water cooling ... worth it?

[DanBuh]

i've talked witha few people all of which say that for what it is ... i shouldn't do it ...

1. it costs too much
2. you don't really get much better temps than air

should i start in watercooling or like some other's said go to phase change?

to me watercooling sounds better ... less hassle ... better clocks than air ... somewhat better temps ... i don't feel like spending 500+ dollars on a phase change unit and crap out my cpu and have to deal with thermal grease ....

you opinion matters .... post

 

[prasvt]

Personally I think watercooling is a hell of a lot better than air cooling. Idle temperatures are basically room temperature and load temps are at least 15C lower than air cooling. Hell w/ high voltage I'm getting the same temps I'd get at stock.

I considered waiting for something like the OCZ phase change kit...but it's not really worth it unless you're either a) living in the desert or b) do alot of suicide benchmark runs c) have the money to burn and are just into that kind of thing (which is okay).

As for it costing too much, yes, it's not going to run you the same $60 you spent on a good air cooling setup, but you can check the FS/FT thread here and also get whatever parts you want (pump, res, rad, tubing, waterblocks).

And you are right, once you've set the system up, there's no hassle. And yes, better clocks b/c a cooler chip tends to be more stable. I couldn't get my Q6700 stable at 3.6ghz to save my life on air (w/ a tuniq tower) and it's cool and rock solid on water.

I'm using a $200 Swiftech kit ...not even anything exotic and I'm amazed by it. And I'm new to all this as well...just followed the directions and it works. So my 2 cents is ..try it for yourself.

 

[kadozer]

1. it costs too much

All subjective but it's not out of reach. Cost me a little over $200 for a 2x120mm Radiator setup cpu loop. I even splurged on extras like UV dye and nozzle kit. Too bad search function is disabled, I could show you my "Watercooling Worth it? Yes" thread Posted my air cooling vs water cooling Prime95 benchmarks.

 

[DanBuh]

lol i love the " watercooling worth it? yes" ... but yea it was an idea i was looking at ... its already hot here ... i didn't want 90c air blowing into my room from my video card as well as like 40c air from my cpu

 

[nightwalker]

its totally affordable these days.... i decided to try out the TRUE 120 Black edition on this rig and if i wasnt satisfied i was gonna get another loop for it, and tbh the temps and noise arent very different for me, except it costs alot less lol. granted a loop can look really slick and better than a big black hunk of metal

if you want a bling bling rig then watercooling is a must IMO.

i would not recommend jumping into phase unless you're into proper hardcore overclocking and water isnt giving you what you need.

 

[DanBuh]

my friend does phase so he would help ... but to me it really isnt worth it ... i mean i'm just guessing here ... but i would think you're chip would die a lot faster and you really couldn't use it 24/7 also .... the heat blowing into my room would just make up for what i didn't want

 

[owkia]

lol i love the " watercooling worth it? yes" ... but yea it was an idea i was looking at ... its already hot here ... i didn't want 90c air blowing into my room from my video card as well as like 40c air from my cpu

The same amount of heat is being dumped by each component regardless of the type of cooling or what temperature that part is running at. If your CPU is at 40c on air and 25c on water, that 15 degrees less on water isn't going to result in your room being any cooler. That just means water is doing a better job at dissipating the heat than air.

 

[DanBuh]

=( you make me sad with your correctness

 

[Hades16x]

IMO, water cooling shines with multiple blocks. My themochill pa 120.3 is an almost silent setup that can cool My e8400, Mch and gpu.
My fans are even on a controller and I can't tell the difference between highest and lowest speed. This tells me that My radiator is extremely efficient with dissapation.

Nevertheless, My cpu temps arnt 15C cooler than when I was on air. I hit 56C after 24 hours of prime vs 59C on air. Main difference was with My true, I had fan speed at max.

I don't think I would ever reccomend wc for a cpu cooling system only. My setup with even My free blocks was over 600 with the case.

Am I glad I'm watercooling? Hell yes. As long as I keep it clean, the cpu blocks arnt anymore expensive than high end air, so its a worthwhile investment.

