Of course it matters if it's in or out of the case. Which way does the air come from when you drive your car down the road? The same principle applys.
Also I'm a plumber, going on 10 years. Water cooling a computer correctly is child's play compared to what I do for a living bud. It's ok man. I water cooled wrong for years until I finally pulled my head out of my ass and learned.
Plumbing school, scientfically, helped me understand the principles better, including some of the equations that go along with those principles. The problem being, a computer water cooling is so small, it's actually difficult to refine the math involved on paper.
Most, and I mean pretty much all, heating or cooling systems do it all at once before it goes into the system and then branches. Kinda like blood in your body.
So all the cooling happens in a cooling tower (cooling) or boiler (heating). It doesn't cool off, go down a pipe, and then cool something and then cool off again and then cool somwthing. The more time water gets to spend being cooled or heated before doing its job the better. This is why we have pump curves for efficiency.
I have stood over my last setup with thermal probes, thermal sensors all over the case. Measuring everything until I found the best scenario. Best setup for ME was: back to back 360 rads before cooling any cores. And EVERY fan was pulling room air. Pump was half speed as full speed was a few degrees warmer on the cores under load. In the winter under max load (folding@home) my cpu was never higher than 25c and the video never broke 45c. My cpu idled at 2c over ambient.
So tell me my man, who do ya think is doing it right? The problem you're having is A/ fan direction. B/ thinking internal case air is fine when it's totally not.
Funny how we all can bang our heads around over loop order.....push or pull...pusn n pull...exhaust thru rads...intake thru rads.....pump speeds are better lower..no higher...etc etc etc...
But, in the end, the vast majority of wet head enthusiasts tend to wind up with the same or similar configs and results
What I got to after so much fvcking around with my loops over the first few years:
- pump speed around 65% or 3200 RPM is a "set n forget" regardless of loads.
- All Radiators set-up as intakes ...always!!
- Cases are hardly air tight, even if all your fans are intakes on rads, that warm is forced out thru all the nooks n crannies via positive pressure.
- If all your Rads are intakes, one 140mm top / rear is perrrrfect!
- Low FPI (Fins Per Inch) rads combined with low RPM / high static pressure fans is ideal.
- A couple of decent Rads after GPU and prior to going back to CPU should help CPU Temp and cool water even a little after exiting that GPU.
- Fvck push / pull...hardly worth the effort of all those extra fans...cables etc etc....yeah yeah I tried it, looked at results...those extra fans are in a back 40 closet.
- Love my manual fan controller.......I hate additional software to "automatically control fan speeds"...although Im still in the dark ages according to some yuppies
- heat up the end of your tubes in hot water prior to slipping on to the barbs,,,way easier.
- a little spit on the end of the tube then slide compression fitting up onto the spit covered rubber ...way easier to tighten!
- diluted CLR with regular rtap water to rinse n clean rads...then rinse n repeat with distilled...fvck that expensive rad cleaner
- use the brush fitting on the end of vaccum hose to clean the dust out of a Rad.
- Attach fittings and extra long tubing to rads prior to installing rads *(for those hard to reach spots.
- Flush your loop every 6 months ???? ..fvck that.(Im far too lazy)...once every 18 months or until you upgrade a component or your temps start getting high or you see mushroom looking anenemoie looking things growin in your Rez
- Wire and test all your fans on your Rads prior to first boot (this can save some grief)
- Build your PC out of the case...install drives...install OS / Apps..thoroughly test then move into case.
- Shake the shit out of your case while leak testing....move to almost horizontal...both directions....increase pump speed to max..then to low...turn it off..turn it back on...rince n repeat to speed up getting all the air out...it works.
- Your Loop IS NOT AN EGG....its far more robust then a lot of folks give credit....spit on your tubes...holy shit! ...that will cause contaminants and next thing you know your blocks will gunk up and your pump will die and your tubes will disintegrate from the inside out...then the Water Cooling Police will scold you...oh no!
My temps like Shades temps...low...my GPU ..whether it was SLi or single idles about 2c above ambient room temp...goes to 46c under full load then goes back to a few degrees above ambient fairly quickly after stopping the App...ideal...tells me my loop is doing what it is supposed to do.
Point of this post is to let the OP know that there is a heck of a lot of current and former wet heads here....a lot of experience building loops.
All of us had help initially in some form...I had plenty from so many members here, especially in my early days here initially building and then moving to Loops
Any books ever been written ...you know "Water Cooling a PC For Dummies"...I'm sure we could put something together!
Uh Oh.....there are now these little tiny "tadpole looking things" swimming around the mushrooms in my Rez, guess its time to flush