Have you left custom water cooled setups
- Thread starter doggles
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Iv avoided water cooling due to all the potential issues which became guaranteed issues with the test of time. It's too risky to have an issue especially when I'm not at home and the kids etc are using the pc.
Will stick to air, it's most reliable
Will stick to air, it's most reliable
My son's rig (5700x3d, 2080Ti) is in a loop roughly the same age. I change the fluid and blow the dust & cat fur out of the rads annually, but it's otherwise been problem free.
Likely replace the GPU in the new year (9070XT) and he's asked for a SFF case, so I'm looking forward to putting the MoRa 420 to work.
I just rebuild my loop to the another case. All the fittings and ZMT tubes looked pristine and I only swapped few tubes and one fitting. Never had any leakage while running my loop with soft tubes and EK premixed liquid *knockknock*.
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I used to be really into water cooling, there were a lot of benefits, the main one for me was increased performance, with obviously looks and lower noise levels as I used to over spec the rads. At one point I even had a massive external rad lol.
Nowadays most parts (gpu and cpu) are at their limit, the focus is more on undervolting, so watercooling won’t really give me much more performance gains. The only reason to watercool now is for the appearance and lower noise in my opinion.
I just want something hassle free with minimal maintenance so only use air coolers - draining was never a big deal, but installing a Noctua air cooler is more convenient. Aio coolers have never interested me.
Nowadays most parts (gpu and cpu) are at their limit, the focus is more on undervolting, so watercooling won’t really give me much more performance gains. The only reason to watercool now is for the appearance and lower noise in my opinion.
I just want something hassle free with minimal maintenance so only use air coolers - draining was never a big deal, but installing a Noctua air cooler is more convenient. Aio coolers have never interested me.
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I won't stop watercooling. There's something magical about it, I don't get the same pleasure from anything. Sometimes I just sit down, drink my coffee and stare at my custom loop like a little kid and I feel like I've created something so special lol
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I tried to ditch my water cooled setup a while back because I was annoyed with the maintenance and difficulty of swapping parts. After about 6 months I was back to water cooling because having fans revving up and down really got to me.
Yes you can tune them a bit to reduce the frequency, but well-set up water cooling is night and day. The price of entry is enough to make you wince these days, but I can't make the compromise on noise and performance.
Yes you can tune them a bit to reduce the frequency, but well-set up water cooling is night and day. The price of entry is enough to make you wince these days, but I can't make the compromise on noise and performance.
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I ditched water cooling with my GPU swap.
While I really enjoyed the near silence of many slow fans I needed a pump and a new water block which would have added £400 on top of the £1k for a 4080 in Aug 23.
I switched to a 280 AIO and the oversize cooler on the card is actually pretty quiet.
I only really game on that PC now, it's effectively a steam box / xbox so I'm usually wearing headphones or steaming to the TV, not that it makes a lot of noise. with a 5800X 3D I don't need to run the AIO fans any harder than the WC loop.
For day to to day I'm using a Linux mini PC which is silent unless I try to game on it. This cheap mini is probably 70% of my usage now so that replaces the idle wine of the tower.
The noisiest thing is my work laptop, Lenovo 6 core T14s.... fan on that is always making a racket, probably due to all the corporate spyware tracking my every blink and keystroke.
These days, I don't have the time for overclocking, both CPU and GPU are undervolted.
For me, PC parts have become expensive to the point where I can'tr justify the cost of WC and most GPU now ship with huge coolers which are good enough acoustically.
Still like to see a nice clean WC build, but more as a piece of art.
While I really enjoyed the near silence of many slow fans I needed a pump and a new water block which would have added £400 on top of the £1k for a 4080 in Aug 23.
I switched to a 280 AIO and the oversize cooler on the card is actually pretty quiet.
I only really game on that PC now, it's effectively a steam box / xbox so I'm usually wearing headphones or steaming to the TV, not that it makes a lot of noise. with a 5800X 3D I don't need to run the AIO fans any harder than the WC loop.
