For 30" monitors, watercool just GPU?

That's_Corporate

[H]ard|Gawd
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Okay, I've been doing a ton of homework on watercooling, namely delta T and all that good stuff. I crunched some numbers and found out to reach the 'magic' 5 degree delta T mark, on either an overclocked video card or CPU, I'll need a triple 120 rad with some decent fans. That's looking quite costly and I'd need to cut up a case pretty bad to fit those two loops in there.

Then I got to thinking; At the res that I use on my 30" monitor, am I really going to notice an FPS difference between a 4.2 ghz i7 on water or a 4.0 ghz i7 on air? Next thought was; do I mind the extra noise that a TRUE on the i7 would give me. Absolutely not. From what I've seen though, overclocking/volting something like a 5970 does indeed yield some pretty impressive FPS gains at high resolutions (which I'd be gaming at).

So if I don't mind the extra noise from putting a TRUE on my i7 and I don't care about the lower overclock on the CPU from not having it on water, is the best FPS-wise solution to overclock my video card only?

I ask because I can honestly say, I've never seen it done in all the WC builds I've looked at.
 
Yep!

If all I care about is the best FPS-gain-per-buck from water cooling, does it make sense to just cool the GPU using a full cover block?
 
Don't understand what the 30" monitor has anything to do with this but....

You want more FPS... regardless of what monitor you have. Now if you ran a 120hz monitor I would see this to be a bigger deal, 30 monitors running at 60hz really isn't hard to get 60FPS out of a 5970

I have never noticed any FPS change with my i7 920 @ 4.2GHZ or stock, but I run it @ 4.2 thinking yes it does help some where in my system of programs that I run :p

If you are going to OC your 5970 then I would recommend getting a water cooling block on it and I really don't think anything more is needed for the i7 if you are truly running it at 4.0 on air.

I run two 5850s both stock and run a 30" @ 2560x1600 @ 60hz and I have no issues running any games, most of them being maxed out.
 
almost all gaming is GPU bound; so if you only objective is higher FPS then just do the GPU. The tradeoff is that GPU water cooling is either significantly more expensive (full coverage waterblocks) or has a much higher chance of voiding your warranty/ruining your card for resale (ripping off a ram chip/mosfet from the PCB while trying to pry off an epoxied ramsink). The only semi-exception I know of to this problem is that Swiftech makes full coverage screw on heatsinks for stock cards that fit around their waterblock and cover everything else on the card. The caveat here is that you're still paying an extra $40ish per card to watercool it (cpu retention kits for new sockets are much cheaper) and that you're limited to using their waterblock. Granted, their GPU blocks are high quality, but vendor lockin always sucks.
 
People never just water cool the gpu because if you are going to spend 500$ on watercooling equipment, why not spend another 70$ on a top end cpu block? Doesnt make sense. And GPU's overclock what 100-150mhz over stock, cpus overclock 2ghz over stock speeds. And after 4 years of watercooling, I've come to realize that temps dont really matter at all as long as the temps are under the maximum. What matters to me is, is it quiet and stable (0 crashes in 2 years) ? I would think that a good triple radiator could cool an i7 with a 4ghz overclock and a 5970 overclocked. A quad would be perfect. Or a triple 140mm.
 
People never just water cool the gpu because if you are going to spend 500$ on watercooling equipment, why not spend another 70$ on a top end cpu block? Doesnt make sense. And GPU's overclock what 100-150mhz over stock, cpus overclock 2ghz over stock speeds. And after 4 years of watercooling, I've come to realize that temps dont really matter at all as long as the temps are under the maximum. What matters to me is, is it quiet and stable (0 crashes in 2 years) ? I would think that a good triple radiator could cool an i7 with a 4ghz overclock and a 5970 overclocked. A quad would be perfect. Or a triple 140mm.

because he wants to save that $70 and waste it buying Black Ops :D

I just want to know what game you cant play max out with the 5970 @ 2560x1600?

I see not need to water cool either the CPU or GPU to get a few Mhz faster and few FPS gain.

Water cooling is just a "cool" thing to do imo.
 
People never just water cool the gpu because if you are going to spend 500$ on watercooling equipment, why not spend another 70$ on a top end cpu block? Doesnt make sense. And GPU's overclock what 100-150mhz over stock, cpus overclock 2ghz over stock speeds. And after 4 years of watercooling, I've come to realize that temps dont really matter at all as long as the temps are under the maximum. What matters to me is, is it quiet and stable (0 crashes in 2 years) ? I would think that a good triple radiator could cool an i7 with a 4ghz overclock and a 5970 overclocked. A quad would be perfect. Or a triple 140mm.

When you have the space, you can do whatever you want. Why not have 10 480mm rads?? Because they take up a lot of space.
If you are, like me for example, space limited to a 240mm rad then you have to make compromises (such as an H50 for the CPU and a 240mm rad for the GPU(s))

OP, its a great idea to W/C just the video card. If your TRUE is keeping your i7 properly cooled at 4.0ghz then its good enough. GPU's are much more heat tolerant than CPU's, so you will be OK with either a 240mm radiator, or a 360mm radiator. The main thing about WCing is being able to dump all the heat outside of the case and quiet the video card down a lot.

My friend's 5970 is working perfectly with a 240mm Thermochill PA120.2, idles at around 35*C GPU1, and 37*C GPU2, loads at around 55 GPU1 and 58 GPU2 after 3hrs of Dirt2 maxed out. He is using some Yate Loon D12SL with a fan controller (very quiet at 50% speed).
OC'd to 1000 on the core and 1200 on the mem with no apparent stability issues :D

Obviously a larger rad would decrease the temps but GPU's can take high temps (his 5970 OC'd with stock cooling would hit 100*C on the core's!!). Just my $.02 though.
 
Well anything more then 60 FPS on a 60Hz monitor is a waste, ie 120mhz lcd 120 fps max. So if thats what you mean by posting 30" monitor then we need to know the refresh rate on the monitor.

IMO... if you wanna cool a GPU why not the CPU, its not much more. And IMO WC extends the life of your hardware due to the simple fact its not running as hot on air. Just because you can OC the CPU on air, doesn't mean the temps are the same as water. Your looking at $275-$300 to cool the GPU alone, and another $60.00 for a CPU block.So if your gonna do it do it all :)

Just shop around and you can find cheap good deals on res, blocks, pumps, etc.

Goodluck!
 
Well anything more then 60 FPS on a 60Hz monitor is a waste, ie 120mhz lcd 120 fps max. So if thats what you mean by posting 30" monitor then we need to know the refresh rate on the monitor.

IMO... if you wanna cool a GPU why not the CPU, its not much more. And IMO WC extends the life of your hardware due to the simple fact its not running as hot on air. Just because you can OC the CPU on air, doesn't mean the temps are the same as water. Your looking at $275-$300 to cool the GPU alone, and another $60.00 for a CPU block.So if your gonna do it do it all :)

Just shop around and you can find cheap good deals on res, blocks, pumps, etc.

Goodluck!

Didn't know they made a 30" that are anything but 60hz?
 
Given the option of OCing just the vid card, when playiung at 2560x1600 I'd do it in a heartbeat. As others have said most (not all) gaming at this resolution is GPU restricted, so you'll get more bang for your buck going down that route.

Add to that noise levels for Air cooled CPU's aren't too bad...
 
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