Ok....I have been building my own PC's for about 12 years and have always air cooled. Up to now, I havn't been arsed with overclocking but am an constant gamer (much to the wifes dislike!) and like good kit (as best as budget can be) that is quiet and as cool as possible. Since the time of Orac I have wanted to do my own custom case build but never had the time, money or balls to do it. I now (being all growded up!) have the money, balls (or indeed willing) and some time to give it a shot. Now, I dont have any machining tools and only have a small workspace so all the work will be by hand and in relatively cramped conditions. So, the question is, do I: A) (seeing as I am popping my case build cherry on this one) start relatively small and just design a case for my current air cooled PC? B) Grab life by the scruff of the neck and just jump feet first into the unknown and go for a fully watercooled future rig? The general idea of buying £1k+ worth of kit and then adding water into the mix scares the bejeezus out of me (warranties?). However the idea of having a fast PC that is near silent and very cool makes me hard! So whats it to be guys, safe option and build up or drop trouser and lay a steamer on caution?
Hey Andy I would go crazy and jump straight into water cooling but then that me you need to weigh up the pro's and con's from both a performance point of view but also from a design one to. Would be great for a bit more info on what you have planned like "full scratch build" "case mod"
I voted to aircool, but in reality you might be fine WCing after all. You don't need any machining tools, unless of course you're planning an extreme build. There are so many after market brackets and accessories that all you might need is a drill and that's it. Water cooling is not necessarily quieter than air cooling. Remember, unless you build a passive system, you're still going to have a pump running and fans to cool the radiator. Air cooling is far, far cheaper, but water cooling may be more fulfilling. Many people WC these days to squeeze out every ounce of performance, not necessarily to drop the sound level. When you have all your components ready to be mounted and connected with tubing, do a dry wet run and you should be fine. Check for leaks after 24 hours and if there aren't any, you're good to go. After that, check the condition of the system every now and then, and make adjustments as necessary. You can connect pumps to your mobo headers so that if it fails, your system shuts off. Similarly, you can set up temperature and/or flow sensors so that if there's a major leak, the system will hibernate or power itself down quickly. As long as you don't take shortcuts, you should be fine. Remember, in industry water cooling is done all the time, with far worse consequences if there's a mistake. Back at the university, someone left an old watercooling loop flowing overnight in one of the labs, and the tubing burst at a fitting. Come Monday morning there was tens of thousands of dollars of damage to second floor and 1st floor offices. In some areas water stains indicate that the water level was 8 inches tall at times. Start off by planning for both air cooling and water cooling and see where your desire takes you.
I'm honestly not convinced that I'd watercool another build. Especially with the sort of performance offered by the likes of the Titan Fenrir. However, I'm glad I've done it at least once. It's an experience.
Agreed, it's definitely an experience every PC enthusiast should have, personally having gone the water route I'm almost certain I'll never go back to air again. Plus it helps stave off the inkling to upgrade every month thanks to the fact it can be a PITA to empty the loop and dismantle it to fit new components but once it's all up and running it's a sight to behold.
Go for it! You will get an amazing sense of achievement from the build as it's the highest form of practical cooling you can use. Every time I switch my baby on I feel it's more than a PC, it's something special.
I personally would recommend doing one or the other. Either making your own custom case, or modifying your setup for watercooling. I've been watercooling for 6 years now, and have been building my own cases from scratch now for several years. There is a lot more to consider when designing a custom case to efficiently house watercooling than aircooling, and I think you really need a good sense of how to setup a watercooling loop before trying to design a case from scratch. There is a lot to consider when it comes to designing any scratch case period, and I think that tackling both may be biting off a bit too much.
