Have you left custom water cooled setups

doggles

doggles

doggles

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Hi
I've been out of the loop for about 6 years due to kids. I need to update my pc...

Well GPU as a.minimum. I'm trying to decide if I can be bothered with a custom water-cooled loop anymore.
It's a faff changing things.

So considering getting an AIO.for a.cpu and leaving the gpu as it comes

Just wondered if you'd done this, or binned off water-cooled pc all.together..any regrets?

What made you make the decision to do it ?

Cheers
 
Plenty of us here explaining why we have moved from custom loops:

Moving away from watercooling!

So I have decided to move away from water cooling and go back to air after 10 years of custom loops. It was a hard decision to make but the maintenance can take a large chunk of your day away which as it currently stands, I don't have. With me planning to upgrade to 15th gen intel shortly after...
forums.overclockers.co.uk forums.overclockers.co.uk
 
Nope. I enjoy it.

With modern coolant maintenance intervals are long and hardware advancemens tare so incremental these days I rarely have to adjust the loop or move about hardware.

The main frustration is parts availability now though!
 
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Same. I haven;t upgraded my rig since the early days of covid and it's probably in need of a drain down and clean. I've been thinking about replacing the GPU (2080 ti) but, aside from probably needing to upgrade the PSU as well, the lack of factory fitted GPU blocks on 9070xt's is making me hold back. I'm not sure if there ever will be a 9080XT model, or whether the 9070XT's NEED a water block - that's irrelevant for me. It's about the noise and aesthetics.

Seeing the PRICE of 3rd party blocks - EK's seem to have gradually risen from £100 to over £200 per block when I've looked, which is obscene.
 
Yea this is the quandary I have. I do enjoy it, but its time consuming.

I can't see the inside of the case at the moment (corsair 900d) as the window sits against the side of the desk. So I'd.need to change things around to be able.to see inside to a new case (lack of room in the room prohibits the case going elsewhere)

But really all I'd need is a gpu and cpu block and new coolent. Although the pumps are over 10 years old and could probably do with being replaced

I guess im reluctant to move to something which could be inferior, plus a silent pc is nice.

Thansk for your views
 
I first built a custom loop in 2011 I think it was, and ran with that until the end of 2023, and only changed the coolant once I think.

I built a new PC at that point, and did another custom loop. I wanted it mainly for being quiet. It's a lot better now that most GPUs have more than just the blower style cooler, but it's still not as good as a full custom loop. Yes, it took a bit more time & cost to build, fill, bleed etc, but I enjoyed it & therefore it was worth doing. I should probably drain, clean & refill the loop sometime in the next year or so, but I don't know if I will. My last loop lasted 7-8 years since the last change, so I don't think I'll have too much issue leaving it for a while longer (probably until I decide to upgrade something)
 
I used to do full custom loops for CPU and GPU both. It was a form of art and obsesson. But soon it changed with blocks(and other parts) getting overpriced. Customisation also became less of a challenge in terms of creativity as the parts became more pre made for specific cases - no longer you had to think about the bends, parts etc as they came pre fabricated - sort of took the fun out of it. The GPUs these days also runs cool or have better cooling.
Currently, only the CPU in an overkill loop(5800x3D in a custom 480mm + 360mm fat RADs). By the time I upgrade my rig, the next cooling config will be all air.
 
I agree a lot of the "mainstream" brand's prices are excessive, but you can get some really reaosnably priced parts that are still good quality direct from China. Pretty much all my kit is Barrow or Bykski & they seem to be decent quality, for a fraction of the price of an EK (for example) equivalent.

Unless you go for a distro plate, I think there's almost more customising available, when I last did it, everything was soft tubing, so although you had to cut to length, there was little more you could do than that. Now with hard tubing being so prevelent, you can cut & shape however you want to get the look you want.
 
R.C.Anderson said:
I first built a custom loop in 2011 I think it was, and ran with that until the end of 2023, and only changed the coolant once I think.
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yea i've not changed this one for 6 years. Although i noticed yesterday that there's a slow leak by the flow meter and it's terribly dusty inside and could definitely do with a hoover..
Avathar77 said:
Currently, only the CPU in an overkill loop(5800x3D in a custom 480mm + 360mm fat RADs). By the time I upgrade my rig, the next cooling config will be all air.
Click to expand...

i know what you mean, i have a 480mm, 360mm, x2 240mm and its just cooling a 3800x and a vega64...absolute overkill, but i had the stuff and the room.

it feels like a bit like parting with a sporty car of my youth and settling down with a nice family 4 door:)
 
I've got one that's watercooled and more or less silent that spends a good chunk of it's time rendering. I wouldn't go back to air cooling on that one.
I've got an older PC that I use as a gaming console that's air cooled. Even from couch gaming distances I find the noise slightly annoying but its not worth spending the money on a loop for it.
 
doggles said:
Im tempted to buy a noise meter to see what db my pc makes...
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All my fans run at 450rpm, they can spin up to 700 but it's rare for them to ramp up at all. You can hear it if you stick your face next to it but any sort of other noise in the room and it just blends in.
 
Yea that's a fair point, i.can just set the fan curve and accept heat may.be higher for a quieter life.
 
doggles said:
Yea that's a fair point, i.can just set the fan curve and accept heat may.be higher for a quieter life.
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That's pretty much what I've done. I don't really mind if components get a little warmer, as long as they're still reasonable. I don't think they get much over about 40C, and it's still essentially inaudible (running a 7800X3D & 7900XTX)
 
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doggles said:
Yea that's a fair point, i.can just set the fan curve and accept heat may.be higher for a quieter life.
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With enough rad area you can have low fan speeds and reasonable temps. I've got a 13700k and a 4090 that typically pull up to 500w. Using a Mo-ra 420 and a single D5 I'm getting water temps of 10c over ambient under sustained load which gives me CPU and GPU temps in the low to mid 50s. When I had a couple of internal rads I was having to run the fans at 1200 rpm versus the 450 rpm I'm at now. To my mind if you need to run rad fans at 1200rpm then you might as well stick with an air cooled gpu, run it a bit warmer and save some money.
 
That's what my.pc is set as at the moment.

Ive just bitten the bullet and ordered a new set of parts and case. Ive gone with an AIO and air.

At least i will.be able to.lift the pc.when its made...
 
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