CPU and Graphics Card Water Cooling

[JooJar]

Hi,

Some of you may have seen my post about building a fast machine.

I am thinking of going with 3 GTX 580 cards, and a 2600k CPU. What would I need to water cool the cards and CPU. I've seen the plates for the cards, but what else is needed? If you had a system that had the same cards and CPU and it needed to be watercooled what would you get?

It would be ideal if I could get the stuff from OcUK as I will be traveling up there to grab the stock.

Also, as a side note, I've seen heatsinks for the ram. Do people watercool the ram?

Thanks.

 

[Tealc]

You can either go full cover for the graphics cards or just cool the core and deal with the rest by other means, such as with heatsinks and maybe some active cooling. The full cover block will cool the GPU core, the RAM (not required apparently) and the Voltage Regulator Mosfets which can produce buckets of heat depending on the cards. Full covers also look much better, especially when coupled with the backplates.

Full cover blocks cost more and are not transferable to your next graphics cards.

 

[w3bbo]

Full cover blocks for the cards (expensive but worth it if you intend keeping the cards). You will also need 2x short sli adapters for the cards to link them together .

 

[JooJar]

You can either go full cover for the graphics cards or just cool the core and deal with the rest by other means, such as with heatsinks and maybe some active cooling. The full cover block will cool the GPU core, the RAM (not required apparently) and the Voltage Regulator Mosfets which can produce buckets of heat depending on the cards. Full covers also look much better, especially when coupled with the backplates.

Full cover blocks cost more and are not transferable to your next graphics cards.

Thanks, I was looking for at the full cover. They are within budget.

What parts would I need to set up the watercooling for graphics card and cpu? Would OcUK be able to advise me parts whilst I am at their shop?

 

[ahenners]

You would need a CPU block, gpu blocks, a pump, reservoir, radiator, fans, tubing, barbs, water/coolant, kill coil. Probably missed something off though. The guys at Ocuk might be able to advise you but the best thing to do is read up and research as much as you possibly can before going into watercooling. Until you feel you have the knowledge to come up with a sufficient spec for your loop yourself then I would just research and read forums on it etc. By all means ask questions and things but speaking from my experience of getting into WC it is the best thing to do

 

[hlennie]

A pity overclockers don't stock enough watercooling parts for u to build a decent loop afraid u might have to look elsewhere

Think sli 580s are your best bet Tri sli going to need one serious loop at least dual 360 rads to see nice temps I take it u going to over clock CPU and gpu's

 

[scrlk]

Thanks, I was looking for at the full cover. They are within budget.

What parts would I need to set up the watercooling for graphics card and cpu? Would OcUK be able to advise me parts whilst I am at their shop?

Get NathWraith to help you.

 

[JeffyB]

For that lot i'd be looking at 2x120.3 rads (or equivalent), 3 full cover blocks, a pump or 2 with good head pressure to cope with the 4 blocks and possibly a nice tripple sli bridge as well as the other usual components (reservoir, fans, fittings, tubing, water, kill coil). No point watercooling ram or mobo, just dumps more heat into your loop. It maybe worthwhile to consider dual loops in this circumstance as well. Rough estimate of the cost of the loop is £600-700 if using full cover blocks.

Get reading as well, that's a pretty big loop to attempt for a first timer but not impossible. Here is how i got started.
I read the ocuk advanced overclocking sticky, although a lot is outdated now there's still some useful info there.
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://martinsliquidlab.org/
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.

 

[jinxpad]

To adequately cool that kind of setup just be prepared to spend a fair amount on cooling it all. For all that heat you will definitely (imo) need a dual loop setup, so take this into account when planning everything out.

a very nice new piece of kit is the new Dual Pump/Loop Koolance Bay Res (looking to get one of these myself)

shown in the OCUK Thread HERE

So you'll need to decide on the pumps you want as you'll need 2 - Either the D5 or the MCP355 pumps will be just fine.

2 x Tripple radiators would be a good start, but with radiators you have the most choice in terms of configuration. You could go with 140mm Radiators for instance, just do your research and base your decision on what will suit your needs.

Jeffyb's links are very useful and will definitely be worth reading and will help you a great deal.

With any watercooling setup, do your research before you purchase anything, as you'll likely need a dual loop to sufficiently cool that beast of a rig you're planning on building, it would very much suck to spend all that cash only to find out you could have/should have got different parts.

Good WC'ing isn't cheap, but done right, its great