Watercooling Water-cooling Upkeep/Maintenance

Hai!

I'm in the process of speccing up a Sandy Bridge system on Scan, and I'm fancying water-cooling, not for the first time.

Amongst other bits and bobs the system has 3 * GTX580's (through the NF200 chip on the Asus Maximus 4), and when I mentioned folding 24/7 while I'm away from uni 3 days a week the man on the phone got quite worried about heat

He's going to pass it onto the watercooling department and get me a custom quote on it, but I'm concerned about daily life with watercooling.

* How well will it transfer too and from uni. Does it need to be handled like eggs, or is it okay in the car?
* Maintenance! A quick google shows me horrible things about 'draining', 'rinsing', 'additive' etc etc. Now I'm very tech savvy, but the thought of me and water in my PC horrifies me! Is the maintenance any more complicated than emptying it (through a simple plug or something), and filling it up again. And how often does it need maintaining? Yearly, bi annually....

Can a water-cooling expert shed some light?

 

All depends on what they're using... Where are you getting the system? Why are you not DIYing?

 

Most CPU blocks are lighter than a top end cooler, so you don't have to worry about your CPU cooler snapping off the motherboard.

GPU blocks (I have an EK GTX580 block) on the other hand are heavy, my graphics card seems to bend a bit more now than with the air cooler on. A clever trick would be to have a pipe pushing into the bottom of the GPU block, this will lift it a bit. Try to use the rigidity if of the tube to your advantage, if you get what I mean.

From building my system, it seems to be a bit heavier than and air cooled system, so consider the extra weight you add, will you still be able to carry the case ok? Does it have wheels etc?

As long as your connections are good (ie quality compression fittings) it shouldn't leak during transport.

Use good quality coolant and you should get less/no algae - check people's long-term experiences. I use Thermochill EC6 but only had it in for a week so can't comment!

It'll make things easier if you have a proper fill line at to top of the loop and drain line at the bottom. Turning your case upside down over the sink to empty will not be easy! I plan to straddle mine between two desks, put a bucket underneath, unscrew the drainport and gravity will do the rest.
I think my most important lesson learned is to use a proper drainport, ideally vertical into your res, and always of nice thick tubing. On my mod I tried to cut costs and save space by using 10mm tubing, routing it from the res at the front to a fillport at the back (no room ontop) - the problem with this is that (unless you have a second bleed point) to get water into the loop air must come out - thin pipe does this really poorly, so use atleast 3/8th or 1/2" pipe as with the rest of your loop.
Once my loop was filled (which took about 2 hrs for a litre of fluid) the pump managed to clear the air gaps pretty quick and I was off, but I'm not looking forward to filling it up again.

Suppose if you get it done by scan they'll do it the right way, but you'll pay for the privelage.

 

Thanks for all the help!

@Bloody_Pete
If I do settle on air then I'm DIY'ing but unfortunately my attempt to join in at folding will be scuppered. Not that I'll notice having been on ATi for my last two systems.

@pistol_pete
Lots of advice! I don't really have any answers to the questions, the custom quote will be coming tomorrow. I assume it will simply be a P67 version of http://3xs.scan.co.uk/ConfigureSystem.asp?SystemID=1023

Which looks like: http://3xs.scan.co.uk/BuildPhotos/3XS/3XS_BlackWidowExtreme/System1/index.html

Feser One is apparently the coolant, and the resivoir is a Bits Power one. Like I say, details to come soon hopefully. The case would be a Corsair Obsidian, which is already chunky, so I hope WC wont make it unmovable



Now your stuffs setup pete, how often do you envisage yourself 'doing stuff to it'. I mean, before it needs any maintenance?

 

I'm going to do a bit of work on it over the summer, but that'll have been 8 months since I put it together. 1 year between cycles is my rule.

Been flicking through my thread then?

 

Ofc .

In fact, your just the person to ask, which of these systems would you go for:

Common:

* Corsair Obsidian 800D
* 3 * EVGA GTX 580
* Crucial C300 128GB
* Corsair AX1200W

Sandy Bridge:

* Asus Maximus 4
* i7 2600k
* 8 GB Corsair Vengance 1600
* Fully watercooled

Bloomfield:

* Asus Rampage 3
* i7 980x
* 6GB Corsair Dominator 2100
* Asus Xonar D2X


As it stands in my head -
+ Sandy bridge is quicker
- Sandy bridge feels like buying 'mid range', in both CPU and Mobo respects
- I do hell of a lot of threaded programming, I like more cores (NP-Quantum problems are my research field, hence the 3 * 580's (CUDA) )
+ Sandy bridge is water cooled
- Watercooling scares me
+ Watercooling allows for long term folding, at 17k PPD per card
+ The Bloomfield system I can DIY
- Buying Bloomfield is buying a dead platform
+ Watercooling isn't needed on Bloomfield as theres a gap between the cards and there not mushed


And I've been going round in circles in my head all day and it's driving me maddddd. What would you do if you were me?

