Water cooling the GPU? Is it worth it?

J

Jakerz

Weaksauce
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I'm planning to upgrade my GPU and a few other things on my current rig I built up early this year. I'm wanting to go liquid cooling on the CPU, mainly because I want the build experience and I think its cool, plus my rig wont sound like a vacuum cleaner anymore, lol. I'm looking at a single 980, would it be worth it to drop the extra $150-175 on the GPU Block? Also, I'm going with a 240mm radiator, would it need to be double stacked to handle the CPU and GPU?

Thanks,
Jake
 
A MSI Lightning style cooler should be more than sufficient to keep a 980 cool quietly.
 
A HAF 932 can take a 3x120 radiator in the roof, it'll be more than sufficient, especially a UT60.
 
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I recently disassembled my loop and put my PC back together with no video cards and the CPU on air. I thought, "This is so quiet! Why do I waste my money on watercooling?"

Then I put one of my 290s back in and played a match of BF4, and I remembered. The lesson was reinforced when I put the second back in. Also, as I recall now upon further reflection, my TRUE is quite good at keeping idle temps down. It's under 6 cores of load that it starts to get hot.

Since I started watercooling, I've simply assumed that the price of any GPU upgrade includes a waterblock for the new GPU. When it's working, I don't have to deal with graphics cards that are too hot to handle for minutes after shutdown, or the sounds of leaf blowers in my case.
 
Tsumi said:
A HAF 932 can take a 2x130 radiator in the roof, it'll be more than sufficient, especially a UT60.
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To keep a 10C water temperature delta with a 165w GPU and a 95W CPU, assuming no overclocking, fans would need to be around 2000RPM, which is getting into noisy territory.

http://martinsliquidlab.org/2012/04/12/alphacool-nexxxos-ut60-360-radiator/4/


With slower, quieter fans, the radiator thickness, etc, make less and less difference, and the difference just becomes rad area.
 
And maintaining a 10 C delta is generally unnecessary. As long as the components stay well below maximum temperatures at the clock speed you want to run them at, I see no reason to spend more than necessary, especially when budget is a concern. Besides, most watercooling cases are designed to fit 3x120 radiators, so getting one now for the HAF 932 can carry on to future cases.
 
Good to know! thanks for the info. Now I have to decide on a pump >< lol... more reading and reading...

Jake
 
I was looking into that pump actually, in a pump/res configuration. I guess it's between that and the Swiftech 655? I could get a PWM D5 with the reservoir for around $140, the 655 is just a tad cheaper with an seperate reservoir.

Jake
 
655 is the exact same as the D5. PWM D5 adds PWM functionality to control pump speed, but I have found that even at full speed it's barely audible.
 
So far it's looking like getting the GPU WB and Backplate is doable in my original $500 budget, it'll be close though lol.

Thanks for the help guys. Feel free to suggest any other parts you think I should take a look at.

Jake
 
Basically get whichever is cheaper at the time. For me, it was the D5 Vario.

GPU watercooling is the best part of my WC loop IMO. No more roaring fan.
 
So, I'm seeing most people are using 2 radiators on systems that are cooling a GPU and CPU, I like the look of the 1 larger radiator, but would the loop cool ok if I had a setup like:

Reservoir > Pump > GPU > CPU > Radiator (3 fan 120mm) > back to the reservoir? VS

Reservoir > Pump > GPU > Radiator (2 fan 120mm) > CPU > Radiator (1 fan 120mm) > back to the reservoir?

Jake
 
3x120 would be near identical to a 1x120 and 2x120. I would go with the single larger radiator. And add a 1x120 if you want to.

Also, loop order does not matter, except reservoir > pump.
 
If I had to pick a GPU loop or a CPU loop, I'd pick the GPU hands down.

Temps below 40c, maximum overclocks, and with a double radiator, often below ambient (daytime) noise.

In-fact, I did just that. Used a tower CPU cooler, and a GPU block. My system was almost silent - and way quieter than with the reverse setup.
 
Definitely worth it to watercool GPU's. I don't know when GPU fans started acting like leaf blowers but it's just too loud when gaming. I prefer to hear the game vs the loud fans.
 
XViper said:
Definitely worth it to watercool GPU's. I don't know when GPU fans started acting like leaf blowers but it's just too loud when gaming. I prefer to hear the game vs the loud fans.
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It got that loud when they needed to cool 250+ watt GPUs.

Also, Arctic Acceleros and similar coolers offer a much cheaper alternative to quietly cooling GPUs.
 
jedimasterben said:
It's always worth it to cool the GPU - even on a 980, you'll get load temperatures in the 35-40C range no matter how high you overclock.

A 2x120 radiator, though, won't be sufficient, you'll want to double that (at least 2x120 per chip you're cooling is a quick rule of thumb). Stacking radiators is not efficient, I would avoid that. http://martinsliquidlab.org/2012/06/08/hesmelaughs-radiator-sandwich-testing/
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I watercooled my 4770k and a titan z OCd with x2 120mm radiators the temps never went higher than 46c
 
I cool a 4570s and a volt-modded 670 on a switftech 2x120 rad and I've not seen over 40C on the gpu.
 
