What are the cons of water cooling?

* It can be expensive
* If you get a leak, something will probably break.
* It's not totally silent, you still need a fan to remove the heat from the radiator
* It can be tricky to install properly.
* You can break expensive things such as video cards and CPUs while installing water blocks - yes, those who have done it, admit it !!!
* You may not get much better results vs good air cooling
 
Nom Anor said:
hmm... really?
can anyone expand on that?
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Some of the cheaper solutions such as the bigwater from thermaltake, you could get the same performance or better from air.
 
High end air, Ultra 120, Scythe Ninja, etc., are likely to be about 5-6C higher than even a rather good watercooling setup (but not an ultra 120.3 very high flow setup).

So it seems like a $ spent vs performance gained equation that becomes a slight caveat.
 
Anemone said:
High end air, Ultra 120, Scythe Ninja, etc., are likely to be about 5-6C higher than even a rather good watercooling setup.
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But "high end air" would be much more louder, right?

Also, do watercooling setups require any maintenance ?
I'm planing to have watercoling installed by some Pros. Wonder if i'd need to do any cleaning or liquid changing, or would i be set for life?
 
High end water would be using the same 120mm fans (unless you like torturing yourself :)

Thus high end air and high end water should end up roughly the same. Some variations may occur if someone uses a super loud 120mm fan in either case, the fact that the air heatsink is normally inside a closed case, etc.

$.02
 
Nom Anor said:
But "high end air" would be much more louder, right?

Also, do watercooling setups require any maintenance ?
I'm planing to have watercoling installed by some Pros. Wonder if i'd need to do any cleaning or liquid changing, or would i be set for life?
Click to expand...

dispite the fact that i run a closed loop, and that every thing is sealed off as tightly as possible, i still need to add 1/4 cup of water every 2 or 3 mounths.... where dose it go??? damned if i know... no signs of a slow leak... i put dielite in the water if it where to leak it would show up on a surface even if it evaporated or at least on a hose edge i went over the sytem with a freaking microscope... no glowing blobs any there... so yes.. there is maitenance... but its very minamil if you so choose, thought you should change the water every 60k miles.. (figure that one out :D)

maitenance is pretty much done every time you do a upgrade to a piece of hardware that is cooled, i.e if you upgrade you proc, flush the system... if you upgrade your vid.... flush the system... ect... if you built your system dont have pros do it.. do it your self, there is a guide in this section im sure, the reason you do it your self is so you know whats going on. if pros do it, well you have someone to blame, but you dont have the experience... (and alot of places wont touch w/c unless you sing a waver, which release them if they break your shit... so just do it your self.. and save some money) its not like its ahrd... assembel the system out of the case first to test for leaks, buy some extra hose because you will mis cut at least once... and enjoy the fruits of your own hard work.. its work it

thore
 
stick with ur thermaltake. I have a tsunami as well. Had it aircooled for a while 2 cd drives 2 hard drives x1900xtx sound blaster card, wireless card... air cooled, and i got really good temps and its plenty big enough... heck ive got a full custom liquid cooled system going in as we speak and have found it to be enough room. Get some of the wire wrap and some zipties and go to town, getting all ur wireing nice and neat is about 80% to having enough room.
 
adrenaline0210 said:
stick with ur thermaltake. I have a tsunami as well. Had it aircooled for a while 2 cd drives 2 hard drives x1900xtx sound blaster card, wireless card... air cooled, and i got really good temps and its plenty big enough... heck ive got a full custom liquid cooled system going in as we speak and have found it to be enough room. Get some of the wire wrap and some zipties and go to town, getting all ur wireing nice and neat is about 80% to having enough room.
Click to expand...

I hear ya there, my gf has the same case and i am going threw it this weekend and re-do the wiring. But it does have awesome air flow and it her's keeps nice and cool
 
high end air = high end water as far as sound is concerned???


I have a hard time believing that. That would mean that your high end water cooling set up has the same number of fans as the air-cooling setup.
 
My PC is watercooled right now, CPU and GPU. The fun part was putting it together, now it just sits in there. I have a new motherboard coming in and I'm debating going back to air just so I don't have to worry about changing or maintaining the loop.

I have a Cooler Master Stacker which would be great for air cooling.
 
I have a stacker also, all I would suggest is to replace the fans because there just a little slow and noisy.
 
Here's the deal to me. High end Water beats High end air for temperatures on an overclocked system PERIOD.

The ability to remove all your: CPU HSF, NB HSF, GPU HSF allows for much lower noise levels.

I'm able to run 2 120mm fans at 7v on my radiator while my client's "high end air" system uses a scythe ninja on the CPU, Zalman passive HSF on the NB and an AC silencer on the GPU.

Side by side (to ghost of course) I could easily hear my client's system over mine. His was also running alot slower than mine.

You can't use a price/noise curve for this sort of thing, you need a third variable. Price/Noise/Performance. As price increases the noise will decrease and your overall possible performance will increase. If done right High end water will cool better, be quieter (maybe not by much, but enough to make a difference) and most importantly, it will look cool as hell.
 
Another caveat on water - if you somehow get a kink in one of your lines, or an air bubble stuck somewhere, or a pump that burns out, your system is going to overheat. Then again, given that most current CPUs support thermal shut down before they fry themselves, this is less an issue than it used to be.
 
If you do it, make damn sure your hoses are all clamed down well...so that a slight bump to the case doesnt make them leak :D
in my case...I fell off my bed and landed on my computer kind of...and didn't think much of it...next morning...well:

DSC05089.JPG




However, done right, it does totally rock...check out my system temps from overclocked dual athlons before I blew everything away:
 
Draconious? Do you live in the Arctic?

Am I reading that right? CPU idle temp of 23'c? Core1 idling at 18.5 degrees???

Also is that samurize?
 
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