Water Cooling, is it Pointless?

firas

firas

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based on this
the best Wolfdale (E8500) reached 4553Mhz just with air cooling
I don’t know what's it's FSB limits but I don’t thik it'l be very far from 505

and based on this
The best Yorkfield (Q9450) reached 3650Mhz with air cooling only
I think 430Mhz FSB is near the max with a Yorkfield

yes it would give better temperatures
yes it'll look awesome
but is WC pointless with non-QX chips?
 
when did the switch occur? I remember water cooling was the only way to go for high end over clocks a few years ago. But i guess now, with 65nm and soon 45nm, couple with the fact that newer HSF are fcking huge, Guess it makes up for it.

edit; I stuck my old swiftech block onto my x2 3800 ( it was made for socket A, i adapted it ) and the temps were better, but I ended up switching to a micro atx board and case and went air. Stopped Oc'ing too.

Damn didnt realize how old this block was.

http://www.swiftnets.com/products/mcw5000.asp
 
Unless you're a hardcore enthusiast who is looking to squeeze every possible ounce of performance out of a system, as far as I'm concerned, the only valid reason these days to use WC are for the silence.

Sit two feet away from (what sounds like) a vacuum cleaner and you'll see much more value in WC.
 
Combination of silence and performance is why I watercool. I sleep in the same room as my computer so I want it to be silent. However I don't want to forgo overclocking to get that. Watercooling allows you some of the best 24/7 cooling while still being near silent.
 
For just a CPU, the ginormous HSF that I'm amazed aren't ripping mobos apart are simply a lot more cost effective, and it takes over $100 more to get a loop that will match something like an Ultra 120E, although water stands a chance of being quieter at this price range.

Once you start adding a GPU or two, that's where water still proves superior to air. Once again, huge GPU HSFs like an HR-03 can get close to water, but it's incredibly huge and can easily take up more space (and potentially slots) than a standard GPU block.

Water cooling is best for silence, really large heatloads, cooling multiple components at once, looking good/showing off (why else would anyone want a windowed case;)), and doing it just because you can.

Air cooling has made greater recent progress than water, mostly because water is getting to the kind of absolute limits HSFs are starting to see nowadays. I remember when triple radiators and tower HSFs like a TT Sonic Tower (which is almost tiny by today's standards) were monstrosities unneeded in 99% of cases. Air cooling has finally understood like water cooling did for years that the bigger the radiator/fins you have, the more heat and lower temps you can get. In that regard, water doesn't have as immense an advantage as it used to over air. To say it's pointless shows ignorance and lack of experiencing an OC'd, silent, dominating appearing system.

If nothing else, go to a LAN. All other things being equal, who's rig is going to have people oohing and awing: the heavy copper/aluminum heatsink filled system, or the water cooled machine that looks like someone stuffed the coolest octopus they've ever seen inside?
 
Xilikon said:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1223401

Read this ;)

Click to expand...

OMG, that’s really shocking, I had a feeling that the situation would be bad but not like this
I’ll not blame Intel for limiting the multiplier and CPU FSB, and will not blame manufacturer’s for setting very expensive prices for their WC parts though I will always consider it ridiculous when a freakin block coasts more than $100, I’ll blame Acer…cuz I hate them.
and what’s with that silence part?! does this mean that a TJ07 with 4x120mm rad mounted at the bottom and 2x120mm rad at top should be quieter than other case with 1 FAN X Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme!

wow who would’ve thought …water cooling is more like a case modding not PC cooling :(
 
Erasmus354 said:
Combination of silence and performance is why I watercool.
Click to expand...

Yup. You get all the fun of a ginormous heatsink with hoover fans, but none of the bulk or noise. Plus you can take the "heatsink" element and move it outside the case entirely.

No one said watercooling was the same as a LN2 stack.
 
I recently switched back to water, and I have to say, the load temps are about the same with my old 9700 NT, maybe a couple deg C cooler, but very close.. the sound factor though is so nice.. much quieter on water. me likie. :)
 
Oh please, any good heat sink put out by any of the numerous reputable companies are not loud at all. The Tuniq or Ultra 120 or Scythe's heatsinks are all quiet and perform very very well. Also, watercooling uses at least one, and typically more, 120mm fans than conventional air cooling and it places them outside of the case for optimum performance. On top of that you got the sound of pump ( albeit you can argue it's not noisy since it's a nice low hum).
 
i think the whole silenced thing is over rated, with my psu silent the 3 yate loons on my rads sound like jets, and they dont move enough air at 7v.
 
skadebo said:
Oh please, any good heat sink put out by any of the numerous reputable companies are not loud at all. The Tuniq or Ultra 120 or Scythe's heatsinks are all quiet and perform very very well. Also, watercooling uses at least one, and typically more, 120mm fans than conventional air cooling and it places them outside of the case for optimum performance. On top of that you got the sound of pump ( albeit you can argue it's not noisy since it's a nice low hum).
Click to expand...

