Cooling Find me a nice water cooling system!

Yes, thats right, find me a nice water cooling system under $150. I am a complete newbie to water cooling, so any tips would be appreciated!

System Config: (Important components only)
AMD Athlon 2600+
Abit NF7
1.25gb ram
Radeon 9600se o/ced to 351.00 Core/ 226.80 Memory using ATi Tool.


I mostly use this system for gaming (BF2, CS, etc).

 

if your convinced on a water kit, u could go for a : Cooler Master Aquagate Mini R120 Liquid Cooling System

or many others, just look here: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=14060

just have a look at us shops, im sure ur bound to find a decent one there, if u find out u like, just google for reviews about it.

 

I have done that, though I'm not sure which one is the right one for me.

 

For $150, right now the most important watercooling component you could buy would be knowledge.
Go to Starbucks, get as many French Roast beans as $150 will buy and start brewing.

Open Google and use the keyword "watercooling".
Begin to read.

When the coffee runs out, I'll bet you will be back asking a completely different kind of question.

 

Yes, I have been reading about it too. I even downloaded a video.

 

I think you misunderstood the meaning of his post, he's trying to tell you that your system isnt good enough/doesn't need water cooling, unless your going to attempt to overclock those components to ridiculous levels.

From the looks of things it seems that you just want water-cooling beacuse t sounds cool, i suggest you do a little more research before you go spend that hard-earned cash.

 

No, I do not want watercooling because it is cool. I don't know why people assume those things most of the time.

I also run a server on that computer, so it is on most of the time. As you can see, the videocard is overclocked, and my PCI slot cooler can't even cool it off.

Otherwise, I'll take what you said.

 

to get away with $150, I think you're gonna have to do a lot of DIYing.

 

Not at all (assuming you were referring to moi).

A bit more knowledge about the mechanics and expectations of H2O cooling will make it possible to ask questions which are answerable.
The original post was so wide ranging/general as to be almost meaningless.

For instance, what are current temps and what do you hope to achieve?
Starting out with a budget figure is completely back-asswards... figure out first where you want to end up and what it might take to get there and then decide how many stages your finances will force to you go through.

Maybe you start with the video and add the CPU into the loop as money permits, etc.

See?

 

If your a newbi too watercooling and on a budget give this a go for the time being.
Source yourself an Alpha Pal8045 and a nice beefy Fan and strap that too your CPU that should keep the temps down and should be around the $10 mark inc the fan.
Source out an Artic Cooler for your GFX and push the fan too 12v and see how that handles it slap on some Ram sinks shouldn't be more then $10-15.

That shouldn't be more then $30 if you shop around the U.S is cheap, see how that handles it if your not happy after that head down too your local scrapy and pick up a nice oil heatcore from a car or a Motorcycle then find a blowtorch and solder on some barbs, source out a local aquarium shop and see if you can find a nice 24/7 high head and ltr's per hour pump and grab one then buy any Socket A 1/2" waterblock and a complamentury GFX block id suggets www.dangerden.com they do some nice stuff also grab a couple foot of hose of them and a fill port, T-piece and some clips. Then come back on here and we'll help you sort the rest out

Good luck
Morgan.

 

why do all newbies (no offence intended) think that watercooling is cheap!!

It's not supposed to be cheap! Cheap is TT stuff and all in one cheaply made tacky bits.. water cooling was made to be a custom engineered piece of kit that'll do what you want it to, it has a lot of design and engineering involved and it's not just sticking water on your PC, it takes knowledge and time and experience.

Since the main-streaming of watercooling... more and more people like you have appeared, making mistakes, asking the wrong questions and not liking the answers in reply.

This rant is not aimed directly at you, it's just a generalisation i've been seeing recently.

/rant over!!!!£^!^!

First of all, ask yourself why do you want to water cool?

1. For silence?

A Zalman is just as effective without the waste in money, time and effort on your rig.

2. For performance?

The GPU overclock is not stella, and since it's only a 9600SE, why waste money, time and effort again when a cheap artic type cooler will be quiet, cheap and effective.
And since it's a server, i'm assuming you are not going to try to massively overclock your CPU.. so a Zalman or a goof Heatsink with a slow spinning fan will be just as good, cheaper and less hassle than going water.

3. For looks, Kudos and because everyone else has one.

Well that seems to be the only reason left as to why you want to go water... but you already said it's not for this reason. Unless you like wasting money, time and effort going water when air equivalents are going to be better.

If, however, you did say that you want to water cool for the kudos, looks etc.. then it'll be a different story... and i'll happily suggest something that'll look good and be cheap at the expense of top performance.

But since you say you are not... then I just see this as a waste of time, money, effort on your part.

 

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=375008
this is as close to a decent system as you'll probably get... it's a great pump to build around, and a decent 120 mm rad, a panaflow fan.. Decent CPU Block, but the point is, in the next bit you can get a new CPU block for your next CPU (A64?) if you want they have a 56~ish dollar GPU block, or any 3/8ID block will work with the system.. start here and add as you can afford.

Christopher

 

It's liquid-cooling ...

VapoChill Micro

$53USD.