That's an awesome build pastymuncher. Great use of modular design 
Moving away from watercooling!
- Thread starter Mr Mcgoo
- Start date
Heh. This is where my head is at... I am slowly looking at getting back into PC gaming and am re-exploring every bit of PC building (my last built machine was a Q6600), but stuff seems so outrageously powerful now it I don't know if I'd see much point teaching my kids how to overclock.
Let alone watercooling! I still have my old case and a leftover single radiator upstairs... I can't see that ever being used again, however.
Overclocking now is really nothing like the days of the Q6600. That was a beast in terms of the extra performance you got, one of my favourite chips, followed by my 2500k. Nowadays, the chips are already cranked near top in terms of performance. What you can do, is undervolt and see about keeping the same levels (or maybe even a bit better) of performance whilst reducing power usage and temps.
It's not as fun as old overclocking though.
Soldato
I moved away from water years ago, after running custom water from the early 2000s when it was much less mainstream. I think the last system I watercooled was a Q6600.
For me, the benefits just weren't there anymore.
I think for me it boils down to benefits A and B no longer being significant and against this backdrop C being more of an issue.
A - Noise. To get decent cooking via air you needed mega noisy fans. Now you can get very good, quiet air cooling.
B - Overclocking. Aside from top end high TDP chips, the benefits of better cooling don't seem to be there. Gone are the days of taking a cheap CPU and exceeding the performance of the top end model. This was part of the appeal to me. Also I don't have the time to fiddle any more, so just let the boost do it's thing.
C - Cost. I know inflation has to be accounted for etc, but proportionately, everything is so much more expensive. GPU blocks can be insanely expensive.
It seemed so much more interesting and exciting back when you had various different approaches to water-cooling and diferrent block designs. A lot of it had to be DIYd or modified. A bit like an underground band becoming mainstream... Now it's just off the shelf parts bolted together and every loop looks the same... it seems to have lost something. Or maybe it's just because I'm 20odd years older
For me, the benefits just weren't there anymore.
I think for me it boils down to benefits A and B no longer being significant and against this backdrop C being more of an issue.
A - Noise. To get decent cooking via air you needed mega noisy fans. Now you can get very good, quiet air cooling.
B - Overclocking. Aside from top end high TDP chips, the benefits of better cooling don't seem to be there. Gone are the days of taking a cheap CPU and exceeding the performance of the top end model. This was part of the appeal to me. Also I don't have the time to fiddle any more, so just let the boost do it's thing.
C - Cost. I know inflation has to be accounted for etc, but proportionately, everything is so much more expensive. GPU blocks can be insanely expensive.
It seemed so much more interesting and exciting back when you had various different approaches to water-cooling and diferrent block designs. A lot of it had to be DIYd or modified. A bit like an underground band becoming mainstream... Now it's just off the shelf parts bolted together and every loop looks the same... it seems to have lost something. Or maybe it's just because I'm 20odd years older
Soldato
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- 22 Nov 2018
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I always thought custom loops were a hobby that people did for fun? Surely the huge benefit is that you enjoy building it and enjoying cleaning it.
Yet everyone is moaning that the practical benefits are no longer worth it. I didn't realise they were ever practical.
Yet everyone is moaning that the practical benefits are no longer worth it. I didn't realise they were ever practical.
The tinkering is why I bother yeah. The practical benefits have mostly gone, other than the quietness which I have grown very used to.
Also, it was more beneficial to GPUs lately, but last gen oversized coolers helped a lot. There’s the issue with GPU size now, but most coolers are more than enough.
CPUs on the other hand, very few would really benefit from it. Most likely will be tamed by a 360/420 AIO.
For me, became too expensive and almost no benefit.
Soldato
I think this probably goes hand in hand with the age thing.
Teens/early twenties I had loads of spare time and enjoyed tinkering, upgrading, tweaking, benchmarking etc.
Now with work, kids etc my spare time is much more limited.
If I can get everything I want from air cooling, the practical benefits are negligible and I've had my share of the hobby side, there's nothing left in it for me.
WCing doesn't have to be a time sink - obviously if you just leave it running for a few years it doesn't require much/any maintenance. But as you say, that's part of the experience. I'm just past it now and moved on.
Man of Honour
Originally it was for getting every last bit of performance out of your system. Back then it was possible to get anything up to double the speed of your cpu if you could control the temps. My first Core2Duo was a E4300 from when they first launched in mid 2006. It's stock speed was just 1.8Ghz but by overclocking the FSB it easily ran at 3.6Ghz 24/7 under water. Massively increasing the FSB was the very peak of overclocking back when the gains were actually worth all the tweaking unlike now when CPU's are already clocked to within a inch of their lives straight from the factory. GPU's were also worth overclocking back then. I had a AMD/ATI Radeon 5850 with a universal block and heatsinks on it and that was the best overclocking card I have ever had with it hitting a whopping 2Ghz on the memory and 1Ghz on the core. Nowadays it's all about undervolting the gpu to lower the obscene power draw that todays cards have which also lowers temps and allows the card to boost higher and for longer. Watercooling is now more for aesthetics rather than for performance gains and money that would have been spent on water cooling is better spent on better components.
