Is watercooling meant to be silent?

Hedge

Hedge

Hedge

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I understand that one of the appeals of watercooling is that its very quiet..

ive never actually seen a setup first hand, but looking at peoples pics on here they have radiators with around 3 fans on them..

so how is that any quieter than my eclipse with intake, exhaust and cpu fan?
 
mines anything but silent 11 sharkoon 2000 fans all at 100% cooling a q6600 clocked at 3.8 (4ghz soon now its winter) but then again the temps never go over 40c even when gaming :)
 
Haha yeah i have 5 Sharkoon 2000's running at full on when i am feeling adventurous and the temps are really good, Can't wait to add my rad so it directly effects my CPU Temp.
 
Main reason i went watercooling was because of the noise, low rpm fans like the sharkoons, noiseblockers are very quiet, they don't shift much air as a result but then they don't need too if you have plenty of surface area (radiators) with which to dissipate the heat.
 
Hedge said:
I understand that one of the appeals of watercooling is that its very quiet..

ive never actually seen a setup first hand, but looking at peoples pics on here they have radiators with around 3 fans on them..

so how is that any quieter than my eclipse with intake, exhaust and cpu fan?
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Case fans generally have to be running at some kind of speed to get any kind of airflow throughout the case, when fans are attached to rads, they only need to be moving the slighetest bit of air to make a huge difference to passive, especially the thermochill PA/feser rads which are designed to be used with low rpm fans.

One of the noisyest components in a water cooled setup will be the pump, and most of this noise will be the vibration from the pump to the rest of the case. As long as you have the pump mounted with some kind of anti vibration kit, most of the noise will be cut out, and then you're laughing =)
 
steveo said:
mines anything but silent 11 sharkoon 2000 fans all at 100% cooling a q6600 clocked at 3.8 (4ghz soon now its winter) but then again the temps never go over 40c even when gaming :)
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Wow Q6600 at 3.8. Whats the power consumption like? That pounds a E8600 any day of the week, that's the toss up I'm having at the moment a Q6 v E8. The main differential is power consumption 95W v 65W at default.
 
jakelovatto said:
Wow Q6600 at 3.8. Whats the power consumption like? That pounds a E8600 any day of the week, that's the toss up I'm having at the moment a Q6 v E8. The main differential is power consumption 95W v 65W at default.
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a lot :) measuring from the wall plug the difference between my rig at stock full load and at 4ghz is about 100 watts.. so its drawing close to 200watts at 4ghz load

when purchasing keep in mind most of the recent Q6600 have struggled to hit 3.6ghz.. you might be better looking for a 2nd hand on that is proven to clock
 
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The loudest thing in my case is my GTS. I've got two 7v Yate Loons on my 120.2 and it's keeping my Q6600 at around 35c idle, 55c load, at 3.6Ghz and 1.5v :p
 
Pneumonic said:
a lot :) measuring from the wall plug the difference between my rig at stock full load and at 4ghz is about 100 watts.. so its drawing close to 200watts at 4ghz load
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Let me guess, you're running it at 1.45V or slightly more?
G0 peaks around 80W. After losses in PSU that's fair 80W more.
 
if you go way, waaaay over the top like me you can run passive apart from the exhaust fan and psu.

Can't hear it basically... very vague hum.

sounds is 100% the reason I'm so into watercooling nowadays, gave up on any sort of extreme clocking years ago.
 
As long as you invest in decent fans (yate loon) they can be quiet. I had some triple blade deltas on mine that were reasonably quiet but I've swapped the 120.2 over for a NHU12P with two yate loon H model fans that does the same job with much less noise, weight and bulk than the whole W/C setup, which I need in my tiny uni room. :p
 
Thanks for the replies people :)

Im tempted to give it a go in future but i dont feel I will get much benefit other than the experience of building it.

My pc is pretty quiet now and my noctua keeps my cpu cool.

Some nice setups about mind! nice to look at the watercooled stuff anyway :)
 
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