Water cooling

MYstIC G

Official Licensed Lump of Coal™ Distributor
Staff member
Moderator
FH Subscriber
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
12,440
So, massive nerds. Any of you ever done anything with water cooling on any of your boxes. Any good resources out there to look at? I'm starting to plan a future build but have never done water cooled before. Pros/Cons please as where I've had an underpowered GPU for a while I've gotten used to a silent PC.
 

Z^^

Can't get enough of FH
Joined
Jan 16, 2004
Messages
1,288
I never done it because lets be honest, i live in finland and we have maybe 2-3months at max when air cooled computer kinda suffers when the ambient air is too hot.. then its a matter of being lazy, and well safe if you have to clean the water check the pumps now and then, and if you get leaks. I don't know I would like to try it but I think you would want to have someone who have done it before with hands on experience to check the loops and the configuration of the water thingy before you start.
 

TdC

Trem's hunky sex love muffin
Joined
Dec 20, 2003
Messages
30,925
I have a Corsair H100 in the overclocked god-box. It's a fairly good closed system. No faffing with waters and anti-corrosion agents and whatnot. Before I installed it, I powered it on and let it run for a day. It didn't leak. Don't install the crappy software, because frankly it's crappy and you don't need it.
 

Mabs

J Peasemould Gruntfuttock
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
6,869
i have an OCd water cooled CPU, really nice, dont see the point of going OTT and getting other stuff water cooled though

mine is a corsair something, 2 years old now. running in windows idle mode had it down around 27 centigrade, never goes above about 70 centi under load, cant recommend it enough
 

Hawkwind

FH is my second home
Joined
Jul 5, 2004
Messages
7,541
I have built rigs with the Zalman Reservator, Reservator 2, CNPS20LQ and LQ315. Corsair H80 and H100 (noisy). Of all of those the CNPS20LQ and LQ315 were easily the best. Much quieter than the equivalent Corsair models.

Latest beast has the CNPS20LQ, but will be replaced with teh LQ520 in August when I have some time to spend upgrading.
 

TdC

Trem's hunky sex love muffin
Joined
Dec 20, 2003
Messages
30,925
aye, I like the Reservators. I still remember when the first version came out :)
 

caLLous

I am a FH squatter
FH Subscriber
Joined
Dec 23, 2003
Messages
18,518
If I was going to go watercooling (and I'm sort of thinking about it from just a noise point of view) I would go the whole hog and make sure I had a graphics card that could have a proper water block added to it (a reference board). I'm happy with the performance of air-cooling but oh my, my Sapphire HD7970 (not a reference board) makes a hell of a din when it's working hard. I quite like the idea of having a couple of case fans (and fans on the radiator) and then everything else water-cooled.
 

Raven

Fuck the Tories!
FH Subscriber
Joined
Dec 27, 2003
Messages
44,800
My case is all set up for watercooling but I just don't have the balls to do it. I did see a nice heatsink and closed system for my processor but it was £80 or so and the external sink was fan cooled anyway so not entirely sure what the point was. My case is sound proofed anyway and all moving parts are also mounted onto rubber so its pretty quiet on full load. No overclocking at all though.

Edit, here it is http://www.ebuyer.com/410723-corsai...h-performance-liquid-cpu-cooler-cw-9060009-ww
 

Poag

m00?
Joined
Mar 11, 2004
Messages
2,411
I picked up a H90 recently, installed it. Forgotten about ti since. Runs nicly, quiet, dropped ~8 degrees on my previous coolermaster air fan.

No software, the pipes are nice and tough, had to make a minor mod to my case as its not supposed t have 14cm fans in it. Aside that its all good.
 

Embattle

FH is my second home
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
13,485
Full blown water cooling is great but can be complicated, I had a full blown water cooling setup about a decade ago which irc was for the P4 I had at the time. Since then I've mainly stuck to air via high end HSFs which generally offer a good level of performance at quiet noise levels, recently I purchased a H110 which fits my case well and offers a good mix of both the performance of water cooling and the easy installation of basic HSFs.
 

MYstIC G

Official Licensed Lump of Coal™ Distributor
Staff member
Moderator
FH Subscriber
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
12,440
Interesting stuff, I didn't think Zalman did anything water based.
If I was going to go watercooling (and I'm sort of thinking about it from just a noise point of view) I would go the whole hog and make sure I had a graphics card that could have a proper water block added to it (a reference board). I'm happy with the performance of air-cooling but oh my, my Sapphire HD7970 (not a reference board) makes a hell of a din when it's working hard. I quite like the idea of having a couple of case fans (and fans on the radiator) and then everything else water-cooled.
ASUS do a set of tweaked NVidia cards which come with built in water cooling which is what has peaked my interest in all of this, I want back into high end graphics but without the noise. The more I read about them the more I'm tempted to even consider a SLI setup.

http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/ROG_POSEIDONGTX780P3GD5/

They also do a motherboard that has a similar air/water cooled block but that I really don't understand the point of. Unless I'm being retarded I thought only the CPU on a board would generate sufficient heat to need dealing with (I've never had a motherboard need direct cooling).

http://www.asus.com/ROG_ROG/MAXIMUS_V_FORMULA/
 
Last edited:

caLLous

I am a FH squatter
FH Subscriber
Joined
Dec 23, 2003
Messages
18,518
Sapphire have also released a watercooled R9 295 X2, if you've got £1100 kicking about for a graphics card.

