Quietest Watercooling Pump

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jk1
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Quietest Watercooling Pump

Post by jk1 » Tue Mar 16, 2004 8:03 am

I am currently building a 1/2" ID WC setup and am trying to find the quietest pump. Any recommendations?...

trodas
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Post by trodas » Tue Mar 16, 2004 10:44 am

Eheims are the most quiet pumps out there, just make sure there are no bubbles :wink:
So either Eheim 1250 or Eheim 1048 - the smaller one it also even more quiet and enought powerfully for many users, however it denpends what do you cooling :wink:
If it will be soon CPU, GPU and chipset and you are DangerDen RBX watter block, then using Eheim 1250 is a must :P

Other pumps are not proven to be such reliable ones and even mcp600 from Swiftech beat the crap out of Eheim 1250 (even having half the specified speed) on highly restrictive loops, it's notably more noisy one - perhaps due to the closed impeler design? :roll:

nova
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Post by nova » Tue Mar 16, 2004 11:01 am

I would recomend Eheim pumps as well. I just installed my watercooling a couple of days ago but I've read a lot about it. I remember reading somewhere that the MCP600 from swiftech uses ball bearings and Eheim is using sleave bearings. The same place said that the MCP600 sounds like a Panaflo L1A. I'll try to find the link in my big collection. Find some way to dampen the vibrations of the pump and make sure there's no air bubbles.

Edit: found the link http://www.systemcooling.com/swiftech_mcp600-01.html
Last edited by nova on Tue Mar 16, 2004 11:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

trodas
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Post by trodas » Tue Mar 16, 2004 11:09 am

Of course, w/o lot's of foam around and mainly bellow the Eheim pump it will be pretty noisy after all :? Vibrating is culprit there.
I taken a bit extreme noise pre-cautinons as you can check there:
http://ax2.wz.cz/galerie.php?p=wc&c=7&d=1&v=v2

Image

...but it's wort it :P I can't hear a thing from my pump and since i have no fans... I got SILENCE :twisted:

jk1
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Post by jk1 » Tue Mar 16, 2004 11:28 am

All good information...thanks...I was planning on the Swiftech, but I am going to have to look into the Eheim pumps now -- one thing about all of this is I want a completely internal solution, so I may have to go with the Swiftech if it fits better than the Eheim 1250
The same place said that the MCP600 sounds like a Panaflo L1A.
Aren't Panaflos pretty quiet?

nova
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Post by nova » Tue Mar 16, 2004 11:36 am


Aren't Panaflos pretty quiet?
Yes they are but I read the review again and it says somewhere between the noise of a L1A and M1A (check page 3). M1A is far to noisy for me, I'm using a Eheim 1250 and a heatercore internally in my case not running fanless of course. I haven't fixed the vibrations completely yet, but my system is in the experiment phase at the moment. Waiting for the waterblock for my Radeon 9800 Pro.

Nice dampening there trodas, a bit too big for me though.

Edit: added info
Last edited by nova on Tue Mar 16, 2004 11:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

jk1
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Post by jk1 » Tue Mar 16, 2004 11:48 am

I'm using a Eheim 1250 internally in my case.
What case are you using...I've got to try and fit it all in an Antec P160...can you hear the pump over the sound of the fans?...[/quote]

sorenbro
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Post by sorenbro » Tue Mar 16, 2004 11:58 am

You can get some antivibration rubber feet for the Eheim pumps, and there is a simple mod for the pumps to make them even quieter.
I have a link to a danish page here:
http://www.sitecenter.dk/magix/scrapbog4/
The original article is in german, and there is a link in the danish articel to the original german.

nova
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Post by nova » Tue Mar 16, 2004 12:04 pm

jk1 wrote:
I'm using a Eheim 1250 internally in my case.
What case are you using...I've got to try and fit it all in an Antec P160...can you hear the pump over the sound of the fans?...
[/quote]

I'm using a Chieftec Dragon miditower, I think it will fit nicely in the P160 as well. Nope I can't hear the pump over the fans.. But my system is not as quiet as it was before I started watercooling, temporary of course. If you dampen the vibrations of the eheim and get all air out of the system it should be basically quiet when the case is closed.

nova
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Post by nova » Tue Mar 16, 2004 12:06 pm

sorenbro wrote:You can get some antivibration rubber feet for the Eheim pumps, and there is a simple mod for the pumps to make them even quieter.
I have a link to a danish page here:
http://www.sitecenter.dk/magix/scrapbog4/
The original article is in german, and there is a link in the danish articel to the original german.
Thanks I've been looking for a step by step guide for the Eheim. I've read about it but never seen pictures of it before.

chylld
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Post by chylld » Tue Mar 16, 2004 1:49 pm

i'm using the eheim 1048 and it doesn't contribute to noise at all. it is an absolutely awesome pump. any eheim pump is highly recommended.

the swiftech mcp600 has been plagued with a lot of problems, so if you get one, you must get the 3rd revision of the pump. it is identifiable by an 'S' in front of the number on the pump label. also, the reason why it outperforms the eheim 1250 is because it has a significantly larger pressure head rating, which is a more important factor than free flow rate when it comes to watercooling loops.

wisefool
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Eheim pumps

Post by wisefool » Tue Mar 16, 2004 4:03 pm

That silencing box looks nice.