Hi everyone, thank you for your responses. I am so tempted to jump in but my problem is that I am currently running AMD quad 3Ghz, 4Gb RAM and a GTX275 which does me alright for now. The hardware technology at this time isnt amazingly better and as most of it is new, the price tags are high. All in all I cannot justify spending so much on a complete new build, materials for case and watercooling equipment. But equally, I dont think it is necessarily worth me redoing what I already have into a watercool rig. @Stuey: I completely agree with pretty much all of your comments which is exactly why I am unsure of which route to take. I have an Antec P182 case which is capable of watercooling and to be honest is quite efficient for aircooling. @capnPedro: I have heard great things about the Fenrir and as I said above, my P182 and Scythe Mugen2 combo work quite well but.....watercooling baby I am definitely going to travel down the watercooling street, the main question really is when. The PITA issue is exactly why I dont want to do it on current hardware and the reasons above are why I dont think it is exactly worth my upgrading right now...... This is all true and very good advice from you all and once again, thank you for your help thus far. Both sides of the arguments are or could be valid for me right now but I think that my first project I have to stick with my hardware and build a case for it. The other thing I have to consider is that when I get new gear, my old stuff is "handed down" to my wife so she can run her games! All-in-all I have (pretty much!) decided to do a from scratch air-cooled case build. This will get my hands dirty and allow me 6-12 months to save up and research the future hardware for a nice watercooled system. Keep your points of view and advice coming, I could always be persuaded plus its always nice to hear what people think and indeed what they are doing/have done in the past.
Make a air cooled case which allows watercooling too. Maybe put 360mm rad up front that blows over the mobo when you have aircooling and leaves room for water as well. Or just go nuts and get watercooling to start with.
Thats a good idea and if my current hardware and case werent going to be passed on to my wife when I upgrade I would make one watercool/aircool case. As it stands Im going to make an aircool case around my current hardware to sate my appetite. From here I will have time to design and build a watercooled machine and spec up some nice kit in the future. I guess I best make it all pretty and probably pink for the missus!!!! As a generalisation, I couldnt agree more which is why 1st case will prolly be some alluminium based stealth windowless chassis and 2nd will be alluminium framed perspex lovelyness Got any pics of your current setup(s)?
When you look at designing your own case, the design considerations you must make for aircooling and watercooling are very, very different. If you try to make a one size fits all case, you may as well just buy a case. For instance, a good watercooled case design will isolate the airflow going through the radiators from the regular case air. This is not even a factor with an aircooled case. If you think about just sticking a radiator into a case, you are thinking about cramming watercooling into a case made for aircooling, not actually building a case designed for watercooling.
He could make one that is decent for air and good for watercooling. Like have a 360mm in the bottom and top which should be enough airflow and leave room to watercool. Just go nuts with watercooling. I just started mine and its fun getting shiny things in the mail. I just got like 16 or so true silver compressions and it was fun unpacking them. Good luck on it though.
Watercool! I haven't been building pc's for long but I watercooled my first pc as an experiment and thankfully it worked
The only advice i have is .. if you wanna water cool thats cool setup a loop but make ur self a wood benching case till you sure you wanna keep it because when you call balls deep in modding a case and you decide you wanan go back to air and ur case is modded for water you can find youself buying another case. Practice Practice Practice. Go find some old Cases to practice on before you at anything new
I would definately go watercooled, if for no other reason than to spend an hour explaining to yer mates why you have put water into a computer
I have water cooled ex gaming rig .. now used as my media rig , it performs wonderfully its quiet and fast it heats the room up great too on the cold winter evenings, it looks brilliant and it tested my nerve cutting into an expensive case. I also have a air cooled rig for gaming .. reverted to Aircooled as there is much less maintenance involved. The new coolers and GPU fans are not ear shattering ..so it made sense to keep air cooled. Air cooled quicker build and functional .....water cooled ..longer to plan build and develop harder to maintain and heavier to shift about generally more expensive, BUT they are personal and you cant help but look at them once they are there humming away quietly in the room .. Oh tricky one......
Depends on what you want to use it for, if you are not overclocking, dont watercool . Even if you are overclocking, watercooling will always be 4 or 5 times more expensive than the best aircooling setup you can install.
