Do I really need a Water Cooler?

Subnated · 13 Jul 2011 at 20:50

I'm not looking to overclock my hardware or anything like that. I'm not one of those enthusiast's that loves to push their computer to the limit, but should I still get a water cooler anyway or will a fan just do?

Just in-case this is irrelevant:

Radeon 6970 2GB
AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition
Asus Crosshair V Formula AMD 990FX ATX Motherboard
Cooler Master HAF X - Full tower

(this MAY be the hardware I'm getting, not completely sure just yet).

If there is any other info you need, ask me.

kiel367 · 13 Jul 2011 at 20:53

fan will do

sniffy · 13 Jul 2011 at 21:03

Watercooling is only needed if you wish to achieve some heavy overclocks. Fans will be fine

prt · 13 Jul 2011 at 21:11

A good cpu cooler and tidy fans will do you.
to be fair it would have done my rig fine, but I wanted to have a mess about with water cooling to see what it was all about

Cleeecooo · 13 Jul 2011 at 21:17

Depends if you want silence. My mate had exactly the same thing. He got it liquid cooled and is much happier as the 6970 can get quite loud.

The link is in my sig is to the build log. you can do the same cooling loop for around £350ish

Also, instead of the X6 I would go i5 2500K as that's what my mate did and he seems to think it's a huge improvement?!

koooowweeee · 13 Jul 2011 at 21:24

As cleeecooo said its not just about cooling its the quietness as well.

With my rig i can play cod world at war for hours with no fans running at all.

Can run them slow with more power hungry games. When my system does start to get tested more ill clock it and then just turn the fans up a little more when gaming.

OLDPHART · 14 Jul 2011 at 14:30

When l first watercooled my PC, l could,nt believe how quiet my PC was, as koooweee says you can game for ages, pure bliss. :cool:

JeffyB · 15 Jul 2011 at 03:11

Quietness was also the goal with my loop and it's exceeded my expectations and was a lot of fun to build and learn about.

paul_radford · 15 Jul 2011 at 23:08

Hi Subnated..

Whilst im not going to tell you to do it or not to, i will sum up the above replies for you, as together they say it all.

you may have a system you are happy with and not need or want change it - but:

1) Are you interested in building a liquid cool system? would it be a fun thing to do?
2) Do you want to make your pc quiet (may not be so quiet with cooling system turned right up)
3) Check your temps.. do you feel they are too high?
4) Are you interested in overclocking your computer?

if you can answer yes to the above, maybe you should think about doing it. however, if you have fears about watercooling maybe you should simply tidy the cables in your case and add fans to improve airflow...

in my case, i have built numerous machines in the past, both for myself and for others.. My past machines have been overclocked slightly with improved airflow. the next logical thing for me was to liquod cool / mod. i do this for a challenge/fun/to learn..

it so much depends on what you want, at the end of the day...