 

[Kuyt]

If you buy used parts, which are usually good as new it should be < $160 for a decent one, and sometimes lower.

Watercooling doesn't even require that much maintenance. The norm is to change the water every 6 months / wash the radiator, but if your temps stay the same you could hold off a bit longer. And the fins on the radiator aren't as packed so it's far easier to wash with compressed air than a heatsink.

 

[Dekoth]

To be honest I imagine it depends on the individual. I used watercooling for nearly 2 years and finally yanked the entire system out.

A little background.
I used a full dangerden setup, only using a cpu block since my Vid card and chipset never hit temps that really hindered OCing. I paid around $350 for the entire getup, for a Good high quality dual 120mm fan Radiator the Black ice series and their premium copper waterblock.

Temperatures were always good and steady, no complaints. My complaint came from the fact that I generally am changing something out in my case every 3 to 4 months. I don't do full upgrades anymore, I simply upgrade at least 1 individual component every 3 or 4 months or so. The water system I spent a massive amount of time being very creative in routing the tubing in a manner that it was as out of the way as reasonably possible. However that said, I still had to pull the whole thing out for anything beyond ram and video card upgrades. This was a tiresome and irksome process. While I know many complain about having to keep the coolant topped off, I actually think I may have had to top it off 1 time in 2 years so I won't complain about that.

The end result for me was the water system under full overclock only achieved temperatures 5-6 degrees Celsius under what a Premium air cooler could do in my environment. Mind you my room is never above 75F. The amount of hassle the water system caused for me since I upgrade so often, vastly exceeded its benefits. So from my perspective, unless you are operating in a warm environment where the ambient temp is above 80F, and unless you at most tinker around in your case once per year then Watercooling is just flat not worthwhile. For some it may be worthwhile to mess around with it that much. For me I would rather be gaming then spending 2 hours extra on every hardware upgrade. So for now I have two water systems sitting in my closet collecting dust, a Danger den setup and a Thermaltake bigwater that I tried as well, while a Zalman CPNS 9700 resides on my cpu cooling just fine.

 

[BillParrish]

1. it costs too much

Only if you let it. It can be done amazingly cheap if you have any mechanical skills at all.

If you are a klutz there is still very inexpensive and very effective ways to do it. For example:
http://www.thermaltakeshop.com/ref/ref-cooler.html

System I slapped in my current machine is on sale for $90 bucks refurbished. It seems to do ok, look at my specs. Everything you need in one box. Mine is 2 years old and all I have done is top off the coolant once a year. Lots of mounting options or just use the included stand and radbox type mounting. Easily handles an added GPU block.


Or you can spend as much as you like.

Water cool because you want too, a Thermalright ultta 120 and good fan will be fine too. Until Nethalem and it will be junk. I will just make a new block hold down.

 

[amoeba1126]

The thing about watercooling is if you decide to do it, you have to use high quality parts. Low quality junk from companies like zalman, thermaltake, koolance, and other so-called kits basically perform on par with high end air cooling like TRUE and TT. With watercooling, you may often have idle temperatures about the same or higher than air cooling, but anyone who knows squat will tell you that idle temps do not amount to squat. Where WC shines is in the delta T or in layman's terms, the change of temperature from idle to full load. With air cooling, especially for multi core cpu's and overclocked units, temperatures frequently spike on air cooling upwards 50c. What water cooling does is severely cut back on that change so rather than have it jump up by 15-20c, the temp only goes up say 5-10c. Another area where WC truly shines, is silence. Say you are not interested in overclocking, so do not experience any abnormally high temperatures, but your CPU heatsink is still too loud for comfort. With WC, it is possible to have your entire computer under 17dba of noise. My computer for examples, only use 7v Scythe S-Flex M-fans, which is like 12dba each and I can still manage to OC my E6600 from 2.4 to 3.6 as well as cool my 8800GT with very good temps.

