I remember years ago, when I was new here, watercooling was the best choice not only for great cooling for extreme overclocks, but also the best choice for a quiet PC. This was before heatpipes were used in CPU coolers, and even the best coolers were only small copper/alu heatsinks with 80mm fans. With watercooling, you could get a single or double 120mm radiator and have two big slow quiet fans giving you comparable temps to that single little high-RPM 80mm fan.
Some people went water for extreme overclocks. Some people went water for extreme silence. Some people went water for reasons in between - to get a mild overclock with something that's still quieter than the stock cooling at stock speeds.
The first reason is alive and well today.
CPU TDPs have increased significantly. Most of them were around a 60w TDP, with the infamous "Preshot" being 115w. Now we're seeing the current flagships with 130w TDPs, but no one thinks twice about it because we have heatpipes and much better coolers.
Graphics TDPs have increased considerably well. In the R300 days, most cards were completely powered by the AGP bus, with a select few high-performance ones requiring a single floppy drive connector for additional power. Now, even midrange cards require a six-pin PCIe power connector, with high-performance cards requiring two. Additionally, Crossfire and SLI have become available, meaning that it's not uncommon to see 500+ watts of just graphics cards in a single computer.
Very rarely do we see watercooling loops like those back in the P4 and Athlon XP days. Single-pump (mains voltage, usually Eheim or Danner), single-radiator loops that were often 1x120mm radiator, sometimes 2x120mm radiator. You'd be cooling a 60w TDP processor and maybe 150w worth of graphics (I don't know what the TDP of those cards were, but I do know that many of them had non-heatpipe single-slot coolers with 40mm fans that exhausted into the case. I remember as we watched with awe one day when leaked pics were posted of the Geforce FX cooler, shocked to see that it was a dual-slot external exhaust affair with a squirrel cage blower). Most enthusiasts ran power supplies around 350-400w, which was plenty for those rigs. We thought a 500w PSU was crazy.
Back then, the cost of watercooling was lower. Heater cores were thirty bucks, and you only needed one. Pumps were expensive, but only one was needed. A decent midrange watercooling setup was only $200 or so. If you wanted to have a good overclock, you needed either a top-of-the-line copper heatsink and a Vantec Tornado or Delta high-RPM 80mm fan, or a quiet watercooling rig. If you wanted a ridiculous overclock, you needed the watercooling plus a high-RPM fan.
Is there still a place for midrange watercooling? At that same price point, is there still an advantage to go to water over air? Big heatpipe towers have now surpassed the performance of single-120mm rad loops, as evidenced by the fact that the Corsair H50, which would be representative of an average water cooling loop circa 2002 or so, is not as good as some of the best air coolers. The majority of current WC loops seem to be at least 3x120mm worth of rad, often as high as 6x120mm worth of rad, and many are dual loops with the GPUs having an entirely separate loop.
If you're not doing extreme overclocking, and if you're not doing SLI or Crossfire, is there still an advantage to watercooling? The noise advantage is significantly reduced, since you can now put slow quiet fans on a heatpipe tower and still get good temperatures.
At what point does it make sense to make the leap from high end air (TRUE, Titan Fenrir, Meghalems, etc.) to low-end water? I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.
__________________
Some people went water for extreme overclocks. Some people went water for extreme silence. Some people went water for reasons in between - to get a mild overclock with something that's still quieter than the stock cooling at stock speeds.
The first reason is alive and well today.
CPU TDPs have increased significantly. Most of them were around a 60w TDP, with the infamous "Preshot" being 115w. Now we're seeing the current flagships with 130w TDPs, but no one thinks twice about it because we have heatpipes and much better coolers.
Graphics TDPs have increased considerably well. In the R300 days, most cards were completely powered by the AGP bus, with a select few high-performance ones requiring a single floppy drive connector for additional power. Now, even midrange cards require a six-pin PCIe power connector, with high-performance cards requiring two. Additionally, Crossfire and SLI have become available, meaning that it's not uncommon to see 500+ watts of just graphics cards in a single computer.
Very rarely do we see watercooling loops like those back in the P4 and Athlon XP days. Single-pump (mains voltage, usually Eheim or Danner), single-radiator loops that were often 1x120mm radiator, sometimes 2x120mm radiator. You'd be cooling a 60w TDP processor and maybe 150w worth of graphics (I don't know what the TDP of those cards were, but I do know that many of them had non-heatpipe single-slot coolers with 40mm fans that exhausted into the case. I remember as we watched with awe one day when leaked pics were posted of the Geforce FX cooler, shocked to see that it was a dual-slot external exhaust affair with a squirrel cage blower). Most enthusiasts ran power supplies around 350-400w, which was plenty for those rigs. We thought a 500w PSU was crazy.
Back then, the cost of watercooling was lower. Heater cores were thirty bucks, and you only needed one. Pumps were expensive, but only one was needed. A decent midrange watercooling setup was only $200 or so. If you wanted to have a good overclock, you needed either a top-of-the-line copper heatsink and a Vantec Tornado or Delta high-RPM 80mm fan, or a quiet watercooling rig. If you wanted a ridiculous overclock, you needed the watercooling plus a high-RPM fan.
Is there still a place for midrange watercooling? At that same price point, is there still an advantage to go to water over air? Big heatpipe towers have now surpassed the performance of single-120mm rad loops, as evidenced by the fact that the Corsair H50, which would be representative of an average water cooling loop circa 2002 or so, is not as good as some of the best air coolers. The majority of current WC loops seem to be at least 3x120mm worth of rad, often as high as 6x120mm worth of rad, and many are dual loops with the GPUs having an entirely separate loop.
If you're not doing extreme overclocking, and if you're not doing SLI or Crossfire, is there still an advantage to watercooling? The noise advantage is significantly reduced, since you can now put slow quiet fans on a heatpipe tower and still get good temperatures.
At what point does it make sense to make the leap from high end air (TRUE, Titan Fenrir, Meghalems, etc.) to low-end water? I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.
__________________