How to tell how powerful pump is needed

[Turas]

I was once loking at a passive solution but have decided to use active instead. I have most of the equip on order or on hand but am curious about the pump. I plan on cooling dual Xeon quad cores, 2900XT, 4 FB DIMM chips, and the chipset. I may also add a single rad right before the video card to make sure I have cooling. There is a tripple rad in the setup also.

Waterblocks
Koolance Vid-290 water block for 2900XT
Koolance CPU-330 x2 for XEON processors
Koolance CHC -120 x2 norht/southbridge
Koolance HX-360 Rad mounted to bak of case
Koolance Memory blocks x2
Black ice gt steach tripple 120mm rad mounted in frount of case

Here is the Diagram




Would i need a second pump also? Does 2 pumps even work or wouldit cause problems due to flow rates and stuff?

[bobkoure]

You're water-cooling your northbridge, your southbridge, and your memory?

Time to move over to ProCooling or OC forums or such like.

[Khrono Devil]

All that really needs water cooling is your CPU / GPU core (not full cover block). Watering the NB/SB/Ram will only restrict you flow and increase your temps on your CPU / GPU. ThermalRight make some excellent tower heatpipe heat sink that can keep your NB/SB/RAM cool.

But if you already have the stuff I would say run a dual loop setup. Use the Single Rad + Pump to cool the NB/SB/Ram then the Triple rad to cool the CPUs and GPU.

Oh and I would throw that 2900XT out, 8800GT or HD38X0 cheap and faster and also would not dump nearly as much heat into your loop.

As for the pump I would recommend MCP355 / Liang DCC+

[surfntom]

i agree with the above poster, there is no need to cool the ram and southbridge and northbridge, a good passive air cooler will do just fine.

to answer your original question, the size of the pump needed is determined by the length of tubing, size of tubing, how much flow rate you want, and the types of entrances and exits of your cooling blocks.

sounds complicated but if you have access to a fluids text book it can easily be done. on the other hand the easiest solution is to just over design it. get a pump with a large head (usually measured in ft.). a trade off though is as the flowrate of a pump increase the available head goes down so just get a pump that seems average and if you need more power order a size up. 2 pumps is not really recommended but i guess it could be done, just more losses and areas to fail.