I watercooled my 4770k and a GTX680 with x2 120mm radiators the temps were CPU 70 Idle / 115 Max GPU 80 idle / 140 Max System 80 Idle / 100 Max
 
Carouselambra said:
I watercooled my 4770k and a GTX680 with x2 120mm radiators the temps were CPU 70 Idle / 115 Max GPU 80 idle / 140 Max System 80 Idle / 100 Max
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lia2eyG.jpg
 
Carouselambra said:
I watercooled my 4770k and a GTX680 with x2 120mm radiators the temps were CPU 70 Idle / 115 Max GPU 80 idle / 140 Max System 80 Idle / 100 Max
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I'm guessing you're using British Imperial, and that 115 means 46c. Sure you might get those temps when you cold start your system and your loop temps haven't stabilized yet.

Because no way you're going to keep that under 46C with only 2x120mm rads. Try stressing the CPU and GPU for an hour and see what happens.

Sure if you might attach several jet engine 3000+ rpm delta fans, but given this makes it impossible to be in the same room as your PC for most people, that's also not especially realistic.
 
echn111 said:
I'm guessing you're using British Imperial, and that 115 means 46c. Sure you might get those temps when you cold start your system and your loop temps haven't stabilized yet.

Because no way you're going to keep that under 46C with only 2x120mm rads. Try stressing the CPU and GPU for an hour and see what happens.

Sure if you might attach several jet engine 3000+ rpm delta fans, but given this makes it impossible to be in the same room as your PC for most people, that's also not especially realistic.
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295x2 is a good example.. 65c with that crappy pump, and thin radiator...
 
Good to know guys! thanks for the info. I'm planning on cooling a Haswell 4670K and a GTX980 on a single loop with a UT60 360mm radiator, forsee any problems?

I do want to experiment with overclocking, I've never done it before but plan to play around with it some.

Jake
 
Nah, that should be good.

I have a 2 - 240mm x 30mm rads in my rig, and they're not even good Alphacool rads cooling a 7950 and i7-2600k OC'd. My temps usually just sit at 30-40*C all day long with ambient around 70-75*F.
 
You can get away with a triple rad, but that's not a lot of headroom if you're going to both overclock and game. If possible, suggest you try to add one or two more 120mm rad's (or a 240mm rad).
 
I went ahead and ordered a Corsair 750D case, so if I have to I can add a 240mm radiator if the temps get to hot for my liking. Everything I ordered was around $600, so it wasn't as bad as I thought at first.

Hopefully everything will be in next week and I'll post some pics up!

Thanks agian for all the help guys,
Jake
 
IMO, I would go all out with the loop just so you don't have to deal with reconfiguring the loop at a later point in time if you do choose to add in another radiator.

It's a small cost.
 
Shooting for a 10 C water-air delta is great from a performance perspective, but wholly unnecessary from a cooling perspective. He is running with a 20-25 C delta, and everything is just ~20 C above that.

However, overkill is underrated ;)
 
TurboGLH said:
I saw an interesting thread over at O/C AU about more vs less in terms of radiators. Nicely done and backed up with logged data.

http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?p=15834209
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I agree that the results are very surprising.

Not sure how he's configured airflow to his rads and the rest of the his setup but I don't think a lot of people would be able to get that level of cooling under normal circumstances.

Still he's backed it up with metrics and all that, and if he's managed it, good for him. I'd still add extra rads, overkill or not :D
 
Well anytime you add something to the loop there is a flow restriction. With a weak pump adding radiators isn't really the solution to getting better cooling performance.

I moved my system to complete water cooling 2 years ago. I won't ever go back to air cooling a cpu or gpu. My computer is actually quiet again (under 25db)

for a 980+ CPU i'd recommend at least 360mm of radiator space. General rule is 120mm radiator space per 100 watts of cooling needed. 360 radiator gives you the ability to cool 300 watts of heat with out getting heat saturated which will be enough for that system.
 
echn111 said:
I agree that the results are very surprising.

Not sure how he's configured airflow to his rads and the rest of the his setup but I don't think a lot of people would be able to get that level of cooling under normal circumstances.

Still he's backed it up with metrics and all that, and if he's managed it, good for him. I'd still add extra rads, overkill or not :D
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He has managed it with simple physics, that is all. Heat transfer is more efficient as temperature differential increases. So if you are ok with a higher coolant temperature, and therefore higher component temperature, you can get away with much smaller surface area on your radiators.

As people have rightly pointed out here, the general rule of thumb of 100-150W per 120mm^2 radiator (please people, use Watts instead of chips, chips can vary wildly in heat output) is for maintaining high cooling performance. If you are willing to sacrifice absolute performance for acceptable performance, you can maintain a strong loop with much less radiator space.
 
ebduncan said:
Well anytime you add something to the loop there is a flow restriction. With a weak pump adding radiators isn't really the solution to getting better cooling performance.

I moved my system to complete water cooling 2 years ago. I won't ever go back to air cooling a cpu or gpu. My computer is actually quiet again (under 25db)

for a 980+ CPU i'd recommend at least 360mm of radiator space. General rule is 120mm radiator space per 100 watts of cooling needed. 360 radiator gives you the ability to cool 300 watts of heat with out getting heat saturated which will be enough for that system.
Click to expand...

Note: A 980 + CPU is going to put out a lot more than 300W, especially if you are overclocking. An overclocked i7 can put out more than 300W alone.
 
echn111 said:
I agree that the results are very surprising.

Not sure how he's configured airflow to his rads and the rest of the his setup but I don't think a lot of people would be able to get that level of cooling under normal circumstances.

Still he's backed it up with metrics and all that, and if he's managed it, good for him. I'd still add extra rads, overkill or not :D
Click to expand...

Surprising on first glance yes, but then you realize the R9 295X2 gets by with crappy pumps and a 120mm rad and it's not all that surprising.
 
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