Blogs Is there still a need for water-cooling?

Will do, thx!!!

 

There are links to tutorials on water-cooling in the 'Useful Links' thread in the Hardware section. Several of them, with detailed information. Read them well, young Padwan, so you too may achieve the exalted state of water cooling enlightenment.

 

I use 12mm ID hose and hose barbs. I wrap some plumbers tape around the hose barbs before pushing the hose on, then the hose is secured with a plastic hose clip (you can use metal screw ones but the plastic ones are easier these days). I often buy from specialtech.co.uk but sometimes from other places like chilledpc or watercooling-uk.

When buying VGA blocks make sure it will fit your GPU. Although a universal VGA block fits most GPUs, sometimes an adapter plate is needed. This is the case with the EK VGA blocks I bought for the 560Ti. EK told me I needed a 460 adapter plate. This is because 460 and 560Ti use the same board design.

Fortunately with the 560Ti GPU you don't need heatsinks on the mosfets. You can optionally fit little ramsinks on the GDDR but it's not essential. You will need to have a fan blowing air over the GPU but it can be a low speed silent one (I use a 120).

I use Thermochill EC6 coolant. Electrically inert so no need to worry about leaks. Leaks only happen when you get careless. If you make sure all the connections are secure you will be fine. I would avoid the Feser UV coolant if I were you. Despite what Feser say, it will fry your components if it leaks.

 

@Nexxo, @feathers: thx a lot for the detailed info & support!

 

I dont watercool, i just use good aircooling to the point where the only time i can here my system (which is about 4m away from where i sit) is when the DVD drive is in use. my GPU is cooled with a 500rpm fan, which essentially is there only to cool the VRM's as the Accelero S1 heatsink can cool the GPU passively but sadly does not cool anything else on the card. The CPU is cooled with an 800rpm fan, although this is undervolted unless i am encoding video or gaming in which case i push it to its normal 12v and it cools fine. I have a 800rpm fan as intake and exhaust. I can hear them from a few meters away but really i have no need for anything quieter. I can actually hear my HDD seek before i hear my fans under normal use.
watercooling is awesome and id love to try it sometime, but i cant see the point right now (or ever).

 

The biggest noise issue for me has been low frequency vibration caused by hard disk motors. Biggest culprit was a Samsung F1 500gb which shockingly I had mounted in 5/14 bay using a hard disk isolator designed to stop vibration. I think the crud was made by Akasa. Once I removed that hard disk from the PC the hum disappeared. My main hard disk has been a samsung F1 1TB. That also would have been a problem with hum had it not been for the fact it is mounted on a thermaltake hard disk waterblock which does an incredible job of cooling it and absorbing all vibration.

I recently bought a 2TB Samsung F4 internal and have been really pleased to find it doesn't vibrate at all even with regular mounting.

All my fans are speed controlled via the motherboard and Speedfan software.

 

My cooling escapades have gone from stock air, to performance air coolers, to passive water cooling with external rad/res, to internal watercooled loop and now back to air (but with the help of a TEC - a CM V10).

To be honest, I have not noticed enough of a difference with WC to make me want to use it again 24/7.

I love the looks of a decent watercooled loop - you just can't get that with air.

However, with decent case fans, a Gainward Phantom GTX570 and a Coolermaster V10 (replaced fans) - my system is pretty much silent for day to day use (even with an i7 2600k o/c'd to 4.5GHz). When gaming, the fan noise increases, but I can't hear it over the explosions, and even my old loop made a similar noise level.

If I get a chunk of money I can spend on the PC, then I might consider a nice loop, but until then, it's good ol air I am afraid...

 

The difference is with my liquid setup, the PC is near silent and by that I mean I currently have an 80mm fan sitting on top of an external usb hard disk to cool it. The 80mm fan is not at full speed, is near silent but still makes more noise than my pc. My triple rad fans idle at 30% whilst case fans idle at 50%.

Your CPU is more efficient and cooler running than mine though and uses less power at 4.5ghz than mine does at 4! In fact I got a belgian friend to measure his i7 2600k at 4.5ghz full load and it too was using far less power than my 1st generation i7 at 4ghz with speedstep enabled.

My dream has always been to have a totally passive cooled liquid cooling system. I'm pretty close to that now since my reservoir is the 500mm heatsink tube. If I ever added a second one of those I could simply stop the rad fans rotating.

I guess my liquid system would show a greater difference than a standard liquid setup because the rad sucks in fresh outside air.

I've done a lot of TEC cooling in the past on P4 up to 274 watts but they were liquid cooled. Air cooled TECS are generally a no-no but I guess if it's a low powered one. The problem is the TEC coolers generally show worse performance than the top air coolers like the Noctua. It's bad enough trying to remove the heat from a CPU let alone a HOT TEC as well.

What are your idle and full load cpu temps with the TEC cooler?

 

I cool my 4GHz OC's i7-920 (1366) with a Corsair H70 WC'er as it beat my previous air cooler (TRUE-120) into the ground. Now I can have my PC fans at a much lower speed (and noise) than before, but turn them up if something is causing a temporary overheat!

