Water or Air... what to do?

Monstermunch · 30 Apr 2011 at 00:44

Hey all...

I've been out of things for a while, had a water disaster a few years back and then compatability issues with ram and mobos after that with x48 and then ran out of money & work!

Started my own business a year ago and things have been going well so around September/October time last year I upgraded to i7:

i7 930
Asus P6X58D-E
6gb Patriot Viper
GTX 470
Vertex 2E

But cos of being very busy with my business I need the rig up and running instantly i ripped out the water cooling and just installed everything at stock. Mainly cos I discovered minor leaks when removing the old gear from my case (1/2" barbs & 7/16" tubing with no clips which was recommended)

My rig is still completely stock so now I have a little more spare time and money I want to get things running again but can't decide if I should get the water back in there or just opt for high end air cooling instead being easier.

Whichever way I go my whole case needs a serious overhaul, new fans, fan controller, filters etc and if I go back to water I will go for compression fittings this time.

This is the water cooling gear I have:

Thermochill PA120.2 (plus another with a minor leak)
Laing DDC2
XSPC Bay Res
Watercool Heatkiller LT
Yate Loon fans - bought these on advice & they suck badly, don't like the noise and they seem to move sod all air.

Opinions/ideas greatly appreciated!

thx

w3bbo · 30 Apr 2011 at 09:14

To be completely honest m8, I went back to aircooling and have only lost 200mhz. Admittedly my rig is quite a lot louder than it was but so much easier to manage and swap things out with minimum hassle.

WC is however addictive and I do miss it as air cooling is stopping my build from reaching maximum potential. The thing is you gotta ask yourself if you can live with high clocks on decent air cooling or maximum clocks on watercooling.

Muel · 30 Apr 2011 at 09:20

How much were you looking at spending? You could watercool and therefore overclock further, but you'd get a far greater performance boost from moving to a Sandy Bridge setup.

mjones1 · 30 Apr 2011 at 09:49

I would go with high air as you never know when one of your pumps might die or have a leak which isnt ideal if you use your pc for business.

Monstermunch · 30 Apr 2011 at 23:26

w3bbo said:
To be completely honest m8, I went back to aircooling and have only lost 200mhz. Admittedly my rig is quite a lot louder than it was but so much easier to manage and swap things out with minimum hassle.

WC is however addictive and I do miss it as air cooling is stopping my build from reaching maximum potential. The thing is you gotta ask yourself if you can live with high clocks on decent air cooling or maximum clocks on watercooling.

Hi m8... long time no speak, how ya been?

Yea, I think i've decided to go down the high end air route for now and will go back to water when I get a server for my business and upgrade my personal rig next year at some point hopefully...

Any rec's on a high end air cooler?

mjones1 said:
I would go with high air as you never know when one of your pumps might die or have a leak which isnt ideal if you use your pc for business.

Yes m8, agreed as above...

Monstermunch · 30 Apr 2011 at 23:31

Muel said:
How much were you looking at spending? You could watercool and therefore overclock further, but you'd get a far greater performance boost from moving to a Sandy Bridge setup.

Spend would be more for high end air as I have all the water cooling gear (as in first post) apart from a few new connectors and fans...

tbh at the moment I couldn't justify a move to SB as my rig has been running completely stock for the last 6 months and gaming wise, the last game I played was Mafia 2 & my rig pretty much runs it at max in 1920 x 1200 at stock settings so with some good air and an overclock I bet it would still max most games without a sweat. If it struggles I will add another GTX470 before going to SB cos it really doesnt offer enough of a performance gain to warrant the spend.

w3bbo · 1 May 2011 at 00:45

The D14 is perhaps the best cooler around although the Thermalright Silver Arrow is also exceptional. Either will serve you well.

MikeTimbers · 1 May 2011 at 11:51

If reliability is so important to your business buy a Dell and get a maintenance contract.

Water-cooling is as reliable as it's made to be. Quality parts fitted with care will be as good as any of the other parts. Good pumps like Laing are extremely reliable. A water-block arguably has less to go wrong than a heatpipe cooler.

But all that having been said, high-end air like Megahalems etc. are so good that in a good case with well-thought out air-flow is easier to build, simply to work with and cheaper. Water is only truly a game-changer when it enables a higher clock that you absolutely must have or quietens a system that otherwise would upset SWMBO.