Never watercooled before, advice please :)

Ice213

Ice213

Ice213

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Hello,

Basically I was on the verge of buying myself an all in one cooler + a couple of fans for my CPU, altogether it came it around £100. But I then came across some of the started watercooling kits on here and possibly thought that spending a little more, they could be the better option, especially when it comes to future cooling upgrades such as possibly watercooling my graphics card etc.

So I was just wondering what your opinions are on this, should I go the whole hog as it were and get a full watercooling kit, or would I be better going for the all in one option?

Just so you know, I've never watercooled before :p.

Oh and I am looking for relative silence inside my PC too for whatever I get to cool it, obviously complete silence is almost impossible, but I like my new quiet (ish) build :). And good temps obviously ;). Although I'm running the stock intel cooler at the moment so I think anything would be a decent upgrade for that ;).

Thanks a lot everyone :D.
 
if you were considering an all in one cooler you would be better off with a decent aftermarket air cooler - lower temps, or quieter, or both and much cheaper

watercooling is a little more expensive but so much better... if all you want to cool is the CPU, there are any number of kits available that will give you everything you need and instructions on fitting that will be much better and quieter than an all in one cooler

if you start getting in to aggressive overclocking of a CPU and a graphics card then these systems start to be on the small side (or you end up needing noisy fans again), but a kit for CPU only will be a good starting point to get you used to the idea and you can always change out a pump or add a radiator at a later point once you are more confident with the whole thing
 
andybird123 said:
if you were considering an all in one cooler you would be better off with a decent aftermarket air cooler - lower temps, or quieter, or both and much cheaper

watercooling is a little more expensive but so much better... if all you want to cool is the CPU, there are any number of kits available that will give you everything you need and instructions on fitting that will be much better and quieter than an all in one cooler

if you start getting in to aggressive overclocking of a CPU and a graphics card then these systems start to be on the small side (or you end up needing noisy fans again), but a kit for CPU only will be a good starting point to get you used to the idea and you can always change out a pump or add a radiator at a later point once you are more confident with the whole thing
Click to expand...

I was thinking all in one because I have stupid finned ram, poor choice it was, but they were cheap at the time so I blindly went for it :p. An air cooler may fit in, but it may depend on how far it overhangs over the ram bays.

This may be quite a broad question, but how quiet is a WC setup in general? I've heard pump noise can be really loud and I don't really want that. Would an air cooler be quieter?

For now it would be only the CPU (because as you say, I could do with getting some confidence in this as I don't want to end up flooding my system ;)) as my graphics card has got an accerlero cooler at the moment. But in the future I may well consider it, how easy is it to upgrade a watercooling set up if I did want to start doing crazy overclocks or cooling the graphics card with it?

One more question too, is it better for me as a beginner just to buy a kit? Or is it cheaper/better to get all the components individually?

Thanks a lot, and sorry for all the questions.
 
Personally if it was only the CPU you were looking to cool, I would probably go with a large air cooler.

I have owned an all in one water cooler, and they do the job - but not brilliantly.

If you are defo thinking about doing a full loop then I would say proper WC your CPU. Just make sure you think in advance.

There's no point in buying a tiny little skInny rad if later down the line you want to add in your GPU.

Do a lot of reading, there's a great guide on here as well as some decent ones on YouTube.

This is coming from someone who is currently putting their first WC build together.
 
Well I was thinking of buying one of the kits on here, something like this:

YOUR BASKET
1 x OcUK Tech Lab - V8 Watercooling Kit 240 £184.98
- 1 x Mayhems X1 UV Blue Premixed Watercooling Fluid 1L £7.99
Total : £204.37 (includes shipping : £9.50).



But although I've done some reading, I'm not sure if this is the right thing to be buying.

For now it probably would be soley the CPU, although eventually I'd go and add the GPU to the mix (single 7970). As I said, I'm not up with how easy it is to upgrade a watercooling setup :(
 
generally speaking parts bought individually will be more expensive than buying them seperately, however the kit you've linked to contains some very pricey parts that you might be able to slim down on to save some money

e.g. you could go with an EK Supreme LTX CPU cooler, you could change the radiator to a 360 to better suit your eventual plans and you could change the GT fans (as they are very expensive for fans)

a 360 EX rad with different fans would cool better than a 240 but still be the same price or even slightly cheaper

the EK DCP 4.0 is a good pump though - but make sure you use the anti vibration mount to keep it quiet

generally speaking it is possible to build a really quiet - nigh on silent watercooling loop
 
Well I was doing a little bit of browsing and threw some things into my basket:

YOUR BASKET
1 x XSPC EX360 120mm Radiator - Black £49.99
1 x XSPC DDC Bay - Acrylic Dual 5.25” Reservoir £44.99
1 x EK DCP 4.0 Pump (12v) £39.98
1 x EK Supreme LTX CPU Waterblock - Nickel Plexi £32.99
3 x Noiseblocker Multiframe S-Series M12-S2 Fan - 120mm £15.98 (£47.94)
1 x Mayhems X1 UV Blue Premixed Watercooling Fluid 1L £7.99
Total : £223.90 (includes shipping : FREE).



Could you by any change give me your opinion on these? And if there's anywhere it can be improved and money saved :p. Going for quietness hopefully.

I know I'm missing the tubing and fittings and who knows what else, but I have gotten lost in all the different available tubings and fittings and connectors :(
 
Ok, I think I've already changed my mind on what I want :rolleyes:.

Anyone have any opinions on this instead:

YOUR BASKET
1 x XSPC RayStorm D5 EX240 WaterCooling Kit £239.99
1 x Mayhems X1 UV Blue Premixed Watercooling Fluid 1L £7.99
Total : £259.38 (includes shipping : £9.50).



How hard would that be to put together? And will it be good and quiet?

Thanks again everyone :D

EDIT: Just another question here (I'm annoying :p), which of the above and these below is the best for the money being paid:

YOUR BASKET
1 x XSPC RayStorm D5 RX360 WaterCooling Kit £289.68
1 x XSPC RayStorm D5 EX420 WaterCooling Kit £284.99
1 x XSPC RayStorm D5 EX280 WaterCooling Kit £255.98
1 x XSPC RayStorm D5 EX360 WaterCooling Kit £254.99
1 x XSPC RayStorm D5 RX240 WaterCooling Kit £252.98
Total : £1,351.22 (includes shipping : £10.50).



It looks as though only the radiators and amount of fans (in some cases size of fans) differ from each one.

Thanks again :)
 
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