High end water opposed to high end air - how much quieter?

grumpybeard · 16 Nov 2009 at 21:32

Hey guys,

For ref to Q below I already have an i7-920 air cooled by push-pulled Megahalem thingy-whassit with 4890 Vapour-X in a Silverstone Fortress case (mental note to self - must do sig one of these days :rolleyes:

).

Gonna be spending a few months at home studying some technical stuff for work and need second system, ideally another i7-920 as v happy with that. My partner will also be studying in the same room hence need for ssshhh!

Never having first hand experience of a watercooled system I was just wondering how much quieter watercooled can be than an air, for say a budget of £1500-£2000-ish?

I find my current system fine when playing games and listening to music or watching movies, but wonder how it may be when silence is required?

Can much difference be achieved with water within that budget (surely what you lose with noise-generating fans cooling CPU heatsink for example ends as radiator fans)? And you would still have case fans irrespective?

Watercooled worth future upgrade hassle (eg GPU) and expense?

Thanks for any opinions!

JonJ678 · 16 Nov 2009 at 21:51

It depends on how many radiators are involved. For example a 120mm radiator with fans will be as loud as the megalahems as it has about the same surface area. A 240 would either give much better temperatures or let you spin the fans much slower, so making less noise. So I'd say that if you can fit at least a triple radiator to cool the i7 and graphics card it'll be a lot quieter, if you can only fit a 120 then it'll be louder.

Does your work need high processor frequencies? Keeping the system quiet is a lot easier if you can underclock & undervolt it. It's even easier if you can base it on a cool running dual core instead of the i7.

grumpybeard · 16 Nov 2009 at 22:06

Thanks for the reply JonJ678. Plan is for current system to become VM server running multiple instances, whilst looking into new system, perhaps watercooled if it can be much quieter, that will act by day as client frontend to the VM host based elsewhere in house, and by evening as full-on games machine!

Happy to stay with the i7-920, can this bargain chip (IMO) and rest of system for my reqs be cooled much quieter with water than with air you think, for the budget?

Ive just been looking at the water-cooled systems gallery and I suspect quite a lot blow my budget out of the water, what with multiple loops and GPU blocks! Some v nice systems out there guys!

WJA96 · 16 Nov 2009 at 22:10

I'm always mystified by the claims that fanned water cooling offers quieter cooling than air.

The only way this seems to me to be possible is where you take a goodly sized radiator like a PA160 and put the 120mm fan that you had on the back of the case on it so you delete the CPU fan altogether. You remove a fan therefore you make the system quieter.

Systems that replace one CPU fan with three fans don't tend to be any quieter in my experience. And the whine from the pumps if often worse than the fan noise in the beginning.

That's why I run massive, passive, radiators instead. No fans = no noise.

grumpybeard · 16 Nov 2009 at 22:15

WJA96 that's what I was thinking rgds fans on rads, cause slow fans cooling heatsinks make no more noise than same slow fans on a rad?

When you say massive radiators, how massive are you talking?! Does this rad of yours actually go inside or out of the case!

JonJ678 · 16 Nov 2009 at 22:19

i have no convincing reply to that. i think its related to low speed fans and low fin density radiators, where the same fans don't do well on a heatsink. May have to get back to you on that one.

grumpybeard · 16 Nov 2009 at 22:22

Now there's an honest man, thanks Jon!

WJA96 · 16 Nov 2009 at 22:25

My current passive system is actually a full sized room radiator in the garage, but if you look up Innovatek or Cape Cora you will find smaller ones that can be attached to the outside of a case. ShadowScotland is running a PA120.3 in the roof of his case with no fans and he's not having too many issues with his cooling.

The other thing that helps when looking for quiet is to lose the all-too prevalent macho attitude to low temperatures. If you're looking for low temperatures you're unlikely to have a quiet system. Most CPUs run quite happily and safely at 85C so why not turn the fans off and let it run at 85C?

WJA96 · 16 Nov 2009 at 22:28

JonJ678 said:
I think its related to low speed fans and low fin density radiators, where the same fans don't do well on a heatsink.

This is actually VERY important in my experience. You do need to match the fan to the radiator. Yate Loons work astonishingly well with Thermochill radiators but many other, theoretically quieter, fans are really loud in comparison.

Jargy · 18 Nov 2009 at 14:47

I'm actually switching back to air from watercooling, as water hasn't really given me the noise reduction I'd hoped. I was running a PA120.3 with 3 yate loons modded to run at 7v, but I was only water cooling the cpu. In actual fact, the gpu makes more noise, but water cooling the gpu for me doesn't make financial sense, as this is likely to be the component that is changed the most and those gpu waterblocks aren't cheap!
I'm glad I've had my flirtation with watercooling, but the increases in cost and hassle compared to what you gain just aren't worth it IMO, especially with today's heatsinks (just brought the Prolimatech). Saying that, I may return to water one day, purely for the fun of the build

shadowscotland · 18 Nov 2009 at 15:52

@Jargy- if you change your gpu that oftern a univeral block is a very good investment.
Air cooling the rest of the card is more than enough.

@gbeard - As WJA said I use a PA120.3 in the roof of my case but I do use a single fan.
So it not completely passive - but watercooling the MosFet is just a drag imho and a small about of airflow is all you need hence the single fan

The case (S80B) only has three holes in it.
120mm Intake with fan - rear Grill in passive psu - 120.3 in roof.
This way the cool air enters the case at low level and is pushed out the top via the rad.

I have a [email protected], P45@400fsb & 3870 in the loop (every thing is cooler than stock cooling)

I've seen a duel xeon / skulltrail setup run of a zalman Res2 (that 8 real cores at load no fans)
one of GTjunkie friends own it. I sure there are images floating around somewhere. Linky
Same case and psu as me

That was with 85w xeons - I'd not use a i7 in a passive build personally - as the rads would need to be quiet large (see jokester build log)
But did wall mount an external system (res2 as with the skulltrail above) to free up deskspace (see link in sig - post #19)

Don't see why the new client/office/gaming machine needs to be more that a duel core.
No real world advantages to any of thoses uses as far as i can see.