 

Well the question is, how much are you looking to spend? And what are you wanting from the system?

 

They work out the same as one is WC'd and the other isn't, at around the 4k mark.

I want as many threads/OpenCL cores as possible, my research area is genetic and meta heuristic programming. However it'd be nice not to be starting at afterburner fan profiles all the time (as I was with my 3 x 5870's), and it would be nice to fold...obviously both leaning towards sandy bridge.

However I'm scared to death of water.

...that said I've just watched http://www.youtube.com/user/CyberPowerUK#p/u/10/xh4DGMOXezI and it seems easy enough to maintain a loop. I suppose I just have to use the same stuff as whatever Scan put in. And he sort of yanks the thing out, I'm my own head I imagined all water cooling bits had to be handled like bone china

 

Just depends on how confident you are really I'd go for the SB one personally. what speed do scan say they'll OC it to for you?

And I assume that if they do the WC for you then they'll cover it with a warranty?

 

I think I've settled on the SB one!

I've read reviews round the web about Scan's WC'ing and everyone sings their praises. And apparently they package the inside somehow for transit, if I keep that I'll be safe going to/from uni.

It'll be OC'd to 4.5 and it's warranty'd for 1 year on site, and 1 year RTB.

Excited to see my email from scan tomorrow haha. As that SB system stands its £3,400 non watercooled, so I can't imagine it will break my budget when they get back to me

Thanks for your input, after many many many builds thinking about it, I'm finally doing it

 

You don't need water cooling provided the case is well ventilated and you don't want to heavily over clock the 580's.
Get a 2500/600k CPU.

 

3 * 580's without a single slot gap run at ~87 degrees loaded according to Guru 3D. Some of my algorithms can run for days at a time, which won't be healthy for the cards.

Watercooling wouldn't be essential if I was normal user, with just a few hour gaming sesh's but unfortunately...I'm not

 

Ask them to use Gentle Typhoon 1850 rpm fans and a Scythe Kaze Master Ace fan controller, so you can change the fan speed

Mind if I take a look at the waterloop spec before you order? I'm on here damn near constantly from noon onwards...

 

I would have loved you to take a look over it, however on my quote its listed as 'Watercooling Parts - £450'. And this only covers the GPU's, the CPU will be using one of those new Matterhorn Coolers.

The chappie said the watercooling parts will be listed on the invoice, so later on this evening I should be able to give you a list to dissect

 

Well I pulled the trigger, none the wiser to the WC bits used haha. Ignorance is bliss eh? But I seriously trust Scan from what I've read in CPC over the years. The final spec is (in case your interested):

Corsair 800D
Corsair AX1200W Professional
Asus Maximus IV P67 Motherboard
Intel Core i7 2600k
Alphenfohn Matterhorn "The Beast" Cooler
8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 PC3-12800 CAS8
3 * Asus GeForce GTX 580
1TB Western-Digital Caviar Black 7200 SATA III (Games)
2 * 1TB Western-Digital Caviar Green, 64Mb Cache (Data, Backup)
128GB Crucial RealSSD C300 (OS)
LG CH10-LS20 8 x BluRay Reader & DVDRW
Pioneer DVR-S19LBK
4 * 120mm Akasa Apache Black Ultra
2 * Sharkoon 12" UV CCFL 2in1 Kit
Water Cooling Parts
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit OEM


EXCITEEEDDDD

 

Just WC parts... The plot thickens...

 

Hang on a mo, just curious...

Is this a rig for yourself? Didn't you break the bank getting your 3x5870s a while ago?

 

Aha the famous PeteJ xD

Yeah I did, the same time you got your 3 * 480's. Life with 3 air cooled 5870's with no gap in between them wasn't pleasant. Add that to high CFM fans and dust filters that took 24 screws to release (4 per side, and 3 fans) on the Antec 1200, life with that PC wasn't pleasant.

So onwards and upwards, to a system similar to your own. At least I'm not waving the red flag this time so I won't ninja your thread

I'm away from my PC friday afternoon till monday morning, and I'm hoping the WC will allow me to churn out some 24/7 folding in that time. Rake in some serious points

 

I feel sorry for your wallet from your electricity bills...

 

So you're building an entirely new system ? Not going to keep the 920 you have/had?