I have to disagree.

My Q6600 + 8800GTS measures 21-24dba from 3 feet, case closed. (lian Li PC-V1000B)

My Sempron 3200+ skt 939 server setup (with the drives off) with an AC Freezer Pro measures 22dba from 3 feet, case closed. (coolermaster Centurion 5)

A Thermalright Ultra 120E on a Q6600 at my clockspeed, plus an 8800GTS under full gaming load measures right around 33dba from 3 feet, case closed. (lian Li PC-V1000B)
 
Nick_Leo said:
i think the whole silenced thing is over rated, with my psu silent the 3 yate loons on my rads sound like jets, and they dont move enough air at 7v.
Click to expand...

On the internet, we call that "doing it wrong."


Incidentally, my CPU is sitting at 75 degrees F. The only sound I can hear from it at ~4 feet away is a slight buzz because one of the latches on my hard drive cage is loose and vibrating. Ought to fix that, now that I notice it...
 
Just your CPU might not be worth cooling. CPU and Graphic card = silent, cool, and well worth it.

Will lower gcard temps, cpu temps, and since that air isn't being blown out into your case, it'll reduce your case temps... (as long as your radiator is outside of your case). so you end up with a few low power silent fans on your radiator and one or two on your case with the best temps you've ever seen.
 
Nick_Leo said:
i think the whole silenced thing is over rated, with my psu silent the 3 yate loons on my rads sound like jets, and they dont move enough air at 7v.
Click to expand...

Do you have the fans sucking or blowing? If they're blowing they wont be putting much air and will be loud. If they're sucking they should be pulling through alot of air and be alot quieter.

You have something messed up man. I have medium yate loons that make almost no sound at all and move plenty of air.
 
Basing air results of 1M Super Pi and Crashed Prime runs isnt really a good basis to discount the value of watercooling as you really arent testing anything.

I'll just say my E6600 couldnt get to 3.85GHz 12hr+ Orthos stable on only air (using a lapped Tuniq/IHS combo). Definately needed watercooling to get it there.
 
I think water cooling is worth it in that you can spend like 200-250 on cooling your cpu and overclocking it, turning it into a cpu that will blow away a $1200 cpu when you only spent about $500-550 on the original cpu and cooling loop. I have my Q6600 overclocked to 3.6ghz using a mcr320 and mcr220 and I have temps of 30 27 27 30 at the moment. 100% on all four cores doesn't get above about 55 C after hours of load. Man, those quads put out some heat.

watercooling the whole system i'm not so sure is worth it due to the cost of the waterblocks and extra radiators for the video cards when you don't get as much of a noticeable performace boost in video card overclock compared to cpu overclock.
 
Arcygenical said:
I have to disagree.

1. My Q6600 + 8800GTS measures 21-24dba from 3 feet, case closed. (lian Li PC-V1000B)

2. My Sempron 3200+ skt 939 server setup (with the drives off) with an AC Freezer Pro measures 22dba from 3 feet, case closed. (coolermaster Centurion 5)

3. A Thermalright Ultra 120E on a Q6600 at my clockspeed, plus an 8800GTS under full gaming load measures right around 33dba from 3 feet, case closed. (lian Li PC-V1000B)
Click to expand...

I'm guessing #1 is water cooled? And #1 is also running at same clocks and full gaming load? That is a drastic difference if everything is equal and you've made it a priority to get quiet fans for the air cooled setup.

There's no doubt that water-cooling will let you squeeze out that last 10% from your hardware but I think that it's past the point of diminishing returns, like will all other super high end stuff. You're spending a hell of a lot more money to get a little bit of more performance. Even then, those kinds of gains will only net you a slightly higher benchmark. If that is your goal, watercooling is for you. Everyone else can just move along and use air cooling.
 
Nick_Leo said:
i think the whole silenced thing is over rated, with my psu silent the 3 yate loons on my rads sound like jets, and they dont move enough air at 7v.
Click to expand...