If you have the room you could borrow the hard drive suspension techniques. I noticed the fish tank of a family member was making a lot of noise. The pump was resting inside a wooden cabinet, making the wooden panels resonate nicely. I grabbed some sewing elastic lying around and suspended the pump.

Got some bungee cord now, try it out to see if it helps. At this point I can't figure it helping much however because the silly air-bubble machine makes most of the noise now.

trodas
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Post by trodas » Wed Mar 17, 2004 1:42 am

nova - thanks :wink: Im just very very addicted to silence and i will be very pi*sed of, when i was able to hear the pump, so that's why :wink: The pump inside are Eheim 1048 anyway. I now got 1250 and see, if i can use it w/o hearing it into my box :P

chylld - you are right (as anyone can see there: http://www.procooling.com/articles/html ... tus__1.php ), however is a question if the Swiftech is worth the possible troubles :roll: For far most users, even Eheim 1048 is enought, not to mention 1250 :wink:
And there are one more thing against Swiftech, except the discusable reliability (not proven over years like Eheim) - the pump add lot's of heat into the loop, so... :oops: :?

snutten
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Post by snutten » Wed Mar 17, 2004 4:44 pm

The Ehiem 1048 has more than enough flow if the loop is open enough.
It performes poorly against back pressure. I used to cool HDD, CPU and GPU with just one loop and water flow was very slow. I have since made an extra loop leading water along copper plates along the outer walls of the case (the alu case becomes a heatsink), and split the other loop into two after the HDD cooler, which has low resistance.

This means water runs parallell along three loops:
HDD - CPU - Radiator 1
HDD - GPU - Radiator 2
Outer cooling loop

These loops each have better flow than the original single one. So the pump now pushes more than 3 times more water. This has made the pump vibrate less, and probably increased it´s lifetime.

Be warned though. If your computer really is sound-geek-quiet, the pump will be the biggest noisemaker, even if you get rid of the vibrations.
Speaking of vibrations; placing it on soft materials won´t do. Best is to suspend it hanging in elastic cords, just like people do with their HDD. Unless of course, you can mount it in an external box like Trodas.

Btw, trodas, does the pump get very warm that way? I´m thinking about covering mine in dampening materials but I´m worried it might overheat a little.

trodas
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Post by trodas » Thu Mar 18, 2004 7:51 am

Well, mine don't overheating very much (me checking the box temperature... ) - the box is cold, about 1 or 2 degrees above ambient i could say? Well, we know better when my digital thermometer arrive :wink: Dusting, pls, hurry up! :P

The only one heating thing are the two rads close to it. Eheim 1048 don't generating much heat, but 1250 do a little. I hope i can post rather sooner that later comparsions between box temperatures using 1048 and 1250 :wink:

...so i think is safe to suggest something like it. I can't hear it, so i quess it's done well. However when i touched the box, it still vibrate a little. Hmmm... :? Time to fix the kinking tube to get better flow and perhaps even less vibrations, as your post suggesting.

However most WC dudes voting always strongly against parallel loops, because always one loop starving and if this is your CPU or GPU - then it could end badly... So be lucky your one working well :wink:
General rule is using 1/2" tubing and making thing simply and serial. However some dudes come with bold idea, using one of the nice 3-inlet CPU blocks like DangerDen RBX one as spliter and - the imput is into the middle and Y joiner is supplied - on one of the output put a GPU block and on one put chipset block. It worked well, however DD RBX need at least Eheim 1250 :wink:

Image

PS. anyone, go for the brass toped one - worser look, but better performance! :wink:

snutten
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Post by snutten » Thu Mar 18, 2004 5:58 pm

Thanks Trodas! I'll try covering my pump up in something soft. But still have it hanging from the cords. It's a must if the pump is inside the case or everything starts to vibrate.

About the splitting. If one loop gets more flow than the other, just add a clamp and adjust it. I have a clamp on the "heatsink" loop, since it has low resistance and need only a slow flow to heat the walls anyway. Splitting can make for big improvements in flow and also eliminates the need for bigger pumps.

