How good is water cooling

R

RancidWAnnaRIot

EspantaPajaros
Joined
Feb 19, 2004
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So how much better is water cooling over fans? How much can water cooling reduce the temp by?

Also, do you guys use any coolants? such as anti-freeze/boil? or wind sheild washer fluid?.. i heard those dissipate heat better than water alone.. what do you guys think?
 
I have the crappiest water cooling kit available (Aquarius II Thermaltake) that cools as well as my 50db delta + alpha 8045. I had to keep the computer in a closet it was so damn loud, now with the water cooling Im running a mobile AMD at 600mhz overclock (mobo limiting my fsb and multi) and running the same temperatures I was
before except its 100% silent! It came with some greenish liquid that I put in the water that I guess helps it cool better. I now use the PC as the heart of my home theater system (for dead silence during movies). Links in sig

Overall even crappy water cooling can compare to a jet engine heatsink/fan combo. Serious water cooling can get more out of your processor than a jet engine heatsink/fan ever could. So I guess if you want overclockability + noiseless, you can't go wrong with a water setup.
 
If you have the money, spend it on watercooling. A good system will be quiet too.
 
I just installed a top-shelf home-brew system into my computer.. cost me in the area of $400, but well worth in IMHO.

It runs now at about 38C full load with 2xprime95, where previously it would top 60C and get up into the mid-60s using the Zalman 7000 AlCu, running 75CFM 80mm fans through the case.


with the air setup it sounded like I had a shop-vac in my computer. Very loud. Now, it is so quiet I'm complaining about the noise from the hard drive, which yes, I can now hear even though its a relatively quiet drive!

That said, I say you can't go wrong with a decent H20 rig, even something like the EXOS, which a buddy of mine has in an identical system to the one in my sig. His is not OC'd however, and it runs in the low 40's on full load.

Remember, these temps are as reported through MBM5 using ABIT motherboards, which seem to report about 10 degrees higher than other boards.


pees.
 
Dropped my temps by nearly 10C from my old Alpha PAL. Won't go back to air now. pushed up to 3.6 recently and still no problems and low temps with little noise. It's quiter, more efficient and more stable.
 
Regular water cooling will give you just about the same temps that high end air cooling will, with less noise. I have two systems on water and they are:

P4 3.0
idle temp 29C
Loaded temp 35C

Amd 64 3400+
Idle temp 30C
Loaded temp 35C

These temps are in a room whose average temp runs right at 70 to 74F

You can get a kit for about $250 or you can build your own system for $140 - $175. I recommend building your own.
 
A simple answer to your question would be that a W/C system that is set up correctly can maintain your temps at near ambient room level. This would be the best case scenerio, but not many achieve that level. I used to run an external dual rad setup and came close to ambient (3-5C*) with a 15% overclock, but that was a massive setup and not practical under normal usage.

The major asset of watercooling is the ability to overclock without the excessive noise of the high decibel HS fans and case fans to achieve the same level of O/C. How high you can go will depend on the efficiency of the system you build or buy. If you are looking to go extreme overclocking, I suggest that you add a peltier into that W/C rig :)

Originally posted by RancidWAnnaRIot
So how much better is water cooling over fans? How much can water cooling reduce the temp by?
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