News New chinese cpu, waterblock-pump BARROW



Anyone know this brand? I wonder if this could fit in a NCASE as alternative for the Apogee 2, but' i can't find more infos.

http://www.barrowint.com/news/x/1607.html
 
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watts_happening

Caliper Novice
Apr 15, 2020
25
36
@watts_happening @baserape How much easier is bleeding the loop with the barrow vs using no res and a T-line?

This is actually my first water cooled build, so I don't have much to compare against. As shown in the photo I posted, I attached a length of clear tubing to the fill port and ran the pump slowly while filling. It was hard enough to keep it from running dry with the tube that I don't think it would work very well without.

Once filled, I tipped the case to various angles to help get air out. Again, that was only possible due to the clear tube. Then I let it run for a couple days with the tube sticking out to get the rest of the bubbles before removing the tube and sealing it up.

The way I removed the tube was to carefully snip the excess length and suck out the water with a syringe until it was down below the level of the fitting.

Not sure how a t-line works exactly, but it sounds like maybe a more permanent version of the above.
 

merchgf

Minimal Tinkerer
New User
Oct 5, 2020
4
4
dexamethasone
This is actually my first water cooled build, so I don't have much to compare against. As shown in the photo I posted, I attached a length of clear tubing to the fill port and ran the pump slowly while filling. It was hard enough to keep it from running dry with the tube that I don't think it would work very well without.

Once filled, I tipped the case to various angles to help get air out. Again, that was only possible due to the clear tube. Then I let it run for a couple days with the tube sticking out to get the rest of the bubbles before removing the tube and sealing it up.

The way I removed the tube was to carefully snip the excess length and suck out the water with a syringe until it was down below the level of the fitting.

Not sure how a t-line works exactly, but it sounds like maybe a more permanent version of the above.

Thanks for the explanation on what you had to do.

With a T-line, you have a T-fitting with 2 ends being the normal loop and the 3rd end being a piece of tubing. The difference between this and what you did is that there is no reservoir to hopefully easily trap the air. That is one of the major struggles of using a T-line is that it is difficult to get the air bubbles to go up the tube attached to the T-fitting instead of just recirculating. With a normal reservoir, much more of the air gets trapped in the top and doesn't recirculate, and while it still takes time with a reservoir it isn't nearly as difficult to bleed the air. You just fill the reservoir, power cycle, and repeat until filled then just run it to get the remaining air. At that point, no intervention is generally necessary and with time the smaller bubbles will work their way to the reservoir. This doesn't always happen so easily with a T-line.

Did the tiny reservoir on the block and tubing you set up capture the air bubbles decently well and prevent them from recirculating? It sounds like there was still some difficulty with trapping the air, but perhaps not too much difficulty since the pump is at least directly fed.

The reason why I am asking these questions, is I want to understand how practical the reservoir on this block is. I'm going to be doing an ncase m1 build soon and I would love to get this barrow block if it can serve as a practical reservoir for bleeding the loop and keeping it filled. If not, I may just get the iceman.
 
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watts_happening

Caliper Novice
Apr 15, 2020
25
36
Did the tiny reservoir on the block and tubing you set up capture the air bubbles decently well and prevent them from recirculating? It sounds like there was still some difficulty with trapping the air, but perhaps not too much difficulty since the pump is at least directly fed.

The tiny reservoir seemed to do ok, combined with the clear tube which I was thinking of as a temporary "reservoir extension". The pump is strong enough that it would recirculate the bubbles, but I found that repeatedly varying the pump speed from fast (to blow out the air from the rest of the system) to slow (to allow them to collect in the reservoir) seemed to get the job done. Much of my air seemed to be stuck in the side-mounted radiator, so I would tip it on the side at full RPM until I could hear the air was replaced by water and then tip it back and lower the RPMs to let the air escape at the reservoir. Maybe the process is faster with a larger reservoir, but as a reasonably skilled newbie it seemed straightforward. I'm definitely happy with how compact it is compared to having a reservoir hanging off the back of the case.
 
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merchgf

Minimal Tinkerer
New User
Oct 5, 2020
4
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The tiny reservoir seemed to do ok, combined with the clear tube which I was thinking of as a temporary "reservoir extension". The pump is strong enough that it would recirculate the bubbles, but I found that repeatedly varying the pump speed from fast (to blow out the air from the rest of the system) to slow (to allow them to collect in the reservoir) seemed to get the job done. Much of my air seemed to be stuck in the side-mounted radiator, so I would tip it on the side at full RPM until I could hear the air was replaced by water and then tip it back and lower the RPMs to let the air escape at the reservoir. Maybe the process is faster with a larger reservoir, but as a reasonably skilled newbie it seemed straightforward. I'm definitely happy with how compact it is compared to having a reservoir hanging off the back of the case.

Thanks. I think I'll try this on my next build. It may be a little while though since I need to get my hands on an RTX 3080 and wait for AMD Zen 3 CPUs. We'll then have an AMD data point on how it fits and bleeding goes as well since the block appears to be turned 90 degrees when mounted for AMD.
 
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baserape

Efficiency Noob
Sep 27, 2020
5
10
I agree with everything watts said. It’s taken about a week leaving the tube connected and adding more water as the micro bubbles slowly workout of the system.
 
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