This happened sooner than expected. Sold my factory block GPU and bought an air cooled 3080 from a mate for a very good price. Decided to drain the loop and remove it all.
I had 3x intake fans + 360 rad at the bottom, and 3x exhaust fans + rad at the top in an OM11D-XL. I did get occasional lock ups, not entirely sure what caused it but I am suspecting ambient air in the case being too hot.
I've now got 3x intake fans at the bottom, 3x intake fans at the side, and a 240 Corsair AIO at the top (which I'm borrowing until my AMD kit turns up). I'll be moving to a 360 AIO on the new setup.
So far I'm very pleased. CPU & GPU temps around 60-65 in games, no lock ups so far, and no change in noise levels. No regrets, the case looks cleaner in terms of aesthetics. And swapping out components is going to be considerably easier.
Edited to add that I did consider an air cooler for the GPU, but I think I'm restricted in my case with height, and it would have meant buying 3x more fans and another Corsair Commander.
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You did exactly what i did. no more noise than my custom loop and much easier to change parts and clean the system as and when needed.
i still have my water box waiting to be filled, and swap my pumps that i already bought it 1 year go ...
But with my Lian Li Galahad II Performance, the temps are so damn good that the damn box is just being filled not with liquid but dust
But with my Lian Li Galahad II Performance, the temps are so damn good that the damn box is just being filled not with liquid but dust
I really enjoyed building mine but it was done with the intention of overclocking hard, the hardware just didnt have any meaningfull headroom though so now i just have a massively overkill cooling system and a massive case. not sure i would do it again
Just having a nosey on through when I found this thread... Hope this isn;t too much of a necro revise 
I went down the watercooling route many years ago and it's been a pleasure as I've gradually upgraded my fixings to quick release bitspower etc. I have found that the cost of the blocks has gone up so much in the past 4 years that upgrading my 2080 ti (I think?) to a more recent gpu is prohibitively expensive, so I've switched to gaming on an Xbox series x instead. I really would love to renew my system, but I just cant afford to, and quite frankly the time I have off from work nowadays it's easier to just power-on the Xbox and give Madden a blast.
My Plex/media storage server is an older PC, and I've got that fully watercooled with a R480 blocked up mining. I know it's costing more than it's generating, but it keeps my office nice and warm
I went down the watercooling route many years ago and it's been a pleasure as I've gradually upgraded my fixings to quick release bitspower etc. I have found that the cost of the blocks has gone up so much in the past 4 years that upgrading my 2080 ti (I think?) to a more recent gpu is prohibitively expensive, so I've switched to gaming on an Xbox series x instead. I really would love to renew my system, but I just cant afford to, and quite frankly the time I have off from work nowadays it's easier to just power-on the Xbox and give Madden a blast.
My Plex/media storage server is an older PC, and I've got that fully watercooled with a R480 blocked up mining. I know it's costing more than it's generating, but it keeps my office nice and warm
This is a thread for those moving away from water cooling mostly, so it's never a necro thread at that point.Just having a nosey on through when I found this thread... Hope this isn;t too much of a necro revise
I went down the watercooling route many years ago and it's been a pleasure as I've gradually upgraded my fixings to quick release bitspower etc. I have found that the cost of the blocks has gone up so much in the past 4 years that upgrading my 2080 ti (I think?) to a more recent gpu is prohibitively expensive, so I've switched to gaming on an Xbox series x instead. I really would love to renew my system, but I just cant afford to, and quite frankly the time I have off from work nowadays it's easier to just power-on the Xbox and give Madden a blast.
My Plex/media storage server is an older PC, and I've got that fully watercooled with a R480 blocked up mining. I know it's costing more than it's generating, but it keeps my office nice and warm
Is your system the same as in your sig?
Soldato
For me custom watercooling has always been about the silence, i don't use headsets or loud volume from speakers. i currently game on a 13700k and 3070ti and can sit here with the fans on 20% (silent wings pro 4) and can game in pretty much silence with great temps. As for maintenance once every 2 years a fluid change is hardly much effort and takes about half hour. if your pipes are yellowing a soft tube replacement takes a couple of hours at most.
It used to be about the silence. I now game in silence using an AIO and air for the GPU. No need to do water changes, loop replacements. And if I want a new GPU it takes 5 minutes. I have zero regrets.
Soldato
i think your version of silence and mine would be very different, i've fitted quite a few AIO's for people from 240's upto 420's and all have been noisy once they start getting a bit of heat soak, i found my 3070ti TUF to be too noisy but i also can't stand the noise from mechanical HDD's so for me it's a necessity, my kids pc is fully air cooled and it drives me mad walking into their room and hearing it.
I'm also sensitive to the noise but I have to admit, a decent 280 or 420 aio on the CPU, big air cooled GPU and 160mm+ and 140mm case fans on low fan curves. Well that can be pretty damned quiet, especially when undervolted and under a desk. Mechanical HDDs aren't a fair comparison in terms of noise.