What would you consider to be the driving force behind your Watercooling purchases? Sheer Unadulterated Performance (I want to push this mofo til it breaks!) or Value (As long as does the job I'm happy!) What do you think?
not a water cooler as of yet but the driving force to my buying will be "looks bad a**" with a side of "silent"
I put value because i couldn't afford to by the blocks so i made them myself, but the aim of my blocks was performance... so both really
I woun't buy anything uless I feel its good value, but that doesn't mean I don't buy it unless I need it, if you see. Thus the best Value cooling is still probably air-cooling with a well chosen fan, but I wanted to watercool the thing. That agreed I tend to look for good value parts.
Sheer Unadulterated mobo-breaking Performance. If value mattered most, I'd stick to a good Zalman aircooler.
Got to be performance. I'm after good cooling and silence. Good watercooling's alwasy going to be expensive!
it all depends what I'm after For my main rig, it'd be performance... but for my day to day rig I'd say value and silence was the biggest key. I've voted for Performance, and then edited the poll to give value a point too, as I'm in two boats when it comes to this dependant on what the computer's purpose is. With the main rig, noise doesn't matter, it's only on during the day when I'm awake; the day to day rig is on all day every day so quietness but a reasonably good value setup is important
hrmm ... havent stepped into watercooling personally yet, but i think you missed an option on the poll ... loudness. isnt quiet the new cool in watercooling? god knows that is why i am interested in it.
Loudness is only really determined by the fans that you put on the radiator You could run with low noise fans for reasonable performance, or you could go to the extreme of running high flow fans for the maximum performance... I would say this is more of a look at whether people want to pay the price premium that is often coupled with Performance, or whether they want something that performs reasonably well at reasonable value.
Performance! While I like the idea of keeping it as quiet as I can while clocking it to the limit, performance comes first. Which rather limits how much quiet you'll have.
have to say, a mix of the two and it depends on the product, for cooling id have to go for the best i can afford, which at the moment is air cooling.
I would choose silence. whatever the costs. have a nice pump, and a bigas radi that works as a resovair aswell. If you have a little fingertouch, then you can make all components athome, aslong you thing safety.. "dont build a blok that will crack first time you put warter in it." Besides.. maby you would choose 2 diffrent systems. put the pump inside the case,and a little radi with a killass cooling. and then when you'r hom, choose a big radi that is passive.. this way you can have both a cheap system and silence just a thourt.
At the moment the way i see it in general the stuff that gives you the best performace is at best value Just because you pay less does not automaticly give you you best value. I belive the best value lies with the higher perfoming equipment such as dangerden and d-tek as opposed to things like thermaltake and the rest of the 'european kits'
Slater hit on a good point here. The term "value" tends to be used in place of cheap. However, good value would imply that you are getting a lot for your money, no matter what the cost. As such, a good value system would be one which is cheap AND offers good performance. Value is also a personal perception. Everyone's different, and what may appear poor value to someone may be great value to someone else due to different priorities. As has been said, the "value" kits such as those from thermaltake are not that good value, since their performance tends to be well below that of a properly thought out kit which may not cost that much more. Heatercores can be considered good value, as they offer great performance at low cost. 8-ball
Performace is my choice! As I sacrifice the money I would even sacrifice some silence, but sometimes I think that the case I have in mind would fly if you put some wings inside
I agree with 8-Ball (but don't quote me on that ) Performance is a factor of value at the end of the day. I like my performance at acceptable noise, aesthetics & cost levels and quality is what swings me the last bit of the way... *me abstains peacefully*
I would have to say value, as if I were a performance freak I would go and buy a silver waterblock or something (though the thought is tempting ) Best to find a balance between cooling performance gains and the amount of money you pay. If I were to pay a premium for all the best parts, I would be better off getting phase change cooling instead @.@