For me it's the hard drives. I went WC for the silence and for the fun of it. I've got a quiet PSU, a quiet pump, yates at 7v, and I thought I'd be satisfied, but now that the hard drives are the loudest thing in my case I'm a bit displeased. HDDs are whiny sounding :(. The hard drive mounting mechanism in the A05 is not quiet enough, so I might have to figure out how to suspend them, and maybe put some of those sound-absorbing mats on my side panel.

But will it ever be good enough? Since my room is often dead-quiet I'll always be able to hear my PC unless it's entirely passive and the disks are SSDs.

It was fun, and I fully intend to keep my WC loop for as long as I have this case, but if I were to start again I think I'd be okay with just air.
 
Water Cooling, is it POINTLESS???
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In theory yes, yes it is. There is no way a copper block full of circulating water can conduct heat away faster than 4,6 or even 8 heat pipes soldered to a copper block and constantly doing a vaporization cycle that is 5x more effective at absorbing heat.

This will make it all clear ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthalpy_of_vaporization

In short here is the relevant bit.
On the other hand, the molecules in liquid water are held together by relatively strong hydrogen bonds, and its enthalpy of vaporization, 40.8 kJ/mol, is more than five times the energy required to heat the same quantity of water from 0 °C to 100 °C (cp = 75.3 J K−1 mol−1).

In practice there are so many physical constraints and other factors making the answer indeterminate and a blanket conclusion impossible. It is, in most cases, less expensive to air cool
 
Dutt1113 said:
I think water cooling is worth it in that you can spend like 200-250 on cooling your cpu and overclocking it, turning it into a cpu that will blow away a $1200 cpu when you only spent about $500-550 on the original cpu and cooling loop. I have my Q6600 overclocked to 3.6ghz using a mcr320 and mcr220 and I have temps of 30 27 27 30 at the moment. 100% on all four cores doesn't get above about 55 C after hours of load. Man, those quads put out some heat.

watercooling the whole system i'm not so sure is worth it due to the cost of the waterblocks and extra radiators for the video cards when you don't get as much of a noticeable performace boost in video card overclock compared to cpu overclock.
Click to expand...

read what I said in my first post
air will get you to the highest speed you could get with the $300 chips
what you said is why we should use cooling methods not water cooling

anyway, just 3 hours ago I found the TJ07 in a local store, i'll buy it next week and go water cooling with it, JUST FOR THE LOOKS :D
 
JUST FOR THE LOOKS
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Damn right brother !!

If you had asked which looks better, is more fun, gives more personal satisfaction, higher geekatude index, WC IS the way.
 
Water cooling is better if you want to spread your heat load across multiple quiet fans and keep good temp when you have borderline bad ambient temperatures.
In the summer here i get 30c ambient temps and air coolers just can't keep up.
 
BillParrish said:
Damn right brother !!

If you had asked which looks better, is more fun, gives more personal satisfaction, higher geekatude index, WC IS the way.
Click to expand...

I like the occational glance at my PC now back on water also a lot more.. I like the lucite top on my mp-tdx also.. seeing the copper pin grid immersed in coolant is just nifty. :)
 
plot said:
Do you have the fans sucking or blowing? If they're blowing they wont be putting much air and will be loud. If they're sucking they should be pulling through alot of air and be alot quieter.

You have something messed up man. I have medium yate loons that make almost no sound at all and move plenty of air.
Click to expand...

fans are blowing out. And my temps are kinda high to, 35-40C idle at stock. adding a gtx made a massive diff im thinking of investing in a tripple rad.
 
Nick_Leo said:
fans are blowing out. And my temps are kinda high to, 35-40C idle at stock. adding a gtx made a massive diff im thinking of investing in a tripple rad.
Click to expand...

Put your fans on the otherside of your rad so they're sucking air through the rad instead of trying to blow air through the rad, see if you notice a difference.
 
ive got it mounted on the top of my v1200. if u look down u see the rad grill, the fans, then the rad. be kinda hard to mount with fans on the other side.
 
Erasmus354 said:
Combination of silence and performance is why I watercool. I sleep in the same room as my computer so I want it to be silent. However I don't want to forgo overclocking to get that. Watercooling allows you some of the best 24/7 cooling while still being near silent.
Click to expand...

Couldn't have typed it better. Watercooling offers so much more than high OC's. And its those intangible offering that give watercooling its value to many people.
 
skadebo said:
I'm guessing #1 is water cooled? And #1 is also running at same clocks and full gaming load? That is a drastic difference if everything is equal and you've made it a priority to get quiet fans for the air cooled setup.