Is WC worth it? In my honest opinion, it is highly worth it. Is it worth it for you? Well, you would have to ask yourself these two questions:
1) Am I interested to pushing my CPU as far as it can go without spending close to $1K on a phase unit?
2) Am I not interested in OC'ing but would still like a dead silent computer?
3) Do I want pretty glowing water in my computer that looks like kick ass Predator blood?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then by all means, have one of us draft you up with parts for a water cooling loop!

 

[shawnol]

Screw Air, Win with Water
But seriously, if u have High OC Mind and want some silence and well i guess more OC YEAH!!!!
dont buy a kit please

 

[Gaiden133]

I'm not a current WC user.. but fully intending on doing so.

Mostly for the reason that it'll last me a damn long time (or hope so).

Plus, i'm rather tired of working in my case with the giant heatsink taking up a lot of work area.

My WC setup will probably cost near 500-600 but im going pretty high quality parts. Can't wait.

 

[Ragenrok]

the only kit I would buy is the ncix kits at www.ncix.com, there all custom made kits and work very well. Mind you I just built my own water cooling parts by mix and matching.


Hoesntly if your only cooling your CPU you wont notice much of a noise diff, but ym GFX card it louder than anything else and once I WC that as well then the noice factor will deffinatly be a big plug, not to mention my idle temps are always room temp and my load themps are always nice and low, much better than the air cooler I was using (zalman cnps9700nt)

 

[Creig]

Water cooling USED to be much more compelling back in the days when heatsinks were nothing but a block of aluminum with fins, possibly with a copper slug in the center. But these days, we have heatpipe equipped HSFs that can keep temps much closer to their water cooled counterparts and do it cheaper, with less hassle and without the danger of a water leak shorting out half your components.

So unless you're planning on some major overclocking/overvolting, I would say that a good air HSF is the better overall choice (and I am currently running one water cooled system myself).

 

[amoeba1126]

Water cooling USED to be much more compelling back in the days when heatsinks were nothing but a block of aluminum with fins, possibly with a copper slug in the center. But these days, we have heatpipe equipped HSFs that can keep temps much closer to their water cooled counterparts and do it cheaper, with less hassle and without the danger of a water leak shorting out half your components.

So unless you're planning on some major overclocking/overvolting, I would say that a good air HSF is the better overall choice (and I am currently running one water cooled system myself).

Water cooling USED to be much more compelling back in the days when heatsinks were nothing but a block of aluminum with fins, possibly with a copper slug in the center.
OPINION: Liquid running through loops in your case brought to life with UV cathodes are more inspiring any day then a heatsink the size of J-Lo's bootie with a couple of LED fans on it any day!

But these days, we have heatpipe equipped HSFs that can keep temps much closer to their water cooled counterparts and do it cheaper, with less hassle and without the danger of a water leak shorting out half your components.
FACT: The best air cooling (TRUE with high cfm fan) at best can only compare with low quality water cooling kits...kits that any WC know hows will tell you is not worth it to begin with. Also a TRUE with a 35dBa fan on it will never beat out a high end WC kit involving a triple radiator and 20dBa fans. Also there are plenty of liquid coolants out there just a s good as distilled water that are NOT conductive.

 

[magoo]

Watercooling = good. True statement.

I have had the same Q6600 running under a variety of coolers since I bought it.

Stock Intel cooler, ArcticCooling Freezer Pro7, Corsair Nautilus 500, and the current setup with a Swiftech Apogee GTX and a dual 120 mm radiator.

The best temps are with the Swiftech. I had fun with the Nautilus and frankly as a kit it was excellent. The Nautilus cooled my CPU and one of three 8800 GTX GPUs and did a great job.

I am able to OC my Quad a bit higher due to the Swiftech and my X48 MB. The CPU never goes over 30C on full load.

You need to be someone who likes to tinker with stuff to really enjoy watercooling though, in my humble opinion. I've revised my loop two or three times to get it just right and look the way I want it to in the case. I use Swifech Coolsleeves and they can be a pain in the butt if you let them get to you.

Have fun.

