Dirt-cheap watercooling?

Mikebert4

Mikebert4

Mikebert4

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Location
Peterborough, UK
I'm looking to water-cool my rig :) ... but on a seriously tight budget. :(

anyone got any sugesstions as to what kit would be the best value?

cheers

Mike
 
I'll second that,not worthwhile at all.Cheap watercooling,crap performance ;)

btw ,what's your budget mate ?

Rob
 
if you want cheap water cooling i recomend the T/Take Big Water SE, can be picked up for about £50-60 and performs on a par with good air

cl-w0005-01.jpg


http://www.thermaltake.com/watercooling/cl-w0005-01BigWaterSE/cl-w0005-01.htm
 
CoolRiver Complete water cooler Deluxe Version

Works fine on my media pc and very quiet, processor runs at about 46 at load with fan set to minimum, not overclocked but cheap and quiet. (cooling northbridge, graphics card and processor as sig)

link here
 
weescott said:
Don't do watercooling for the sake of it. Save up and do it properly.

Ignore all the cheap tack out there.
Click to expand...


Depends what you are after, the set i used was about £60, now the only fan I have i my system is a 120mm for the psu and a 120mm for the rad and the system runs near silent and performs fine.
Great for using as a media pc with the occasional bf2, couldnt get it that quiet on air cooling for £60.

as i said before tho, I wouldnt want to overclock it
 
I will say it once and i will say it again, do not buy watercooling on the cheap, you get what you pay for in the tech world, also the thermaltake and coolriver stuff are a total waste of cash as a decent air cooler will beat them.

Friends dont let friends buy thermaltake/coolriver watercooling. :)

Save up for the apex ultra, if you dont want to do that then dont bother as it isnt worth the trouble.
 
Was said:
Depends what you are after, the set i used was about £60, now the only fan I have i my system is a 120mm for the psu and a 120mm for the rad and the system runs near silent and performs fine.
Great for using as a media pc with the occasional bf2, couldnt get it that quiet on air cooling for £60.

as i said before tho, I wouldnt want to overclock it
Click to expand...
I think you could get that quiet on air ;)

Get an XP-120 and get a silent 120mm fan on it, silence and still reasonably good cooling :D
 
Riiight...
I was originally thinking under £100, but luckily (thanks to some shrewd dealings) i can probally afford up to £150-160

I'm currently running a Verrrry quiet Air setup (god bless the AC freezer 64 Pro) so the main reason for me wanting to upgrade is performance-related.

my end-goal is to be able to pelt both my GPU's... but thats a way off yet. I just need a fairly basic system which'll keep my system cool and keep my optons open for expanding it.

cheers
 
If you are thinking about using 2 pelts then you should know what watercooling parts to get. I suggest you do some research.
 
Dirty cheap wc....just get a block, 1/2'' tubing and some fittings. Get a Hozelock tap adapter for you garden house, boge the 1/2'' on to that then to the block, then the outlet into the sink or where ever. Turn on the tap job down, free flowing always cold (all household water is from pieps a good 4ft under the deck)

If your on a water meeter you'll be charged loads mind
 
Drazic said:
Dirty cheap wc....just get a block, 1/2'' tubing and some fittings. Get a Hozelock tap adapter for you garden house, boge the 1/2'' on to that then to the block, then the outlet into the sink or where ever. Turn on the tap job down, free flowing always cold (all household water is from pieps a good 4ft under the deck)

If your on a water meeter you'll be charged loads mind
Click to expand...

haha

Very enviromentally friendly.

I can see the newspaper headlines down south. (Hosepipe and watercooled pc ban)
 
Up to £50 - pump (don't skimp on a pump, choice depends on what waterblocks you go for)

£15-25 per waterblock (1x cpu, 1xgpu, do not get a nb block - waste of money, match waterblocks to pump)

£15-35 heatercore or car radiator (with room for at least 2x120mm fans, a decent heatercore can be picked up for very cheap an is equivilent to a 120.2 radiator, or you could go the alternate route and get a larger car radiator and run passively)

£30 - tubing and fans (running at 5-7v)

Do not bother with a reservoir, use either a t-line or if you use a car radiator it may have a fill/bleed port.
 
Only thing id add to the car radiator bit is to make sure you buy new if possible. Back when I was water cooling had a couple of car rads and the amount of gunk that came out of them is scarey - took about 3 or 4 full fill-run-drain cycles before it was even mildly clean.
Since gone full cycle - modded vapochill PE into a case (2500 barton @ 2.7gig) and now to small shuttle based system. I can quite honestly say for the sake of the cost of getting it all sorted nicely you might as well just buy higher end kit to start with. Once you can afford very top end AND water cooling then you see benefit from it.
I might just be a bit jaded tho so enjoy :)

E.g X2 3800 = £216 (new retail box) + decent water cooling = £366

X2 4400 (higher speed + more cache) = £387 - for the sake of £20 you have better chip to start with.
Accepted theres the whole thing of the chips all topping out around the same level but much less hassle involved. Probably not a popular viewpoint on an overclocking forum but.... :D
 
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Right.. I was thinking a setup similar to what follows:

Alphacool AGB-Eheim 600 Station II 230V Pump

Alphacool NexXxoS NVXP-3 6800/7800/7900 VGA Block

CPU Alphacool NexXxoS HP Pro AMD 64 CPU Block

Alphacool NexXxoS Xtreme I Radiator

Repack-cooling Mini Slot-In 3,5" UV Resevoir

+ Connectors +Hosing +Water additives

for just shy of £150...

i'm not a complete noob at assembling it all, having built a watercooled rig for someone richer than me. But i'm a little sketchy on what kit is best.

btw... it's cooling a week 18 3000+... muhahahahaha! Proud because I recently got it stable with FSB 275 and on measly air cooling :D
 
Go second hand.

My first watercooling consisted of:

S/H Dangerden Maze4 - £15
Hozelock 850lph pump - £21
Car heatercore - £5
polly hose - £7
MDF for the radbox - £10

For less than 60 quid i had a watercooling setup that at the time would kick the pants off ANY aircooling setup and most other peoples watercooling setups!

If your gonna do it, do it right, but that doesn't mean it has to cost a lot of money.
 
sweeet...

I'm still waiting to get paid :(

Is there any disadvantage of using a heater core over a water-cooling specific radiator?

what about connectors/barbs?
 
depends which ones you get, but changing the inlet/outlet size is easy for someone with even limited diy skills, if you get the rad from an automotive store you may be able to get them to do it for you.

Some rads come with appropriate fittings though.
 
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