water cooling for beginners

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Im going to be buying a new system soon and want to water cool the cpu and gfx card iv never done water cooling before and wonder were to start what is needed to get it up and running.

thanks!
 
read everything to do with watercooling that you can find

the project logs section in case central is a good place to start.

list your computer spec and we can help :)
 
Taken from my build log

I read the ocuk advanced overclocking sticky
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17803239
Trawled the xs forums
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=70
and the stickies there
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=202394
and then discovered skinnee and martin, two of the best reviewers of watercooling gear. This is where delta temps and watercooling clicked in my head, the graphs and tables didn't mean much to me at the start now i go straight to them to see how many watts can be disapated at XXXrpm fan speed
http://www.skinneelabs.com/
http://martin.skinneelabs.com/
Be clear on what your goal is. Silence, performance and aesthetics and match your hardware to your needs. Think about your future cooling needs as it will probably save you money in the long run and most of all be patient. I steadily bought a component every week or 2 until i was ready and did my big order for the rest of the parts. Was nice to be able to familiarise myself with the new hardware.

My build was my first loop i cooled the cpu and the gpu, maybe a good read for you, link in my sig :)
 
heres the spec am thinking of getting:

Asus Rampage III Extreme Intel X58 (Socket 1366) DDR3 Motherboard

Intel Core i7 960 3.20GHz (Bloomfield) (Socket LGA1366)

OcUK Extreme H2O GeForce GTX 480 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
-EK 480 GTX Backplate - Nickel Plated
-EK 480 GTX Nickel Plexi Full Cover VGA Water Block

Corsair Dominator GT 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 16000C8 2000MHz Triple Channel Kit

Antec CP 1000W Modular Power Supply

all in my p183case with ssd 128gb drive and a 2tb drive
 
heres the spec am thinking of getting:

Asus Rampage III Extreme Intel X58 (Socket 1366) DDR3 Motherboard

Intel Core i7 960 3.20GHz (Bloomfield) (Socket LGA1366)

OcUK Extreme H2O GeForce GTX 480 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
-EK 480 GTX Backplate - Nickel Plated
-EK 480 GTX Nickel Plexi Full Cover VGA Water Block

Corsair Dominator GT 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 16000C8 2000MHz Triple Channel Kit

Antec CP 1000W Modular Power Supply

all in my p183case with ssd 128gb drive and a 2tb drive

I would scrap the i7 960 and get the 930 or 950 and save some money.

Also if you got a decent branded GTX480 like EVGA that allow cooler swaps i would get one of them and a waterblock and fit yourself and save a few quid.
 
I would scrap the i7 960 and get the 930 or 950 and save some money.

Also if you got a decent branded GTX480 like EVGA that allow cooler swaps i would get one of them and a waterblock and fit yourself and save a few quid.

yep im going to go for the cheaper cpu still do 4ghz and the evga card also
 
yep im going to go for the cheaper cpu still do 4ghz and the evga card also

Yeah they all do 4Ghz easily.

If your doing watercooling anyway you might aswell fit the waterblock rather than paying a premium for someone else to do it :) plus you get the epic EVGA warranty

Besides its half the fun of watercooling :D
 
Some tips:

Angled adapters for compression fittings are useful for getting tubing around the case.

Thread extenders are invaluable. Buy a few, you won't regret it.

If you're fitting a radiator internally, at the top of the case, measure the clearance from the top of the motherboard to the case roof. For example, the CM 690-II Advanced only has a clearance of 45mm, meaning that you'd need to use a slimline radiator.

It's better to have fans pull air out of a radiator, than trying push air through. So, using that top-mounted radiator as an example, the fans should sit on top of the radiator (in the case of the CM 690-II Advanced, you can mount the fans on top of the case rough and place the top case shroud over them).

Radiators again: beware that some radiators mount the barb holes quite far apart. With the Swiftech MCR220QPK, this meant that one of the barb holes was obscured by the ports on the motherboard backplate and I had to reverse the mounting of the rad so that the barb holes were next to the 5.25" bays. This caused me some cable routing problems, but isn't the end of the world. Still, you'll probably want to make sure that the barb holes on your radiator are a bit closer together.

You'll still want some regular case fans to pull/push an air supply through the case: this is necessary for cooling the motherboard chipset and the RAM and will also help temperatures in your loop.

Check the clearance from the top-mounted radiator to the back of the case, where the 120mm case exhaust fan goes. A slimline rad will probably be okay, but larger rads will mean that that case fan will have to be mounted externally. This isn't a problem, but you will need to buy a fan grill to cover it.

Before you mount your radiators, you should flush them. Rads tend to build up impurities sitting on a shelf for so long, and if you don't flush them before you fill the loop, those impurities will come out during operation and you'll see stuff floating in your tubes! To flush a rad, get some distilled water (doesn't need to be expensive coolant, you can get distilled water cheaply off eBay), boil it, leave it to cool for a couple of minutes, pour into your rad, seal the rad with the plugs that came with it, shake the rad around for a few minutes, repeat until the waste water runs clear.

Avoid AC Ryan gear, especially their radiator grills - they aren't drilled correctly and don't fit 15mm fan spacing even though they're advertised as doing so.
 
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