Exactly how hard is it to water cool your CPU and GPU?

cHk4

cHk4

cHk4

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I've owned one water-cooled PC which I bought as a pre build from OcUK many years ago as the thought of water-cooling scares the hell out of me.

With the new Nvidia cards and CPUs on the way I'm thinking of going down the water-cooling route for my next build, looking at the pre builds OcUK do I just feel for the money I could potentially buy the parts and build a better machine. However, this brings me back to my first point in that it scares the hell out of me.

I know Corsair do some kits but I think I want my GPU under water this time, I'm not a massive overclocker or anything like that just want to keep temps of my components down.

Just how hard is it? Any advice or things you wish you knew before you went down the water cooled route?

Thanks
 
It's not really the case that it's hard because it really isn't. It's the fact that it is stupidly expensive to do these days. It's a hell of a lot of money for minimal performance gains as overclocking is largely a waste of time these days as everything is already almost maxxed out from the factory. Gone are the days of 50-100% overclocks on cpu's and this time around I didn't even buy a K series cpu. From water cooling you should have better temps and possibly silence if you carefully choose the fans and the speed you run them at, anything else is a bonus. One thing I would suggest should be a part of any water loop is a inline temp sensor so that you can keep a eye on the loop water temp. I already had the majority of my loop as I have been watercooling for almost 15 years now so only had to buy the gpu block which I could have done without because my gpu's stock cooler was very effective and quiet anyway. If I was looking at cooling my pc for the first time right now I would be leaning more towards high end air cooling as there are some very good coolers available now for reasonable prices (always worth looking at the b-grade section for air coolers at very reduced prices) and a lot of todays gpu's have excellent coolers as well.
 
i used to do all the watercooling at one time, cpu 3 gpu's yes it was good to max everything out and looks great but as above not worth it these days.

i am on a cooler master heatsink for the cpu and the gpu is just on its own air cooler.
 
As above really, I watercool today as Ive been watercooling for nearly 20 years so it doesn't cost me too much. But if I was starting out today I don't think I would bother as the gains are not what they used to be. Watercooling today is more for looks than anything else and most seeming to favour aesthetics over performance.
 
SpudMaster said:
As above really, I watercool today as Ive been watercooling for nearly 20 years so it doesn't cost me too much. But if I was starting out today I don't think I would bother as the gains are not what they used to be. Watercooling today is more for looks than anything else and most seeming to favour aesthetics over performance.
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Even RGB has went nuts with watercooling. I turn that stuff off and the hottest trend seems to be at the moment is distroplates. Those are getting pushed hard.
 
Agreement from me too. I'm a noob but building my first watercooled system was not very difficult, it just took time, particularly in planning. Whilst I'm very pleased with the result, that's because my objective was to have a PC that is quiet in idle and much quieter than an aircooled PC whilst gaming. But it came at a cost - quite a ridiculous cost really. For sure if you don't mind fan noise then aircooled gets the same performance at a much lower cost.
 
therealdippy said:
Agreement from me too. I'm a noob but building my first watercooled system was not very difficult, it just took time, particularly in planning. Whilst I'm very pleased with the result, that's because my objective was to have a PC that is quiet in idle and much quieter than an aircooled PC whilst gaming. But it came at a cost - quite a ridiculous cost really. For sure if you don't mind fan noise then aircooled gets the same performance at a much lower cost.
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They really shine in the summer weather. I was hearing twitch streamers in Europe having their GPU's and CPU's overheating. While most watercooling systems still got warmer but nothing was close to overheating. Quite a number on their air cooled systems in July/start of August was well into the 90s. Some almost hitting 100C and still a lot of them were using AIOs for their CPU's.

I'd say the price to a degree is definitely worth a relatively quiet system. Air cooling can get pretty noisy. Faster fans more dust. Watercooling with more radiators is lower rpm, less dust, less noise.
 
V F said:
They really shine in the summer weather. I was hearing twitch streamers in Europe having their GPU's and CPU's overheating. While most watercooling systems still got warmer but nothing was close to overheating. Quite a number on their air cooled systems in July/start of August was well into the 90s. Some almost hitting 100C and still a lot of them were using AIOs for their CPU's.

I'd say the price to a degree is definitely worth a relatively quiet system. Air cooling can get pretty noisy. Faster fans more dust. Watercooling with more radiators is lower rpm, less dust, less noise.
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Yes that's a good point. Although I have used my study aircon a fair bit over the summer the energy cost has been high so there have been days when I didn't and relied on opening windows. My water reached 40C and the fans became noticeable, but they were still only at 60% duty so I guess it could have survived warmer days.
 
V F said:
Even RGB has went nuts with watercooling. I turn that stuff off and the hottest trend seems to be at the moment is distroplates. Those are getting pushed hard.
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Distroplates go against everything you know and learn as a long time watercooler. Pay £150 to £300 to add loads of additional tubing and decreased flow rate.
 