And back in the days when CPUs didn't do so much themselves, you might find that the north and south bridges would get toasty on a motherboard but I think it's just a gimmick. I don't see the point in watercooling RAM either. Although, I guess if you're going with an entirely water-cooled system, there will be next to no airflow over the components so if you're a belt and braces kinda guy it might be worthwhile.
 
Last edited:

Embattle

FH is my second home
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
13,485
Zalman have done water cooling for a while but last I checked they hadn't really done much in the ways of updates to their product range of products.

If you wait with newly released graphics cards the OEMs bring out their own after market coolers, for example I've got a Gigabyte that uses a much quieter Windforce cooler.

At the real overclocking extremes people like to cool MOSFETs etc better.
 

MYstIC G

Official Licensed Lump of Coal™ Distributor
Staff member
Moderator
FH Subscriber
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
12,440
Sapphire have also released a watercooled R9 295 X2, if you've got £1100 kicking about for a graphics card.

And back in the days when CPUs didn't do so much themselves, you might find that the north and south bridges would get toasty on a motherboard but I think it's just a gimmick. I don't see the point in watercooling RAM either. Although, I guess if you're going with an entirely water-cooled system, there will be next to no airflow over the components so if you're a belt and braces kinda guy it might be worthwhile.
I'd seen that card. I have to admit the Mantle stuff that AMD are doing really is making the graphics card research I've been doing much harder. It's not helpful that the only thing out there that supposedly implements it is battlefield 4 though. To be honest the concept of having two fully isolated radiators that cannot be topped up or maintained, i.e. one sealed on GPU and one on CPU, doesn't appeal to me as when something breaks there won't be a spares department.
Zalman have done water cooling for a while but last I checked they hadn't really done much in the ways of updates to their product range of products.

If you wait with newly released graphics cards the OEMs bring out their own after market coolers, for example I've got a Gigabyte that uses a much quieter Windforce cooler.

At the real overclocking extremes people like to cool MOSFETs etc better.
I just had to look up MOSFET on wikipedia :confused:

I think where I'm landing is that I'm happy to put in a water based system as long as it is accessible for maintenance and also removable should it go wrong. I think that's the appeal of the ASUS cards, that basically if you start going tits up you just remove the pipes and drain the loop and go back to stock fans which stay on the card the whole time. Also as it is a built in component you're not stripping a graphics card to add a water cooler that you then fuck up and sink £400 down the drain though sheer stupidity (which I'm totally capable of).
 

caLLous

I am a FH squatter
FH Subscriber
Joined
Dec 23, 2003
Messages
18,518
I've stopped flip-flopping between manufacturers since I had my Sapphire HD5870. The Nvidia offerings at the time were not good - huge power usage for not-as-good performance compared to the equivalent Radeons. Unless AMD/ATI seriously drop the ball I have no intentions of jumping ship. For me it's Intel for CPUs and AMD for graphics and unless something fairly drastic happens, that's how it's going to stay.
To be honest the concept of having two fully isolated radiators that cannot be topped up or maintained, i.e. one sealed on GPU and one on CPU, doesn't appeal to me as when something breaks there won't be a spares department.
You would also benefit much more (cooling efficiency, power usage etc) by having one big radiator/reservoir serving both components in one loop.
 

MYstIC G

Official Licensed Lump of Coal™ Distributor
Staff member
Moderator
FH Subscriber
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
12,440
I've never gotten on with ATI drivers which is the biggest issue for me but that was over a decade ago. The NVidia GeForce software that automatically sets up games is really appealing as well. Problem is that having read up on Mantle, it makes sense and AMD are doing the work to get it standardised but I fear NVidia will simply ignore it.
 

Embattle

FH is my second home
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
13,485
The 4 cards I've had went amd->nv->amd->nv with a nvidia replacing each and card because they failed.

As I said I used them some 10 years ago, no recent knowledge of them.

When I recently considered returning to a full water setup I considered http://www.xs-pc.com since you can fit the combined pump & reservoirs easier in most cases. All full system water cooling needs lots of planning.
 

Raven

Fuck the Tories!
FH Subscriber
Joined
Dec 27, 2003
Messages
44,800
I am a bit of an AMD fanboy really when graphics cards are involved, performance wise there isn't much in it though.

Had some driver issues with Wolfenstein but an update sorted that out.
 

MYstIC G

Official Licensed Lump of Coal™ Distributor
Staff member
Moderator
FH Subscriber
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
12,440
The 4 cards I've had went amd->nv->amd->nv with a nvidia replacing each and card because they failed.

As I said I used them some 10 years ago, no recent knowledge of them.

When I recently considered returning to a full water setup I considered http://www.xs-pc.com since you can fit the combined pump & reservoirs easier in most cases. All full system water cooling needs lots of planning.
I've had a browse through their website, they don't seem to do the separation connectors. Whilst I'm quite some reading away from planning anything at the moment my instinct tells me that having the ability to separate and remove the reservoir simply would be a useful feature. They also don't make any mention of drain points, etc.

In other, annoying news. The Asus Posiedon GPU I mentioned just went into OCUKs This Week Only... http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-331-AS

£30 off or £60 if I did the SLI that I've been thinking about... balls :(
 

Lamp

Gold Star Holder!!
Joined
Jan 16, 2005
Messages
23,121
I CBA with tower PC's anymore since I don't game, but some of them look great

liquidcoolingkit.jpg
 

caLLous

I am a FH squatter
FH Subscriber
Joined
Dec 23, 2003
Messages
18,518
Hmm. I appear to have ordered lots of water cooling stuff. This should be interesting...
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top Bottom