Seal
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Post by Seal » Sat Mar 20, 2004 9:55 am

Hiya, yeah i use an eheim 1048 in my watercooled setup, its MORE than adequate for alot of setups. Common misconceptions with watercooling are that pumps create alot of noise, they dont (well very little anyway), its just the vibrations from them that subsequently cause the noise, the bigger the pump, the more vibrations = more noise.

Seal
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Post by Seal » Sat Mar 20, 2004 9:59 am

btw nice box trodas!

trodas
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Post by trodas » Sat Mar 20, 2004 10:54 am

snutten - im affraid that most watercooler pros did not agree with the parallel. It's not because you are not right and the flow cannot be adjusted by a simple clamp, however because you mostly did not know, witch part of the parallel run starving and witch not, especially if your GPU is ATI and not nVidia and you then don't have any idea, how good is cooled - and for me, 300+$ is far too more to send to computer heaven right now :wink:
Better 1/2" tubing and you can run everything in serial wihtou worry about flow :wink:

Seal - thanks, i did my best on it, i like well-done things and i need to put the WC thing away from my computer for many reasons, from safety, to heat, from EMI to small case... so i did. It, however, hurt the flow a little... I soon (hope very soon) find out, how it can ne improved.
And because there are too much obstacles in the loop and the rads tend to have very small diamaters of pipes, the Eheim 1250 is more desirable that the 1048, because simply spoken - flow is everyhing that matter in watercooling :wink:
AND some blocks, namely the DD RBX and similar, are well performers only with HIGH flow, they perform pi*spoor on Eheim 1048, because of small flow. In case of small flow setup, like me, go with the Maze4 instead of RBX :wink:

Gooserider
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Post by Gooserider » Tue Mar 23, 2004 2:48 pm

For the most part, the small mag-drive aquarium pumps we typically use for WC'ing a system are all pretty quiet, noise doesn't need to be the primary consideration in choosing one. I would agree with those reccomending the Eheim pumps however, as they have an excellent reputation for quality and reliability. The rev. 3 Swiftech pumps also have a good reputation, I would consider one of their pumps even if I wouldn't touch one of their blocks. In the US the Danner Mag3 is also a good pump, as are the Iwaki's (My personal choice)

All will need some form of vibration damping and isolation. Head pressure is probably the most important factor, so I would probably go with the Eheim 1250 or the Swifty of the choices presented. Also keep in mind that among the AC pumps, the 50Hz models don't perform as well as the 60Hz models. The Swifty has the advantage of slightly easier wiring since it's 12 volt, and at least in theory can be undervolted to give less noise if a given setup offers enough flow.

As to the series vs. parallel debate, THERE IS NO RIGHT ANSWER! Each setup is different, and each will do best with a different configuration, the only way to determine the best setup is by testing. That said, I would offer the following guidelines -

1. ALL coolant should go through the radiator, although it doesn't matter in what sequence it does so. The rad should be chosen to be as low restriction as possible. (Why I like single pass rads so much, they have 1/4th the resistance of double pass rads)

2. ALL, or nearly all coolant should go through the CPU block, with the exception that if using a high pressure / high volume pump, it might be OK to run low volume high restriction loops in parallel with the CPU

3. The line from the res to the pump inlet should be the biggest line in the system, so as to offer NO effective flow resistance - a pump that is pulling a suction head is much more likely to cavitate, which causes both noise and vibration.

4. Dual CPU's can run parallel or serial, depending on which gives the best flow through them, or which optimizes the total system flow rate.

5. Tubing sizes should go down no more than a 1/8" or 3mm step for each doubling of tubing count or they will be flow restrictions themselves. (1/2" ~ 2 x 3/8" ~ 4 x 1/4", etc.)

As an example, my very atypical system is setup as follows
1. Iwaki MD20 ->via 3/4" ->
2. rad (Fedco 2-342 single pass core) ->
3. manifold, 4 way, with 2 x 1/2" and 2 x 3/8" outputs ->
4A. Each 1/2" out feeds a home made CPU block ->
4B. Each 3/8" out feeds 2 highly restrictive home made HDD coolers ->
5. All rejoin at the res via seperate inlets ->
6. Back to the pump via 3/4"

When I was doing my bucket testing, I found that the CPU blocks in series flowed about 3GPM, which was good. When I put them in parallel, my per block flow dropped to 2.5GPM, which was not as good, but still highly acceptable, and the total system flow of 5GPM was better overall. As I stated, my HDD blocks are very restrictive, (I would not do the same design again) and while they flow about 1/2GPM for the two branches, I could not see that they caused any significant change in the CPU block flow rate. Thus they are OK run in parallel, but would not have been OK in serial as they would have killed the flow in the entire system.

Gooserider

Nowhere_man
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Post by Nowhere_man » Tue Mar 23, 2004 9:10 pm

I went the Chevette heater core route last year with a Hydor L30 II pump and a Swiftec universal water block (screw in barbs) and no reserve tank, just a 1/2" fill tube. As lean as you can get but a real bear to fill and bleed.

