what's water cooling?

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FS Effects

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 28, 2006
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what exactly is water cooling with those pipes connecting to one component to another? do you actually put real water in them? what if it leaks? water and electricity dont mix from my understanding.

oh, pc's with water cooling looks really ugly.
 
FS Effects said:
what exactly is water cooling with those pipes connecting to one component to another? do you actually put real water in them? what if it leaks? water and electricity dont mix from my understanding.

oh, pc's with water cooling looks really ugly.
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If you search you'll find your answer.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=759705


Q: What is watercooling?

A: Put simply, watercooling is cooling your computer with the power of water. Water is pumped in a continuous loop in your system, drawing either from a resovoir (res) of water, or having all the water contained inside the tubes. It flows from the pump, to a radiator device (some way of transferring the heat to the air), where all the heat is transferred through the radiator, to the air. The water (coolant) then flows to the CPU and any other sources of heat, where it absorbs the heat put out by each block. It then flows back to the res, where it stays until it is pulled back out again, repeating the cycle.

Q: Is watercooling really safe?

A: When done correctly, watercooling is as safe as air cooling. When done poorly, watercooling is as safe as an underwater LAN party. The main thing to remember about a watercooling system is you have to be CAUTIOUS, you have to be SAFE, and you have to TAKE YOUR TIME. When its all said and done, there will be no risk to your system. If you rush through setting it up, then you put your system in danger. Remember, most failures are due to human error and not a faulty component. A fan can die just as easily as a pump can die.

Q: How effective is watercooling?

A: That depends a lot on the components of your system. In a good watercooling system, it is much more effective than air, in a megahertz/temperature way. Watercooled systems have the potential to overclock higher than one could achieve with air, be quieter than an air-cooled system,. and have a general geekiness factor that no air heatsink could ever obtain.
 
**sometimes** its ugly.

There are two types of watercoolers in my mind...people only concerned about the best temps, and people concerned about good temps without sacrificing the *wow* factor.

You need to look a bit harder if you havent seen anyone that fits into the second group. There are tons of people on this forum alone that have extremely cool looking H20 rigs that are also extremely functional.
 
FS Effects said:
water cooling is mostly used by overclockers, right?
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Uhh, i guess you can say so. They can also use w/c to lose the loud fans and have a quiet rig. You can run the radi. fans with Nexus fans and you wouldn't even be able to hear them. And basically watercooling can be used for the cpu, gpu, and mobo chipset. There are probably other stuff you can watercool too.
 
Water Cooling is used by three types of people
-Nice Temps
-Quiet comp
-Both of above

Im a little of both as I had a few loud fans in my case and now they are gone and my temps are nowhere near what I got on air. So much better. As far as the ugly comment goes, depends on the comp you look at. If the tubing and loop is a mess, then yeah it can be ugly. But most people on here know what they're doing and if you have UV reactive coolant (or UV active tubing) with some UV lights, then it can look really nice. So as far as it looks ugly? not really. And yes its mosly used by OCers but see what I just said, for nice temps, quietness or both. And as anthongy said, as long as you know what your doing, take your time, inspect your loop carefully and all the connections and leak test for at least 24 hours, you should be good :)
 
FS Effects said:
oh, pc's with water cooling looks really ugly.
Click to expand...
why would anyone say this unless they were looking to start a flame war? you haven't seen every water-cooling setup out there.
 
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