For day to to day I'm using a Linux mini PC which is silent unless I try to game on it. This cheap mini is probably 70% of my usage now so that replaces the idle wine of the tower.
The noisiest thing is my work laptop, Lenovo 6 core T14s.... fan on that is always making a racket, probably due to all the corporate spyware tracking my every blink and keystroke.
These days, I don't have the time for overclocking, both CPU and GPU are undervolted.
For me, PC parts have become expensive to the point where I can'tr justify the cost of WC and most GPU now ship with huge coolers which are good enough acoustically.
Still like to see a nice clean WC build, but more as a piece of art.
For maintenance all it take is a few strategically placed QDCs and you’ll be fine. Becomes very easy to swap parts and troubleshoot. Agreed though, they can get expensive quick. I have 2 pair QDCs on each the CPU block, GPU block, and my Mora 400 radiator. Came from hard tubing, now maintenance is a breeze. The system is whisper quiet. Like others said performance boost is negligible but the system runs cool on OC, and in some games I did see a small 5%-8% improvement in FPS and better 1% lows. (Excuse the cable management, its still a work in progress lol!)
I still have mine, but I only use pure di water and mayhems XT1 clear...
flushed it after 3 years, took apart the blocks and everything was almost clean, very little sign of anything.
I also use EK ZMT tubing
So I guess if you don't use dyes and don't care about the looks, you can have a custom loop as reliable and maintenance free as an AIO.
flushed it after 3 years, took apart the blocks and everything was almost clean, very little sign of anything.
I also use EK ZMT tubing
So I guess if you don't use dyes and don't care about the looks, you can have a custom loop as reliable and maintenance free as an AIO.
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I genuinely considered stepping away from a custom cooled setup after having to RMA my expensive Z790 BTF Hero board. The hassle of pulling apart all my metal chrome tubing, partially draining the loop with the MO RA 420 and its quick disconnects, then putting everything back together made me stop and think about whether it was worth it.
For a moment I thought about switching to an AIO and putting the stock cooler back onto my Red Devil 6950 XT so I could be done with it. The problem is I have invested so much into this system from a water cooling standpoint that I could not bring myself to walk away. Right now my loop looks like this:
• MO RA 420 cooled by four 200 mm Noctua fans
• Two D5 pumps mounted in two Alphacool lay flat reservoirs, one pump as redundancy
• EK block on the 6950 XT Red Devil
• Alphacool Core CPU block
• Around £200 worth of fittings for both hardline and soft tube compression
• Two pairs of quick disconnects
• Aqua Computer flow meter
For me the whole point has been the luxury of silence. I could switch to a hybrid air and AIO setup and sell everything, but if I ever wanted to return to custom cooling I would regret letting it all go. So instead, I ended up buying even more water cooling gear for the new build.
I am moving to a full AMD system and retiring the Intel setup. I picked up a block for my new Hellhound 9070 XT, kept my CPU block, as it will work with 9800xt, bought two new 360 radiators and grabbed more soft tube compression fittings. I am planning to retire the MO RA 420 and run a more traditional, simpler loop inside my old Lian Li 011D XL. I will hang on to the hardline fittings and the MO RA since selling them would not give me enough back to justify it. For this build I will use standard EPDM tubing for the runs and keep everything stealthy with zero RGB. No lighting, just quiet and efficient cooling.
For a moment I thought about switching to an AIO and putting the stock cooler back onto my Red Devil 6950 XT so I could be done with it. The problem is I have invested so much into this system from a water cooling standpoint that I could not bring myself to walk away. Right now my loop looks like this:
• MO RA 420 cooled by four 200 mm Noctua fans
• Two D5 pumps mounted in two Alphacool lay flat reservoirs, one pump as redundancy
• EK block on the 6950 XT Red Devil
• Alphacool Core CPU block
• Around £200 worth of fittings for both hardline and soft tube compression
• Two pairs of quick disconnects
• Aqua Computer flow meter
For me the whole point has been the luxury of silence. I could switch to a hybrid air and AIO setup and sell everything, but if I ever wanted to return to custom cooling I would regret letting it all go. So instead, I ended up buying even more water cooling gear for the new build.
