Water Cooling hierarchy?

G-Dubs

G-Dubs

G-Dubs

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2 Jan 2009
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Lincolnshire coast
Is there an established hierarchy with WC kit.

I'm looking to do another WC set up and just thought i'd ask thoughts on this

feel free to list the good the bad and the ugly (horrendously bad don't touch it with a barge pole)

Please separate into different categories though.
 
Skinnee, martin, bundymania all do great reviews.

Kit wise i always like EK blocks, great build quality an performance to match. Pumps i'd recommend sticking to laing (d5 or ddc). Tubing i like primochill lrt, great bends radius, not seen it leech either. Rads hwlabs, thermochill or xspc rx series. Res i like the ek multi res' best.
 
The only really bad bit of kit i have had was a XSPC pump/res combo that failed.

The biggest surprise ive had was using the HWlabs stealth RAD it was very good considering how thin it was, another good bit of kit that im using now is a dangerden pump for the cost you really cant knock it.

As for blocks you can not go wrong with EK.

I think the main problem is people assume they need to buy the most expensive gear to get good results as a lot of us know this is not true...a well set up cheap system will beat a badly setup uber system every time. Its not always about the Kit :)
 
Sayso said:
The biggest surprise ive had was using the HWlabs stealth RAD it was very good considering how thin it was, another good bit of kit that im using now is a dangerden pump for the cost you really cant knock it.
)
Click to expand...

Honestly right now I think one of the biggest myths in water cooling is that thicker (much more expensive) rads are better than thinner (cheaper and more compact) radiators. The one case where this is true is with really high fan speed radiators, where the HWlabs GTX series reigns supreme, but that is only really because no one makes a thinner radiator with high enough fin density.

For low fan speeds (600-1000rpm) a thin MCR/XPSC RS radiator dissipates nearly the same heat load (2-3% either way depending on the rad it is being compared to) at the same temperature delta as all the other popular thick low fan speed radiator brands (RX/PA/SR1 etc).

Personally I think (in the case of low fan speed radiators at least), that both money and space are much better spent on a thin radiator and a shroud. The use of a shroud will result in better performance than any of the thick rads, use up the same amount of space and probably still cost less.
 
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