The Hydor pump gets louder with time, vibrates a lot, very annoying. It's all inside an Antec SX835 with the heater core mounted in the front behind the stock bezel with zip ties. 3/8" ID hose worked best due to the very low restriction of the heater core. Serria Environmentally friendly anti-freeze works well while not staining the tubing much. Distilled water is a must.

I like the Aluminum EXOS and probably would go with that if I did it again.

trodas
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Post by trodas » Wed Mar 24, 2004 3:09 pm

Gooserider - agreed with almost everything, and especially with this:
3. The line from the res to the pump inlet should be the biggest line in the system...
Definitively! :P I has a flow-rate problems, but as soon, as i moded my Tank-O-Matic res from 3/8" output to 1/2" output and the Danger Den tube lead right to the Eheim 1250 inlet - well, when i first turned the pump for a while when flooding the system - whoa - that WAS SOMETHING!!! :shock: The flow is shockingly strong and fast, i could not believe my eyes :shock: Whooooosh!!! :twisted: ...and watter is sucked out of the res and gone in the system 8)
Well, thumbs up for such a solution - even my system is highly restrictive, the res-pump connection with respectable hose making wonders when come to flow - and in watercooling - everything and realy everything that matter is the flow :wink:
I only can't agree with using 3/8" tubing as 'normal' or "standard' and i can't believe you can say that is possible when spliting got to even lover diamater. Never! 3/8" tubing is restrictive as hell itself! No wonder all well experienced WC guys going with 1/2"! I would recommend to avoid 3/8" at all. Of course there is no point of avoiding it, when your rad(s) have internal diameter of the pipes 7mm (2/8"), as mine...

Nowhere_man - well, try dumping the Hydror pump at much, as you can. In contrast to Eheim 1250 is at least small :wink: BTW, vibration is mostly result of too big flow resistance in your loop :?

halcyon
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Post by halcyon » Thu Mar 25, 2004 1:27 am

My guess is that the Zalman Reserator pump/radiator is the quietest of them all. It's hard to say this for sure though, as I haven't seen acoustic measurements yet.

Funnily enough Zalman Reserator and their WB2 also outperforms Eheim 1048 + Danger Den RBX + big active radiator (according to a test at Nordic Hardware).

More discussion here:

http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=11147

Now that's quite something (if it's true).

Seal
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Post by Seal » Thu Mar 25, 2004 2:42 am

the zalman is a 3/8", thats not acceptable!!!

Dhurdahl
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Post by Dhurdahl » Thu Mar 25, 2004 3:22 am

Seal wrote:the zalman is a 3/8", thats not acceptable!!!
Why?

As long as it works I wouldn't care less HOW they did it.


Sure it might not suite those Uber overclockers but that isn't the target for that product anyway.

:D

Beerhunter
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Post by Beerhunter » Thu Mar 25, 2004 3:56 am

Eheim 1048 is SILENT after impellor mod.

chylld
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Post by chylld » Thu Mar 25, 2004 5:48 am

Dhurdahl wrote:
Seal wrote:the zalman is a 3/8", thats not acceptable!!!
As long as it works I wouldn't care less HOW they did it.
well, we do. :)
any watercooler worth half his salt would appreciate the numerous benefits 1/2" tubed systems have to offer. 3/8" systems are quite simply inferior, with flow rates literally around half that offered by 1/2" systems. even when you're going for silence, performance comes into major consideration.

Seal
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Post by Seal » Thu Mar 25, 2004 10:55 am

Dhurdahl wrote:
Seal wrote:the zalman is a 3/8", thats not acceptable!!!
Why?

As long as it works I wouldn't care less HOW they did it.


Sure it might not suite those Uber overclockers but that isn't the target for that product anyway.

:D
It might work, but not very well. Esp with higher end processors (not overclocked at all) I think something like that would struggle to efficiently cool more than an xp2200

Nowhere_man
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Post by Nowhere_man » Thu Mar 25, 2004 7:01 pm

SPCR forums sure are busy!

Thank for the advice trodas. I actually had too much flow with 1/2" hose, the water didn't spend enough time in the rad to properly cool. I'm probably just going to wrap the pump in foam and let it go at that.

I orginally put that water system together as a quick solution for OCing, since then it has been assigned to other duties.

chylld
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Post by chylld » Thu Mar 25, 2004 8:24 pm

Nowhere_man wrote:I actually had too much flow with 1/2" hose, the water didn't spend enough time in the rad to properly cool.
is this really the case? i don't really know for swure myself, but i'd imagine that the water would spend less time in the waterblocks as well, balancing it out.

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