 

[geok1ng]

I believe that water cooler for CPU alone is pure waste of money: OMFG my Q6600 went from 3,4Ghz on air to 3,6Ghz. My fps went up by almost 0,9 on Crysis!!! Fir that kind of money you could just put a better CPU to begin with, or a top VGA for 15fps more!

But WC is the only solution for Multi VGAs setups and for single slot dual GPUs : there is no way to mount 2 Acellero S1 in CF/SLI AND put good airflow over the setup, and there are NO good aftermarket coolers for the 3870X2 (and the 4870X2 pretty soon) that run on air. In a multi VGA system i believe thta WC is the way to go, and since you are at it just go ahead and WC the CPU ( and north bridge )

 

[magoo]

I believe that water cooler for CPU alone is pure waste of money: OMFG my Q6600 went from 3,4Ghz on air to 3,6Ghz. My fps went up by almost 0,9 on Crysis!!! Fir that kind of money you could just put a better CPU to begin with, or a top VGA for 15fps more!

But WC is the only solution for Multi VGAs setups and for single slot dual GPUs : there is no way to mount 2 Acellero S1 in CF/SLI AND put good airflow over the setup, and there are NO good aftermarket coolers for the 3870X2 (and the 4870X2 pretty soon) that run on air. In a multi VGA system i believe thta WC is the way to go, and since you are at it just go ahead and WC the CPU ( and north bridge )

I disagree.
You can rid your case of clutter,noise and heat by WC the CPU alone.
I agree, the 200 or 300 Hz OC is not that dramatic but the heat reduction is.

I agree that WC GPUs are better. Silent and cool.
But......most GPU blocks are too expensive in my opinion to warrant the benefit and the GPUs change so frequently you can't afford to keep up. I've had my Q6600 for alot longer now than any GPUs (although I had my 8800 GTXs for a long time, but I think that was a fluke.) If you have Crossfire or SLi and need two 100 dollar blocks, that sort of kills any advantage the 4870 has/had over the GTX 280.

 

[DogChainX]

i've talked witha few people all of which say that for what it is ... i shouldn't do it ...

1. it costs too much
2. you don't really get much better temps than air

should i start in watercooling or like some other's said go to phase change?

to me watercooling sounds better ... less hassle ... better clocks than air ... somewhat better temps ... i don't feel like spending 500+ dollars on a phase change unit and crap out my cpu and have to deal with thermal grease ....

you opinion matters .... post

This has probably already been covered, but here are my two cents worth.

It does cost more than air. An entry level system runs a little above $100. A Great custom system can go well over $200, and an insane system...well....the sky is the limit (who was it that was running 3 loops, all with a PA120.3 on each loop?). You will get better temps than MOST air coolers with even a low-end water cooling system.

I've built four computers in the past year for my brother-in-law. All four had one type of heatsink, the Tuniq Tower. His temps when his E4500's are o'clocked to 3.4GHz on full load? 68-70C with the fan turned low, 65C on high (loud). My E8400 clocked at 4.2GHz on water on load? About 60C (SILENT, fan running on very low with a PA160 rad). He's nuts on computer being silent. Now he wants to buy my system, water cooling and all.

So, other than better overclocks, lower temps, and quiet cooling...why do I water cool? Because computers are my hobby. I love to tinker around with my system. Water cooling is fun for me. Air cooling isn't.

I'd say get into water cooling, and leave Phase Change for another day (and an extra paycheck). If after a year of water cooling you still feel the "itch" to get the high-end of computer cooling, go for it.

 

[veedubfreak]

I recently went from an all air cooling setup TRUE120 to dual loop. Running a swiftech apogee on the q6600 and 2 DD maze5's on my 4870s. Watercooling is for when you want another project to tinker with. If you dont LIKE working on your computer, stick to air. If getting the most out of your machine and you enjoy working on it, its great. I just need to figure out why i'm not getting better temps out of my q6600. Although i was able to get it stable at 4ghz and 1.6v without breaking 70C with 80F ambient. Best i was ever capable of with my TRUE was 3.8ghz at 1.55v and 55F ambient.