Mine has only ever been touched with hardware upgrades, been running some bits for years, only found the limits of my water setup running 3x r290s, they kicked out some watts, >900w OC'ed plus had OC'ed CPU in loop which took that over 1.1kw, toasty, water was at ~50degC and still kept hardware from throttling, air couldn't keep thouse cards in check with those overclocks. It just needs a flow switch and keeping an eye on levels just in case you spring a leak, this has happened on my pump, a tiny drip, I PTFE'd it a few years ago, no bother since.
Dabbled with a custom loop before and you can achieve great temperatures. Going back 2 rigs ago I managed to cool a GTX 480 under full load to a mere 40 degrees. That was packing server grade fans at jet speeds however! These days I have a much more sensible AIO Corsair H150i Pro. Wonderfully quiet system that keeps my temps in check. Found installation easier than a cumbersome heatsink stacked on top the CPU. Aesthetically I find it more pleasing. As Sandy points out the consistency in noise is a benefit. The only sound that mildly irritates me now are the fans on my 2080 spinning down and up again!
Everything involved with pcs requires maintenance. Air coolers clog with dust over time and fans also require cleaning as well as dust filters etc. I never stopped maintaining my rig on air. Once you get used to water cooled components it's really no harder to maintain tbh.
Mine hasn't been cleaned for about 2 years. Bad, i know, but the temps are still fine and i see no dust bunnies. One reason i like cases with no clear side panels. It will get cleaned in the move though. Mind you i'll be getting new kit in a few months so does it need it...? That said the KB and mouse need a thorough clean. I'll have to look into the vest way to do that, it always feels a bit half assed when i clean them.
Tip upside down and bang it ( ), vacuum with the brush attachment, then the thin nozzle, wipe it down, done. Fudge taking off all the keycaps!
It was always about high performance and low noise for me, as well as the technical aspect to it - it was another reason to be constantly tinkering with my PC. I had a i7 920 @ 4.4GHz 24/7 and a heavily overclocked dual gpu GTX 295 sharing one 240mm and two 360mm radiators. All the fans were running at 5v and the system was whisper quiet, even when heavily stressed. Would I bother with water now, with modern CPUs and GPUs? No. I game with noise cancelling headphones on these days, so fans ramping up isn't an issue. Also, I don't have anywhere near as much time to invest in tinkering with my rig, so the low maintenance of air cooling has more appeal.
Same here, I spent far too much time trying to make every component as quiet as possible and getting quiet fans yada yada yada. I wish i'd just spent more on headphones at the start and saved some money overall.
Countless hours of fun tinkering around (+silly amounts of money down the infinity spend rabbit hole of custom liquid cooling) vs wearing headphones? I'd pick the former every time, then again I don't exactly qualify as a benchmark for sanity
You never refilled the liquid of the loop in 3 years? Anyway this means that your loop was properly done.
No, no top ups. The only thing I changed was the psu and did so with the loop intact. I am extremely meticulous and ridiculously cautious, the last major upgrade took me 3 months to complete!
For now I'm doing great with my Kraken X52, my 8700K when it's stressed it's around 40-45 degrees. But I think in the near future I will upgrade with a loop, but just for the CPU, I still prefer to keep the GPU with the original look.
Yeah but that does only have a 92mm fan. Your case should take 170mm it sounds like. I never get that with full size cases, my mATX case can take 174mm coolers. I guess it's all down to the narrowness full size ones usually are though eh?
After reading this, and as I am gathering myself as much possible knowledge, other's experience and advices to cross the air-cooling boarder... I allow myself to get inside this discussion. I've read several times that WC was more efficient with GPUs than with CPUs, and it is the time to check if it's true, I want to try it on my I7, I mean, I must try it on my I7, because I ordered a new Ram kit, and ther's not enough clearance under the Dark rock3 to put a ram stick... The subject is a I7 4930k, a Ivy bridge-E in 22nm is not OC yet, and I don't overcome 30°c in idle, even actually running in a room witch the ambiant temperature is 32°c... The dark rock 3 is really efficient, even running the 6 cores 100% under handbrake, still in that hot room, it doesn't overcome 46/47 on some cores, when others are around 39/40°... I am very curious to see what will be the result with a full custom WC......and I hope it will be as good as the Dark rock3 in terms of cooling
I have built 4 or 5 custom loop builds now and they are my preference. The downsides are the additional cost and, if something is wrong, the additional time and effort putting it right. I cant stress how annoying it is when it takes 3 hours to drain the loop, remove tubing and components, just to get to a fan header or some such. Nevertheless, the quietness and coolness is unsurpassed without going very exotic/expensive with phase change cooling or something. I am put off by AIO coolers these days. The pumps on these units are cheap and nasty, and it always ends up being the noisiest thing in the system. Indeed, many of the different brands like Corsair etc use the same OEM pump in their coolers. Also, the limitations on radiator size mean you need fans running loud and fast to keep things cool under gaming loads. My old EVGA hybrid 1080ti sounded like a jet taking off playing Witcher 3. So now I would either have a fully air cooled system, or custom loop. I tend to do the latter, as I have all the components (and they are mostly reusable from build to build), and the pumps like the D5 have excellent build quality and noise levels. While the performance/noise ratio is the best. Plus they look awesome and are always a cool talking point with friends/family, if you pardon the pun
Running two custom loops in my case. Two D5 vario pumps per reservoir. Cant hear a thing. Have not used air cooling for over 14 years now.