custom watercooling??

johnno

johnno

johnno

Associate
Joined
11 Dec 2005
Posts
360
Location
the mighty hereford
could someone please spec me a custom watercooling kit for 100quid. i only want to cool the cpu. or would it be worth me getting Alphacool Cool Answer II 120 Watercooling Kit (WC-001-AC) or is this setup poor???


help please
 
My opinion (and I haven't yet watercooled but am looking into it) is that for £100 and to cool only the CPU, you're better off with a high end air cooling HSF. imho watercooling is worth doing if you are prepared to spend good money on it and include other components such as the gfx card.
 
The Alphacol setup isn't great and uses small-bore tubing so hard to change components as most water-cooling kit in this country uses large pipes.

For £100, your choices are limited.

Heatercore - £22
120mm fan - £4
Swiftech Apogee - £34
Eheim 1048/1250 at auction or MM - £15-£20
Tubing/T-piece/Jubilee clips - £20 max.

Make your own shroud for the heatercore here
 
Hades said:
My opinion (and I haven't yet watercooled but am looking into it) is that for £100 and to cool only the CPU, you're better off with a high end air cooling HSF. imho watercooling is worth doing if you are prepared to spend good money on it and include other components such as the gfx card.
Click to expand...

You're looking into it but you need to look some more. You don't need to spend lots of money on water-cooling (see above). You certainly can spend a lot of money if you wish, but the best block/rad/pump combination in the world will cool only 10-20% better than the one I've listed but will cost 200-300% more.

The major benefit of water-cooling is relative silence not cooling anyways. With high-end, noisy air you can get extremely efficient cooling - down as low as 0.15CW of so if you buy the biggest baddest sink and fan but you won't want to sit in the same room with it. With water you can easily achieve 0.15CW but without deafening yourself.

EDITTED: major typo pointed out by Mr. Footlong.
 
Last edited:
Alphacool Nexxos XP - £23
Nexxos pro 120.2 rad - £20
AP700 Pump - £27
Coolplex res - £15
Fittings and tubing - £15

Similar to my setup(except I have the 120.3 pro rad) which cools a 3800x2 @ 1.57v to 35c load compared to 55c load on a big typhoon. You don't need big tubing for decent performance imo and most WC kit uses g1/4 threads which makes upgrading easy should you feel the need to. Bigger tubing is better for systems with a strong pump as small tubing will add restriction. But for mid range pumps 10mm is quite enough imo. The nexxos has been shown to equal or even outperform the apogee in reviews for less ££'s so I would go for that. The pump (ap700) is the only weak point in that you will need to upgrade it should you want to add extra blocks to the loop in the future but for the cpu alone it is more than adequate.

You can quite easily spend hundreds on WC which will improve temps but not that much more than a budget custom kit would. It depends how extreme you want to go and how deep your wallet is. Personally I can't understand folk who would spend over £200 on WC when 2nd hand phase is within that price bracket.
 
Heatercores rock for their size and the Swiftech Apogee is a solid choice for a cpu block IMO. If you get one, make sure that you take the copper plate off it and inspect for any copper shavings etc before use. Their Quality control on that should be better now but just check ;). Also, decent watercooling blows decent air cooling away for cooling performance, contrary to a comment above as far as I am concerned with my setups. You don't have to have it noisy to cool extremely well.
 
Last edited:
Where exactly did i say that decent WC didn't blow away decent aircooling? :rolleyes: Read the post again. What I said is that top end watercooling isn't that much better than mid range watercooling for the price you will pay, maybe by a few degrees but not much more. I actually showed an example where my 'budget kit' blows away a typhoon (considered by many to be top end air).
 
Last edited:
Actually it was Mike's information I was referring too ;). As far as I am concerned at least, watercooling performance is as much in the setting up, positionining etc as it is in what quality of components. If you get both right you get outstanding performance compared to air cooling ;).

Yes I am keeping this simple but I have just sat down after spending the last 2 days cleaning out 3 old waterloops in component form. I think people thought I was a bomber when I was walking around Tesco's with 15 bottles of Vinegar, 6 pots of baking soda and and a 3Kg bag of salt lol :D.
 
Strange, I stand by my comments. A very powerful fan on a top-end heatsink with heatpipes and vast numbers of fins will get extremely good cooling and can get as low as 0.15CW. Getting 0.15CW with water is quite simple and can be done quietly. Therefore for many people, water-cooling is about silence not performance.

What part of that don't you agree with or does your wink smiley mean you're joking about disagreeing with me?
 
Mr Footlong said:
Actually it was Mike's information I was referring too ;). As far as I am concerned at least, watercooling performance is as much in the setting up, positionining etc as it is in what quality of components. If you get both right you get outstanding performance compared to air cooling ;).

Yes I am keeping this simple but I have just sat down after spending the last 2 days cleaning out 3 old waterloops in component form. I think people thought I was a bomber when I was walking around Tesco's with 15 bottles of Vinegar, 6 pots of baking soda and and a 3Kg bag of salt lol :D.
Click to expand...

Best to use the 'quote' feature m8, saves a lot of confusion.

A very good air setup with very good airflow through the case can give excellent results but as Mike says this usually leads to noise and therefore a lot of folk went WC for noise reduction without suffereing a loss in performance.
 
MikeTimbers said:
The major benefit of water-cooling is relative silence not cooling anyways. With high-end, noisy air you can get extremely efficient cooling - down as low as 0.15CW of so if you buy the biggest baddest sink and fan but you won't want to sit in the same room with it. With air you can easily achieve 0.15CW but without deafening yourself.
Click to expand...

It was the way I read this that made me come out with my comment. Also, I think the last part has a typo in it where it should say water and not air perhaps? ;).

Cheers,

Nick :).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom