all done is due to manufacturer defects or user manipulation.

No surprise there.

you say you're gonna have the thing in a case with a bunch of large fans. Why even bother with replacing the motherboard heatpipes and such with a water block? Seems rather unnecessary. They should see plenty of airflow from the case fans and probably cooled as effectively or more than sharing a radiator with the cpu and look way less cluttered than running multiple radiators and pumps.

[Zka17]

I also like dual pumps for redundancy! But didn't consider them for higher flow...
I have D5 varios and running them always on 2nd setting... I would really like to experiment low vs high flow one day though...

Until now I was thinking that allowing slow flow will facilitate the heat exchange - for the water in the block to take up heat and in the rads to dump it (water has a lot heat capacity)...
But now everybody opts for high flow systems... one day I will make some experiments...

[Arne_Saknussemm]

High flow for the win...it's to do with turbulent flow...higher flow more turbulence...more turbulence at boundary where heat exchange is taking place...more cooling...

[Darth_Ender]

Arne Saknussemm wrote:
High flow for the win...it's to do with turbulent flow...higher flow more turbulence...more turbulence at boundary where heat exchange is taking place...more cooling...

there is that but it is also just a simple physics problem. Heat builds up in the cpu constantly and has to go somewhere. The heat constant of the liquid doesn't change due to speed and nor does the total volume of liquid in the system, so how fast it can get heat from the cpu to the radiator is simply a matter of how fast it is moving. The same is true at the radiator end with transferring to air. Faster speeds == lower normalized temps, slower speeds will result in higher normalized temps.

A lot of people get hung up on the idea that temp differentials result in higher amounts of heat transferred over a given time, but they dont realize that creating this situation requires you to have really high cpu temps to water temps and this is bad. It also means that when the system normalizes, it will normalize as a much higher temp. You want the water temp to be normalized to the cpu temp and you want both as low as possible. This is best realized by fast moving water, but you can achieve similar results as fast moving water in a slower system if the radiators ( or air flow across them) is much higher in the slower pump system. However, often, faster water flow is quieter and easier to do than have a huge radiator or louder fans on them.

[Zka17]

Thank you, JustiThyme - it is greatly appreciated!

Yes, I know the literature about the flow thing... however I never experienced it on my systems... - but I start getting it now... it has to do with the radiator surface too...
I guess, I just always had excess radiator estate...
I was keeping my D5 varios at the 2nd speed because of noise considerations... then kept my coolant temp not more than 5C above the ambient... but again, with way bigger rads than you could buid in a case... 🙂

I will certainly play around with the flow! :cool: