Expensive way to go........

[Dr. Righteous]

The idea of water cooling is pretty cool but the parts are Ridiculously expensive for such simple pieces.

12v water pumps $80? Screw that.
Anyone consider this?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Mr-G...8371d2e63&_trksid=p4506.c0.m245#ht_500wt_1137

And water blocks?
Buy some plate copper or aluminum, form them into a cube, solder the seams and then soldier in the inlet and outlet tubes. Maybe add some metal screen to the internals to create water turbulences.

For the radiator, how about a transmission fluid cooler for $18 bux at the auto parts store.

 

[BillParrish]

Sorry, all been done before, in fact we had to. And you still can !

We started out using aquarium pumps and the enheim's are still a good choice. But keep in mind whatever pump has to be rated continuous duty, on for hours at a time and the reliability needs to be there or you could (well in the old days anyway) toast your CPU.

Sure its fairly easy to make your on blocks and many of us have. But to do it right requires more tools than the typical younger person has and once you get old enough to have a place to work and drill press or CNC mill after you do one for fun its cheaper to just buy something, You priced a 3/8 thick hunk of copper lately ? Its just not worth the time unless you are doing it for fun/hobby.

Nothing is better than good sized automotive Heater Core for $25 but you have to make the shroud, solder on the fittings etc. etc. For $50 ish you can buy something ready to go, works almost as good and you don't have to waste 3 afternoons in the shop screwing around with it. Automatic Trans coolers suck. Mostly alum and just not made to dump heat efficiently compared to a rad. If you had a huge one it might be OK but the mixed metals is a no-no. They just don't have the fin density and tube density to work well.

But your point is taken, I get quite a laugh at some of the price tags as my "old school" system is a Lincoln heater core $25 , 6 80mm case fans I scrounged, closed loop so no reservoir, a surplus Gould mag drive lab pump $35, DD maze 3 block - cant remember but think it was the most expensive about $40 and that was it and it works as good as anything you can buy. But I spend a LOT of time putting it together and making stuff fit. If I paid myself $10 an hour I could have bought the best stuff out there. On the other hand it is over 6 years old now and all I had to do was make a new acrylic hold down for the cpu block and my CD2 6300 is happy as a clam at 3.2GHz , Lord knows how many air coolers I would have thrown away as cpu sockets changed over that 6 years.

So I miss the old days of WCing where the only option was to make it yourself, no one sold the stuff, there was no such thing as a WCing parts store, but then again I do not.

But if you are willing to do the work, you can certainly put together an effective WCing system for $100 or so if you can scrounge.

 

[ekuest]

bills right as usual. people just have way too much money i think. another suggestion: you can get awesome deals on old tech in the fs/ft forum. i built a loop as follows:

$25-mcp600
$20-dtek fuzion
$10-hoses, clamps and res
$30-pontiac heater core+4 high speed yate loons

thats a full system for $85. and really not too bad performance-wise. i added on a fan controller and a nice gpu block for another $45, but theyre not essentials. as you can see, if youre not too demanding (and you dont have to be unless youre taking your brand new i7 to 4.5GHz and want it to stay under 50C) it doesnt have to cost as much as everyone seems to think it does.

 

[wondergod]

ya honestly for the hassle i'd rather troll the FS/FT forums. Although I'm lazy

 

[Emission]

There isn't a right way or a wrong way, you do it how you want to do it and that's that. Some people choose to buy off-the-shelf parts because historically, purpose-built parts tend to work well and last, given that the manufacturer is a respectable name, at least. I've tried to nickel and dime it, for the additional effort involved in making everything work, sometimes it isn't worth it.

One thing I learned the hard way: You get what you pay for.