Overclock, Water vs Air

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Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 25, 2002
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I am curious how many people actually took their highest air cooled oc higher on water, and by how much.
Basically, I have a q6600 b3 thats very stable at 3.2 and runs smoothly at 3.4. At 3.2 the load temps are as high as 74c. At 3.4 I can see as high as 80c fully loaded with prime on 4 cores. My 3.2 vcore is 1.4 and I have to bump that up a couple of notches at 3.4. This is on a P5K3 Deluxe with ddr3

I have a Blitz Formula coming and I figured that since there is a water block on there anyways, I might give water cooling a shot. What I really want to know is how much of an increase are most people getting? I'm really kind of anal about having a quite system. My current setup can be turned down to a really nice level. Will I be able to keep it nice and quite on water?
 
Matters how much voltage you are pushing now.... A good air cooled system typically overclocks as well as a good water cooled system since CPU heat is typically not the part holding an overclock back. Watercooling typically allows your CPU/GPU to run cooler, which means more voltage.
 
R1ckCa1n said:
Matters how much voltage you are pushing now.... A good air cooled system typically overclocks as well as a good water cooled system since CPU heat is typically not the part holding an overclock back. Watercooling typically allows your CPU/GPU to run cooler, which means more voltage.
Click to expand...

I would somewhat agree. Heat plays a large part as more voltage is always readily available yet heat dissipation isn't. I would say that an extreme high end air setup can get within 80% of the performance of a good custom water build. Although both are susceptible to high ambient temps (like those of us living in Southwest & West Coast), air's performance suffers as the heatload increases.
 
On air (stock Intel cooler) my Q6600 was aproaching 80 degrees at 3.2 GHz. On my water, it's currently at 3.7 with a max temp of 50 degrees. I'd say it helped my OC quite a bit!
 
You cannot compare Stock Air Cooler with Water Cooling of any type. You should compare it wil High End Air coolers like Thermalright's Ultra Plus or IFX, because even the decent, cheapest water cooling is twice the amount of high end air cooler.

So i hope you get my point.
 
You also have to think about noise level because achieving a higher overclock is not always the only benefit to high end watercooling. High end watercooling allows you to use quieter fans and still achieve the same if not better overclock.
 
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