Have you left custom water cooled setups
- Thread starter doggles
- Start date
Yes I moved away, only for one reason - there is no performance benefit. If water cooling made my CPU and GPU run 10 or 20% faster than air cooling I'd be happy, but those days are gone and water cooling has no performance benefit anymore
pretty much the same for me. Also the prices started to get a bit out of hand too
I'll very probably continue to run with custom cooling for the cpu, since I have all the gear and going to an AIO would be daft. For me you'd still want the heat the cpu generates getting out of the case as directly as possible, so the mosfets/ chipset/etc sinks don't have a head start with whatever case air cooling there is, so an AIO or custom water for the cpu. But there is very little point with GPUs nowadays. My next GPU upgrade will likely be a 6090, so it will all boil down to what the acceptable noise to performance ratio will be.
I gave up water-cooling (custom loop) a couple years ago but have started to find myself buying some Thermal Grizzley fitting and will buy there water-cooling when released for the 5090 Astral. I found myself missing the research and i much prefer the aesthetics although it seems difficult to buy things like 420mm Rads and even reservoirs right now
Do.you know the reason its hard to.get large rads and reservoirs at.the moment.?
No idea at all to be honest, seems to be quite a few cases that will house the rads, can get some direct from manufacturer but will hold on for OCUK as prices seem reasonable
I think it depends quite a bit on mindset.
If you're water cooling and going the whole hard tubing route because a great looking PC gives you pointless internet likes/makes your partner/mum/sister wet... well, that's a hassle to maintain.
If you're water cooling for performance or noise purposes - ZMT wins. Ugly thick, super bendy black rubber tubing that you can just flex out of the way to mess with stuff. The blocks come off stuff, get pushed out of the way and aren't particularly harder to mess with than air or AIO.
Personally, very much in the second camp. Custom loop, when not a vanity project is fine.
If you're water cooling and going the whole hard tubing route because a great looking PC gives you pointless internet likes/makes your partner/mum/sister wet... well, that's a hassle to maintain.
If you're water cooling for performance or noise purposes - ZMT wins. Ugly thick, super bendy black rubber tubing that you can just flex out of the way to mess with stuff. The blocks come off stuff, get pushed out of the way and aren't particularly harder to mess with than air or AIO.
Personally, very much in the second camp. Custom loop, when not a vanity project is fine.
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ZMT, acetal blocks and chromed fittings looks great.
Ditched custom.
My thread is here; https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/custom-loop-aio-and-gpu-thermals.19005388/
I think I had it setup all wrong - after removing the water block from my GPU. Thermals are better now!
My thread is here; https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/custom-loop-aio-and-gpu-thermals.19005388/
I think I had it setup all wrong - after removing the water block from my GPU. Thermals are better now!
I'm still using custom, I love it; the silence, the overclocks, the look. But I'm older, different priorities, and I'm moving to a much larger case to make management easier.
Used ZMT tubing for years, would never use anything but that and undyed quality coolant.
Still running a very compact full loop on a Meshify C, trying to do maintenance the other day and it was so (beautifully I must say) crammed in that accessing headers and moving cables was an absolute pain in the posterior.
I'll go Dual D5 for redundancy, and stick aquacomputer for management. I can literally just dump everything into the new case and redo a couple of runs, with a better drain and fill and access to everything.
It's low maintenance, and with the extra room I'll be happy, but if I had to spend all the money again, on fittings etc, I'm not sure I'd bother.
But give it up now? No, it rocks.
Used ZMT tubing for years, would never use anything but that and undyed quality coolant.
Still running a very compact full loop on a Meshify C, trying to do maintenance the other day and it was so (beautifully I must say) crammed in that accessing headers and moving cables was an absolute pain in the posterior.
I'll go Dual D5 for redundancy, and stick aquacomputer for management. I can literally just dump everything into the new case and redo a couple of runs, with a better drain and fill and access to everything.
It's low maintenance, and with the extra room I'll be happy, but if I had to spend all the money again, on fittings etc, I'm not sure I'd bother.
But give it up now? No, it rocks.
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I was just thinking to myself I wonder if I could be tempted back to custom loops and same this haha! I went from trying to build a monster to pretty simple AIO and suck it up…
Almost identical to the OP kids got in the way, but I do miss it having had 2x480mm and 2x 360mm rads waiting. Maybe I’ll convince myself soon
Almost identical to the OP kids got in the way, but I do miss it having had 2x480mm and 2x 360mm rads waiting. Maybe I’ll convince myself soon
So.two weeks in:I was just thinking to myself I wonder if I could be tempted back to custom loops and same this haha! I went from trying to build a monster to pretty simple AIO and suck it up…
Almost identical to the OP kids got in the way, but I do miss it having had 2x480mm and 2x 360mm rads waiting. Maybe I’ll convince myself soon
Love it..well almost.
Building it was a breeze,
Perhaps not as.much.fun. but certainly quicker and less moist.
Temps are good.
I'd forgotten how.easy it is.to move things around inside a case when you don't have to navigate tube and reservoirs.
Only slight irritation is that the aio (lian li galahand 2) pump noise. Its quiet, but.not as quiet as my previous set up. I guess this is the sacrifice for convenience. Fans are inaudible.
Now to go.through the pain of.getting rid of all my old stuff on the bay
It is a hell of a lot easier, the main thing I miss is the GPU cooling but I guess I don’t really miss the terrifying warranty void side of that lol!
I need to do a proper job on my build as it was ‘temporary’ but that was many years ago… it’s probably fine for most people but not for the OCD former water neat freaks
That's another reason why I would never switch to an AIO CPU water cooler from a custom set up. If you end up getting pump noise they is pretty much bugger all you can do about it. You can't decouple anything, loosen the mount, put the pump elsewhere in the case etc. Fair play if you can put up with pump vibration noise.
Yep. I only notice it when thr rest of thr house is quiet. I'll have a play about over the next week and see if I can figure something out. Maybe some rubber washers where the coolers screwed to the mb. See if that makes a difference