Yes. I thought they were cool at first because of space and a clean build. Then came maintenance and everything has to come out to get to the distroplate as it'll only go in a certain order. Then 80 odd hex screws to open it up. Plus even before fittings go in, they have 90 degree turns on every entry of the distroplate impacting flowrate.

At least with tubular reservoirs, you can take sections out to clean as well as whatever order you want the water to flow. I got suckered at first by the EK marketing with distroplates abd they're pushing it hard now with the Quantum line.
 
I recently built my first custom loop (thread a bit further down the page if you want to see the finished product!) and was pretty reticent too initially - the cost, the risk of springing a leak, picking components / fittings that work together etc all for what may be marginal gains seemed like too much trouble. I enjoyed every minute of it though, it was a really interesting learning experience (with help advice and help from members here).

I bought one of the Corsair hydro X kits to make getting compatible parts a bit simpler but now I've done it I'm much more confident about using other manufacturer's parts too.

If you're mostly interested in practical benefits it may not be worth it over a good AIO purely from a CPU perspective but since adding my GPU to the loop, it's temps have dropped a fair bit. If you want a great looking PC, a project to work on AND (I can't stress this strongly enough) the time to put into it, I can heartily recommend it. I'm trying to talk friends and family into letting me do theirs :D
 
How much time and effort goes into the maintenance of the loop once everything is set up and running smoothly? Probably no longer than blowing the dust out of an air cooled system every once in a while, but I can be a right lazy git. :o
 
SpudMaster said:
Distroplates go against everything you know and learn as a long time watercooler. Pay £150 to £300 to add loads of additional tubing and decreased flow rate.
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Personally I`m not a lover of distroplates, they make all the builds look the same, for me aesthetics is 50% of why I went down the water cooling route so I`d rather look at tube bends rather than just straight runs.
 
von Humboldt said:
How much time and effort goes into the maintenance of the loop once everything is set up and running smoothly? Probably no longer than blowing the dust out of an air cooled system every once in a while, but I can be a right lazy git. :o
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Maybe 4 -5 days depending what needs cleaned and how bad it is. Maybe a week with hard tubing. Soft tubing maybe 2 - 3 days. Though I was once two weeks downtime as I was waiting on distilled water for flushing, a new block and 24 hours for each radiators soaking in citric acid.

The maintenance is worth the silence, performance and looks. Plus it's not as if you're doing it regularly. Even dusting is rare as there is hardly much dust with low fan rpm. What there is, a few goes with a rocket blower and it's gone.

Gavster said:
Personally I`m not a lover of distroplates, they make all the builds look the same, for me aesthetics is 50% of why I went down the water cooling route so I`d rather look at tube bends rather than just straight runs.
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Plus it's usually a lot more fittings for distro plates. The weight all adds up. I was originally 46 - 38 fittings at one point with the distro plate then went down to 26 with bends and tubular reservoir. The build got way lighter.
 
Is there anyway to avoid taking the loop apart all apart and cleaning it? Like if you replaced the liquid every 6 months say? I really want to do this for my next build wether that’s doing it myself or a pre build or getting someone to do it. Just taking it apart scares me
 
There are so many factors to that. What soft tubing you pick that *can* leech, temperature of the water long term, lots of light in the room, what kind of coolant. Yes you can flush it every 6 months but those 6 months each time will eventually add up and lead to a full tear down. Especially if you start changing brand of coolants.

What aspect scares you? As long as you don't ramp in fittings to acrylic with brute strength, you only want to squash the o rings to create the seal, checking o rings for any tears, nicks or brittleness, pressure testing each part before and during building eliminating any potential leaks during the process. There's really nothing scary to it.

It's just like mechanical plumbing lego. As well as planning out the routing of your loop.
 
V F said:
There are so many factors to that. What soft tubing you pick that *can* leech, temperature of the water long term, lots of light in the room, what kind of coolant. Yes you can flush it every 6 months but those 6 months each time will eventually add up and lead to a full tear down. Especially if you start changing brand of coolants.

What aspect scares you? As long as you don't ramp in fittings to acrylic with brute strength, you only want to squash the o rings to create the seal, checking o rings for any tears, nicks or brittleness, pressure testing each part before and during building eliminating any potential leaks during the process. There's really nothing scary to it.

It's just like mechanical plumbing lego. As well as planning out the routing of your loop.
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Honestly, I guess it's more fear of the unknown as it's not anything I've ever done before. It does sound simple when you put it like that lol.

I do have a further question and this may be a case of it's an unknown but for example AMD are moving to the LG socket, if I got a CPU block for a 7950x lets say, would all the chips that come out use the same block or would say the 8950x (example) need a different block? Obviously I know if I go Raptor Lake it's the last of this type of chip so there won't be any upgrade path for CPU.

Thanks
 
Possibly if they use the same socket dimensions but right now none exist yet. Very rarely the blocks change drastically when you stick to a main used socket. Look how the Intel 1151/1200 blocks can be used with the 1700. Only the backplate is a little different in size to mount.
 
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