I remember years ago, when I was new here, watercooling was the best choice not only for great cooling for extreme overclocks, but also the best choice for a quiet PC. This was before heatpipes were used in CPU coolers, and even the best coolers were only small copper/alu heatsinks with 80mm fans. With watercooling, you could get a single or double 120mm radiator and have two big slow quiet fans giving you comparable temps to that single little high-RPM 80mm fan. Some people went water for extreme overclocks. Some people went water for extreme silence. Some people went water for reasons in between - to get a mild overclock with something that's still quieter than the stock cooling at stock speeds. The first reason is alive and well today. CPU TDPs have increased significantly. Most of them were around a 60w TDP, with the infamous "Preshot" being 115w. Now we're seeing the current flagships with 130w TDPs, but no one thinks twice about it because we have heatpipes and much better coolers. Graphics TDPs have increased considerably well. In the R300 days, most cards were completely powered by the AGP bus, with a select few high-performance ones requiring a single floppy drive connector for additional power. Now, even midrange cards require a six-pin PCIe power connector, with high-performance cards requiring two. Additionally, Crossfire and SLI have become available, meaning that it's not uncommon to see 500+ watts of just graphics cards in a single computer. Very rarely do we see watercooling loops like those back in the P4 and Athlon XP days. Single-pump (mains voltage, usually Eheim or Danner), single-radiator loops that were often 1x120mm radiator, sometimes 2x120mm radiator. You'd be cooling a 60w TDP processor and maybe 150w worth of graphics (I don't know what the TDP of those cards were, but I do know that many of them had non-heatpipe single-slot coolers with 40mm fans that exhausted into the case. I remember as we watched with awe one day when leaked pics were posted of the Geforce FX cooler, shocked to see that it was a dual-slot external exhaust affair with a squirrel cage blower). Most enthusiasts ran power supplies around 350-400w, which was plenty for those rigs. We thought a 500w PSU was crazy. Back then, the cost of watercooling was lower. Heater cores were thirty bucks, and you only needed one. Pumps were expensive, but only one was needed. A decent midrange watercooling setup was only $200 or so. If you wanted to have a good overclock, you needed either a top-of-the-line copper heatsink and a Vantec Tornado or Delta high-RPM 80mm fan, or a quiet watercooling rig. If you wanted a ridiculous overclock, you needed the watercooling plus a high-RPM fan. Is there still a place for midrange watercooling? At that same price point, is there still an advantage to go to water over air? Big heatpipe towers have now surpassed the performance of single-120mm rad loops, as evidenced by the fact that the Corsair H50, which would be representative of an average water cooling loop circa 2002 or so, is not as good as some of the best air coolers. The majority of current WC loops seem to be at least 3x120mm worth of rad, often as high as 6x120mm worth of rad, and many are dual loops with the GPUs having an entirely separate loop. If you're not doing extreme overclocking, and if you're not doing SLI or Crossfire, is there still an advantage to watercooling? The noise advantage is significantly reduced, since you can now put slow quiet fans on a heatpipe tower and still get good temperatures. At what point does it make sense to make the leap from high end air (TRUE, Titan Fenrir, Meghalems, etc.) to low-end water? I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.
There's no point going to low end stuff . I run my i7 940 @ 4.3ghz on a Corsair H50 with push pull fans, idle temps are low to mid 30's and max 72 on prime 95. That's not on full speed either. if you're going to make the jump to full on water cooling you've got t do it properly and go the whole hog.
I did it because the noise from my 5870 was annoying me during gaming!!! My water loop dropped my CPU temps by 10-15 C degree at idle and 20 C under load compared to my TRUE 120, GPU dropped by 20 at idle and 40 C under load and much quieter than my system before... Alot of cost and effort though...
I guess what I'm wondering is if 'low end' watercooling still exists. To me, it seems like the expensive heatpipe tower coolers and self-contained loops like the Corsair H50 have completely killed off basic watercooling. The only watercooling that still seems prevalent is expensive multi-loop multi-GPU stuff. There used to be a significant gap between the best air cooling and the worst watercooling, and it seems like air cooling has just gotten better while water cooling has remained the same. How much do you have to spend to get a watercooling setup that surpasses the best air coolers? Seeing a 120mm or 240mm single loop is far less common than it used to be. I feel like many people that would have had basic watercooling setups instead went with expensive air cooling that's just as good, and those that are watercooling have moved onto huge and expensive setups. Bloody_Pete, if you don't mind me asking, what is in your loop?
Low end custom loops became obsolete when manufacturers realised that they can easily satisfy this market segment. Why would you build your own when a H50 can do the same? High-end multi-block watercooling on the other hand is here to stay.
Have to agree, a h50 or h70 is nice but high end is worth it for serious overclocks. Plus you have to admit it really does look the savage. Asthetics does play a huge part after all. Most of all do imho it adds alot of fun to the project your working on even if it is at at a higher cost. Rip
I don't think that it does, recently i looked into water for 1 GPU (nvidia 275) and the cost would have been just a little less than the graphics card. It was only for the gpu because the cpu, i dont feel needs that level of cooling. The plus was the same as all water cooling setups. And cases tend to be better made for air cooling atm.
Many high end cases now feature triple 120mm radiator mounts. You can have a very clean water cooling setup with no unsightly external mountings.
I was trying to say that they are more built for high air flow, over water cooling. If that makes sence.
Low end WC certainly exists, but I'd agree in that with the current HSF lineup it's largely pointless -- I'd say you *do* have to make a significant investment to make WC give you more headroom for a higher clock. Take my 920 for example -- most will do 4Ghz easily on air. My quad rad allows me to take it to 4.3 -- was the ~£400 investment worth it for an additional 300Mhz? Probably not. I know a lot of chips will do higher than that but I've never really seen anyone run higher than around 4.5 24/7. Even the argument of increasing the chips longevity doesn't necessarily hold water (see what I did there?) when you consider the type of enthusiast to invest in a significant amount of cooling is likely to completely replace their platform every year/generation or so.
But once you have the pump, rad and res they dont need replacing very often do they? I dont really know because i'm still undecided if the cost is worth it.
