Moving away from watercooling!

[Tattysnuc]

This is a thread for those moving away from water cooling mostly, so it's never a necro thread at that point.

Is your system the same as in your sig?

I upgraded the CPU/motherboard to a 590X, but I'm still rocking the 2080ti. it does me for what I need. PC gaming got too expensive to keep up with, and with having a series of SAP projects at work, my time to spend on my PC maintaining it and keeping it up to snuff with the rest of world is very much a premium. It was my 50th last year, so I got an Xbox series X to scratch my gaming itch and now I've basically got a watercooled internet browser.

I will get back into it, but for now I'm playing on the Xbox and not spending >£1000 on new gpus (and waterblocks- I cant believe how much they've gone up in the past 5 years!!!!)

 

[novalis]

That's fair enough, you should spend time on the things you enjoy. Though maybe we'll see you back here some day

 

[***F1ZZY***]

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

This 1000%

With the advent of heatpipes and decent air cooling in combination with limited overlocking potential, water cooling became more about aesthetics and just an enthusiast driven hobby.

It still looks cool but mostly not required these days. You can build a quiet, top tier rig on air these days and not have a heart attack trying to reseat a graphics card or any other maintenance.

I used to love it back in the day - early 00’s - but not really bothered much with it recently.

 

[Mr Mcgoo]

I upgraded the CPU/motherboard to a 590X, but I'm still rocking the 2080ti. it does me for what I need. PC gaming got too expensive to keep up with, and with having a series of SAP projects at work, my time to spend on my PC maintaining it and keeping it up to snuff with the rest of world is very much a premium. It was my 50th last year, so I got an Xbox series X to scratch my gaming itch and now I've basically got a watercooled internet browser.

I will get back into it, but for now I'm playing on the Xbox and not spending >£1000 on new gpus (and waterblocks- I cant believe how much they've gone up in the past 5 years!!!!)

if i had a 2080ti i would likely still be running that now at 1440p 60fps maybe medium/high instead of 1440p 90fps all high/ultra as i do currently. The price of the watercooling parts are so much right now. That's part of the reason i went back to gpu air and cpu aio. my gpu fans get to a max of 1500rpm and aio gets to 1200rpm and is fairly quiet for me. about the same as custom loop

 

[Mr Mcgoo]

This 1000%

With the advent of heatpipes and decent air cooling in combination with limited overlocking potential, water cooling became more about aesthetics and just an enthusiast driven hobby.

It still looks cool but mostly not required these days. You can build a quiet, top tier rig on air these days and not have a heart attack trying to reseat a graphics card or any other maintenance.

I used to love it back in the day - early 00’s - but not really bothered much with it recently.

i agree it's mostly aesthetics and enthusiasts that are running them now. back in 2015 when i went custom loop temps were amazing and prices while still expensive was still some what affordable. Now a setup the same to what i built in 2015 would go from £400 to nearly £600.