There's no doubt that water-cooling will let you squeeze out that last 10% from your hardware but I think that it's past the point of diminishing returns, like will all other super high end stuff. You're spending a hell of a lot more money to get a little bit of more performance. Even then, those kinds of gains will only net you a slightly higher benchmark. If that is your goal, watercooling is for you. Everyone else can just move along and use air cooling.
Click to expand...

Yes, sorry, #1 is watercooled, and runs at the same clocks no matter the situation. 6dba was strongly worth it to me, as I have two computers, a fish tank, and a DIY AC in the same room. Lots of sources of noise, so I minimized as much as possible.

Overall, the loop only cost me about 250$ to put in, everything but the pump was bought used... Compared to 70$ for a good HSF, and another 40$ for a good GPU HSF, I'm only out about 130$.
 
i dont find watercooling just a gimmick
or for overclocking

i find it indeed runs whatever components you have under a block . cooler.

cooler = longer life

example.
a cpu under a fan
idle = 30c
load = 50c
very normal conditions on alot of pc's

a cpu under water
idle 25-30c
load 35-40c

the difference is quite big.
 
firas said:
read what I said in my first post
air will get you to the highest speed you could get with the $300 chips
what you said is why we should use cooling methods not water cooling

anyway, just 3 hours ago I found the TJ07 in a local store, i'll buy it next week and go water cooling with it, JUST FOR THE LOOKS :D
Click to expand...

This doesn't really make any sense to me. Water cooling is the reason you can overclock so high and why you can most of the time overclock higher with cooler temperatures than air cooling. If you do not properly set it up or do not have the right/good components for the loop then water cooling is no better than air cooling. Buy individual components and putting a good water cooling loop is a lot more cost effective than buying a premade brand kit. Like i said before, you can buy a couple hundred dollar processor and spend another couple hundred on water cooling parts and overclock the processor to the point where you are getting a processor that is as fast as one that is 2 if not 3 times what you spent.
 
i've been using air coolers for years, and i do have to say they rock. i love my noctua, but it's frikkin huge. i can't really fit anything really awesome into my sg03. i didn't really think the nt06 lite would have performed too well so i put a geminII into it, and it works good but not as well as i want it to. i also hate these damm loud ass fans on graphics cards. i had an 8800gt, and that thing was doin 90C stock when i was gaming. i had to manually up the fan to get better temps, but that equals lots of noise. more so for the gpu than for the cpu, but heck might as well do both. i've not bought it yet, but still very much considering it. hr03's are nice, but i need the few expansion slots i have.
i believe top notch air is almost as good as a well built water setup, but not superior. just looking around at temps, good watercooling (not those all in one bs kits, but a well built custom one) can yield a good 10C better temps than the best air on quadcores (mid40's vs mid 50's). seeein 70C's on oc'd quadcores with an nt06 lite and geminII really did put me off from investing more into air cooling. so i've decided to go with watercooling.
yes, i do believe that water is expensive, but that's because of extra parts... a good block will set you back $60, same as a good air cooler, a nice gpu block can be had for $40 about $10 less than an hr03. it's when you factor in the radiator ($40), hoses, pump ($60), resevoir ($10), and coolant that things start to skyrocket... if only a nice waterblock were cheaper, same for rads, and especially the pumps.. come on. $60 for a frikkin pump?
so if you can fit a nice air cooler then go for it, they're not all that loud, but if you're like me and hate noise (gpu wise), don't have room for super tall coolers, and like steady temps then go for the water cooling.
 
firas said:
read what I said in my first post
air will get you to the highest speed you could get with the $300 chips
what you said is why we should use cooling methods not water cooling

anyway, just 3 hours ago I found the TJ07 in a local store, i'll buy it next week and go water cooling with it, JUST FOR THE LOOKS :D
Click to expand...

Air MIGHT get you to the highest speed on a $300 CPU if you're lucky. I wasn't.

My B3 Q6600 wouldn't do anything over 3.2GHz stable using a TRUE with dual 1600 RPM Scythe SFF-F fans on push and pull.

Went to fairly cheap water cooling and now I'm typing this at 3.6GHz rock solid stable at 1.48v, and looking at 36c idles in 23c ambient. Can actually hit 4GHz on this chip now, if I'm willing to throw 1.6v at it.
 
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