Advice needed AIO or Full system?

Soldato
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18 Jan 2007
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I will be grabbing a Corsair 450D as I love the look of the case and wanted to get an AIO cooler to clear up clutter and give me better cooling than my current skinny heatsink.

I looked through a lot of options and the swiftech h220 seemed to be one of the best but if offered expandability too and I was wanting to upgrade my GPU at a later date and water cool that with a block. A lot of people have said that adding a new rad to the H220 loop actually works quite well.

But if I'm adding a GPU anyway at some point I'm not going to be getting much of a saving over a custom loop or any benefits other than initial easy CPU only setup.

My first question is, if I'm going to be adding a new GPU after probably a month or two (maybe more) is there any point in putting together the loop for the CPU only or should I just wait until I'm all in?

So here's what I'm looking for:
* All the fans and rads/kit to fit in the 450D* that will handle a 3770K and probably a 290/290x when I go for it so all i have to add at that point is the gpu+block.
* Quiet fans but not noctua, they're too brown and/or too expensive, form is just as important to me as function.
* Some idea of where I should be placing what in the 450D.
* Something that goes with the blue motif I've already got going, I gather UV liquid or tubes would look great.
* Any other advice.

I'll want to overclock with the setup but if there's a compromise to be made I would rather compromise cooling performance to get a quiet system.

I was thinking that I would have a 240/360 rad in the top with a 240 rad at the front using corsair SP quiet edition fans, maybe even with a fan speed reducer also. I guess that the res would go in the drive bays, which isn't a problem.

The only problem with that setup is that I have a mechanical drive to go in, the 2x ssds I have can go around the back, with the H220 setup I was going to put the mechanical drive in the 5 1/4 drive bays but with a full setup I don't think that's going to be possible. I guess the only answer there is an external enclosure/nas. Ack, I've just thought, I record game video so need good thoughput will a USB 2/3 interface be fast enough to write 1080p fraps? If not the mechanical drive needs to fit in there somewhere.


Thanks for any help I know I seem to be asking a lot :)


*Mobo is a Gigabyte DS3H if that makes any difference to fan/rad clearance.
 
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