Watercooling?

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Caporegime
Joined
12 Mar 2004
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I was wondering how water cooling compares to air cooling in terms of sound. I get sick of hearing the noisy gpu fans when playing games, is water cooling any quieter considering there is a pump? My temps are fine so I don't expect to see any major benefit there, but I've always found water cooling cool having all those pipes inside the case. :D
 
Generally fans are the loudest part. Water cooling uses less fans, and therefore is generally quieter. If you take the pump and 1/2 radiator fans vs about 8 or so fans, yeah. Certainly for the same level of cooling, air cooling will be noisier, though some of the newer fans are pretty damn good. (higher rpms needed make the diff).
 
Most pumps are silent. And 120mm fans are a lot quieter than smaller gpu fans. Its expensive water cooling but the benefits are good. Less noise and heat.

But to be honest the money you spent on it you could get a new quieter card. So i would not bother putting your card on water
 
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Pump doesn't make much noise. I have the D5, and I've tried it at different speed settings. At speed 3 it's very quiet, at speed 4 it's audible if you listen carefully and at speed 5 it can make a girl 'arrive' in just a few seconds.

When considering noise, the most important thing to think about is the radiator and the fans that you put on it. The point of watercooling is that it works with much lower rpm fans than air cooling, and most radiators are designed to work optimally with lower rpm fans. Lower rpm meaning quieter fan, of course.
 
Some misconceptions already here. It's not the amount of fans but the speed that they run that cause noise. I opted for a near silent loop and pick my components to reflect this goal.

Using the low fpi sr1-420 rad i use 3x140mm fans at around 600rpm, these are inaudible to me. I chose a d5 vario pump and use setting 2, again near silent. Lastly i have 6x120mm case fans, again all running at about 600rpm so practically inaudible. I cooled my cpu, gpu and also moved to a ssd and low speed storage drive to reduce noise further. Pick your components to match your goal and silence is possible, full build log in sig :)
 
As JeffyB said, pick your parts to meet your brief (significantly quieter or inaudible)

cheapest option is an aftermarket gpu cooler (£20+)
Next is a good set of headphones (£50)
Usually both of these together is enought, unless you don't like headphones

next is a newer / cooler running card (£100) - A second hand 460 will clock well and give you a small fps increase using much less juice
Card plus cooler (£130)

next is a gpu only waterloop (universal block) (£150)
Full loop (£180)
Passive full loop (£250)

low power/heat pc rebuild inc case/mods (£550+)

Your psu may also be making a lot of noise when gaming if old or over 60% load

You can watercool with only a single fan - my gtx460 and 2500k for example.
But usually JeffyB approach 3 to 5x 600rmp fans is more that good enought
 
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Hi, just upgarded my 1st H20 loop which was Black Ice GT Stealth 360 Rad x6 Fans - Vipers / Xilence Fans push:pull config, XSPC D750 Res:Pump Combo / CPU Block / GPU Block Full Cover + Tubing, Fittings, coolent, which came to about £300. This loop set up worked very well cooling my i7920-4.2GHz + GPU-GTX 470 850:1700:2000MHz as you can see both are well overclocked.

The Upgrade was to replace my BI GTS 360 Rad to a BI GTS 420 Triple Fan Rad + 140mm Fans 1000rpm and also upgarde pump and Resivoir through the year. Don't get me wrong the 1st custom loop worked very well.
 
I have headphones but they do not compare to a subwoofer nearly collapsing the house when artillary shells hit in COH.
 
My 18W pump is virtually silent I have it sat on the bottom of the case on top of some foam padding to isolate it from the case, if I don't use the foam there's a fair bit of vibration.
 
If you get a full loop I cant give any advice but I dont know much about them but if you get something pre-sealed like a Corsair H50 or H70, I can tell you now the pump is completely silent, The only noise maker are the fans and even those aren't any louder than your average case fan (if that) :P
 
The problem with coolers like the h50 is they dont cool graphics cards unless you mod it. Best option is as said above a triple rad with low fpi count with some slow speed fans could keep your cpu and cool.

My rig in my sig is easily cooled with a triple blackice sr1 rad with fans at 800 rpm. Noisiest part for me now is my hdd's.
 
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