Water Cooling... Spec Me Please (matter of Son vs Father pride!)

Pneumonic · 30 Oct 2007 at 15:36

Ok so I go to my parents house this weekend and dad has just taken a step ahead in the Lee family arms war! I knew he had been far to quiet recently! His "new" Q6600 is now running at 3.6 Ghz on some serious Air Cooling so now its time to get serious!

I am looking to spec water... tbh I have read through several threads / guides and having had no previous experience with specific parts I really cant decide on what to get for a custom water setup... Cash wise I am looking at around £200 - £350

I would be looking @ CPU / Chipset / GPU

P5K - E Motherboard, Q6600, 8800GTX and Armour Jr Case

weescott · 30 Oct 2007 at 15:53

lol

The P5K doesnt really need chipset cooling. But if you must just to get one over on your poor old man, then an EK chipset block and mosfet blocks (not really needed either) or some Thermalrite heat sinks.

CPU Block, Bowed D-Tek Fuzion with accelerator pack.
GFX block, D-Tek Fuzion, or purely for bling, EK full cover block (not so upgradable)
Pump: DD D5 Vario (reliability) or DDC 18w with aftermarket top of your choice. There is a new EK res top coming out that looks promising.
Tubing: 3/8" Tygon (my new favourite) or 7/16th " Masterkleer
Swiftech Micro Res / bay res / T line plus fill port. your choice. No real performance gains.
Rad: Thermochill PA 120.3 or a PA120.2 for the CPU, PA120.1 for the GFX/Chipset on a separate loop
Fans: Yate Loon.

A lot is personal preference/taste.

Chris Beard · 30 Oct 2007 at 16:22

Fans could be scythe s-flex or sharkoons for silence as alternatives to Yate Loons. Fans could be YS-Tech 38mm for noisy cooling or panoflow 38mm for less noisy but not silent cooling.

Pneumonic · 30 Oct 2007 at 16:48

Well fans arent a problem I have 3 or 4 Delta EFB1212SHE atm so would use them

Chris Beard · 30 Oct 2007 at 16:49

Brave man.

Monkey Puzzle · 30 Oct 2007 at 16:53

3 or 4?! Can you still hear okay?

Minstadave · 30 Oct 2007 at 17:00

If all he's using is air cooling you could save a fortune by just getting top end air cooling or one of the Swiftech kits. Even the smallest kit:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=WC-028-SW

Would let give you pretty solid cooling.

It seems daft spending that much money on cooling a £160 chip. You're better off just banking the money and spending it on future upgrades (8800GT SLI would be pretty impressive). If you've got the money though and haven't got any other hardware you could upgrade go for it though.

Pneumonic · 30 Oct 2007 at 19:28

Chris Beard said:
Brave man.

They arent the ones that you can buy from OC, are not quite so mad as those! They are "only" 9 watt .8 amp so can run them off the mobo and 90% of the time they just idle along at low speed so not all that loud.. only if i really start to push do they make some noise

Pneumonic · 30 Oct 2007 at 19:32

Minstadave said:
If all he's using is air cooling you could save a fortune by just getting top end air cooling or one of the Swiftech kits. Even the smallest kit:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=WC-028-SW

Would let give you pretty solid cooling.

It seems daft spending that much money on cooling a £160 chip. You're better off just banking the money and spending it on future upgrades (8800GT SLI would be pretty impressive). If you've got the money though and haven't got any other hardware you could upgrade go for it though.

Well I had taken a look at the kits, but most opinion on the forums seems to be that you are better off making a custom setup, I had thought maybe I would start with a mid level kit and then upgrade as I got a bit more knowledge... could customise it then as I needed

bilston · 30 Oct 2007 at 21:28

Thing is though m8, you really cannot go wrong with Swiftech if all youre after is silence and slightly better cooling. Got loads of their kit, all top quality stuff.