I won't be able to replace my m/b, CPU & RAM for a couple of years at least so the water cooling has helped a lot (especially in the current hot weather).

 

i used to watercool lots back in the day, I have to admit I can't be bothered nowadays. Just due to the reasons listed in the review, the price to gain is not really worth it. Air cooling works just as well as watercooling, give or take a bit of noise and temp.

I'm running my 2500k on the stock intel cooler, its stable at 4.5ghz and even under load its not too bad.

 

"Air cooling works just as well as watercooling, give or take a bit of noise and temp. " - Give or take a lot of noise and temp actually. I would agree that the difference between the best air versus a standard water setup are relatively small.

If you have the inclination to build a more extreme liquid system then the difference in performance can be significant. I'm cooling 2 x 560Ti which are factory overclocked to 880mhz, 4ghz i7 and these parts are cooled silently without heating the room. I don't like how an air system or a bog standard liquid system dumps the waste heat into the room.

Liquid cooling isn't something that has to be all at once. I used to buy some of my parts used on ebay. Used hard disk water block, discounted cpu block, water pump, rad etc. My water pump is a very powerful EK 4.0 which happens to be very inexpensive. The great thing about liquid is that as with PC hardware, you can change parts one at a time. Take my waterblock for example, it was a socket 775. When I changed to socket 1156, I bought an EVGA Cheesecake 657 motherboard which also has 775 mounting holes and thus I didn't have to buy a new CPU block. A year later I upgraded the CPU block to a Swiftech Apogee XT v2. It came with 1156 and 1366 mounting holes and Swiftech also posted me a 775 adaptor for it as well. Some waterblock makers will release new adaptor plates so you don't have to buy a whole new waterblock.

My VGA waterblocks are universal and cost £35 each.

Liquid cooling done right surpasses the best air cooler by a significant margin. When I run Bc2 in SLI, I can open the side of my case and it's no longer hot. It's cool. When the 560's were air cooled the noise was awful and the PC was throwing out a lot of heat. That is not the kind of PC I want. Liquid cooling allows me to choose exactly where I dump the waste heat.

 

To be fair though - when playing BC2 I can take the side off my system, and hear a gentle woosh - not a hair dryer sound like has been described in some posts - thats an i7 2600K @4.5GHz and a GTX570.

I found when I was watercooling that:
1. it was a bit of a money pit - as I kept dabbling
2. I kept telling myself it was better than air, but when I switched back, it wasn't as much as I had thought.

In reality, surely if the temps are under their maximum then all is OK? My CPU hits 70c ish, if I push the volts a little higher and go to 5GHz, the temps reach 85c - still under tjMax, but close enough for me to back down to 4.5GHz (or 4.6GHz as I am at now).

I am all for watercooling, but don't knock air, unless you re-try it...

 

That sounds pretty impressive then. A gentle whoosh with side panel off. Seems like air coolers have improved significantly. I think despite all the sales hype and reviewer ********, the MSI Twin Frozr II coolers were more noisy than my original planned Gigabyte 560Ti super overclocks. The MSI 560's sounded more like vacuum cleaners even with side panel on case (even just a single 560 on air). Some air GPU coolers are better than others I guess.

 

The air cooler is a Gainward Phantom : http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2011/02/14/gainward-geforce-gtx-570-phantom-review/8

I have 6 Scythe S-Flex E fans as case fans, which generate very little noise at 700rpm.

I was using 2 S-Flex fans to replace the fans in the Coolermaster, but I have switched back to the stock fans to make use of the PWM controller on the Sabertooth P67. I have just bought two Scythe PWM fans to go back in as the Coolermaster fans do sound quite loud - especially compared to the Scythes.

As for CPU temps - idle is about 35c and load is about 70c. (75c with the stock coolermaster fans back in).

GPU temps - idle is about 37c and load is about 87c - at which point the GPU fans have only just reached 100%.

These temps are both with a room temp of 23c.

 

need? no. Want? yes.

 

Gah, all this watercooling talk has made me want to dabble again, damn!

 

GPU temp at load is shocking but exactly as expected with air. If the GPU fan is quiet then it's not too bad though. I like my GPU temps of 35c or less full load. In winter my 560's will be 24c or less full load and maybe 18c idle.

 

Why so low though? They have a max temp of about 95c.

 

need? no. Want? yes.

Also 85c is heat I'd much rather dump outside than into the room.

 

I just finished a WC build with i7 2600k and SLI EVGA GTX580 Hydrocoppers 2's.
My impressions match alot of what has been said with spiralling costs, frustrations with fittings and modifcations to the case to get all the kit attached.

It's cost me about £1000 for the water cooled parts and alot for the hydrocoppers.
I've had to make numerous additional orders after discovering more parts are needed and had to wait countless weeks for stock or imports!.

End result of all this; it has fantastic temps, runs nice and quiet and looks awesome.

But more than anything after the frustration, cost and stress of building it I really feel I've achieved something and it feels very unique to me that this really is my pc designed to meet my exact requirements and technically is an impressive feat that really does feel rewarding.

Downside is now I want to refine it with the lessons learn't and I see more elegant designs in the future