I am moving to a full AMD system and retiring the Intel setup. I picked up a block for my new Hellhound 9070 XT, kept my CPU block, as it will work with 9800xt, bought two new 360 radiators and grabbed more soft tube compression fittings. I am planning to retire the MO RA 420 and run a more traditional, simpler loop inside my old Lian Li 011D XL. I will hang on to the hardline fittings and the MO RA since selling them would not give me enough back to justify it. For this build I will use standard EPDM tubing for the runs and keep everything stealthy with zero RGB. No lighting, just quiet and efficient cooling.
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I've actually just gone back to a full WC'd set-up, I was on air, decided I wanted an AIO, bought the very nice EK-Nucleus AIO CR360 and within 2hrs of use it had a nasty vibration noise coming from the CPU block, turns out this was a common complaint with this model.
So, with all this, I didn't really see another AIO that I wanted, so I thought I'd just build a basic loop for the CPU only, and then I made the mistake of looking at water cooled GPU's
So I've now replaced every part of my original build (apart from 2 NVMe drives) and gone full water, just waiting for the last bits tomorrow to start building it all, can't wait, I love looking at the low temps and having a quiet system, plus it looks the bees
So, with all this, I didn't really see another AIO that I wanted, so I thought I'd just build a basic loop for the CPU only, and then I made the mistake of looking at water cooled GPU's
So I've now replaced every part of my original build (apart from 2 NVMe drives) and gone full water, just waiting for the last bits tomorrow to start building it all, can't wait, I love looking at the low temps and having a quiet system, plus it looks the bees
That's another thing that stopped me going with an AIO. With a custom cooled system, you can swap out parts that fail easily, or build in redundancy for pumps, etc. Good luck with the full system - what is your WC setup?I've actually just gone back to a full WC'd set-up, I was on air, decided I wanted an AIO, bought the very nice EK-Nucleus AIO CR360 and within 2hrs of use it had a nasty vibration noise coming from the CPU block, turns out this was a common complaint with this model.
So, with all this, I didn't really see another AIO that I wanted, so I thought I'd just build a basic loop for the CPU only, and then I made the mistake of looking at water cooled GPU's
So I've now replaced every part of my original build (apart from 2 NVMe drives) and gone full water, just waiting for the last bits tomorrow to start building it all, can't wait, I love looking at the low temps and having a quiet system, plus it looks the bees
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Yeah, the AIO failing so quickly just made me realise that as well, so like you I just thought I'd much rather a full WC set-up and do it properly
WC set-up:
* Iceman CT3 CPU Block
* 1 x 360mm EK-Quantum Surface P360M X-FLOW Rad
* 2 x 240mm EK-Quantum Surface P360M X-FLOW Rads
* Alphacool Eisblock GPU block
* Alphacool D5 Pump + Plexi Top
* EK-WB EK-RES X4 250 (R2.0) 850ML Glass Reservoir
* Barrow Brass Fittings
* XSPC Pure Clear Premix
* XSPC Clear Tubing (though I am considering getting some ZMT tubing instead?)
That's the main bulk of it, what are you using at the moment?
Nice set-up that'll be! Personally, I'd go with the EPDM/ZMT tubing - it's far more durable than the PVC tubing. Good luck with the build!Yeah, the AIO failing so quickly just made me realise that as well, so like you I just thought I'd much rather a full WC set-up and do it properly
WC set-up:
* Iceman CT3 CPU Block
* 1 x 360mm EK-Quantum Surface P360M X-FLOW Rad
* 2 x 240mm EK-Quantum Surface P360M X-FLOW Rads
* Alphacool Eisblock GPU block
* Alphacool D5 Pump + Plexi Top
* EK-WB EK-RES X4 250 (R2.0) 850ML Glass Reservoir
* Barrow Brass Fittings
* XSPC Pure Clear Premix
* XSPC Clear Tubing (though I am considering getting some ZMT tubing instead?)
That's the main bulk of it, what are you using at the moment?