Shall i got water?

jonneymendoza

jonneymendoza

jonneymendoza

Caporegime
Joined
7 Apr 2008
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Lorville - Hurston
Hi. i have been building pc's since the old Viglan machines running windows 3.1 and up until this day i still have not took the courage to try out water cooling.

is it safe to do nowadays? are water cooling kits still prone to leakes? i heard there is a special liquid to use called non conductive? does that mean if it leakes it wont damage your components?

How much does it cost to water cool a GPU and a cpu using a decent kit?

This is the case i have http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/LianLi/PC-A7010/4.html

It has a i7 920 inside along with a 480gtx which is blooming loud and hot :mad:
 
Coolants are theoretically non-conductive, but that's no reason to be complacent about spillage.

The 480 is a notoriously hot design, thus the noise created to cool it. The 500-series runs cooler, thus quieter, and modern cases are designed for good airflow - e.g. any of the Cooler Master HAF series. In all honesty, a case with mesh panels and large fans will deliver excellent cooling, especially with Sandybridge (where it's possible to OC to 5GHz on air). There's really only a need for water cooling if you're heavily into over-clocking.

Additionally, most cases are not designed for water cooling - even the ones that advertise themselves as being so. Tubing has a habit of taking over your case, and there really aren't any cases that have come up with effective solutions for where to mount your pump, your reservoir, etc. The water cooling industry as a whole has also been quite bad at establishing standards - hence 15mm vs 17mm vs 25mm fan spacing, 3 different types of screws for radiators, etc. And then there's the problem of filling and subsequently draining the loop: I've yet to see simple, consistent solutions to that (for example, draining the loop still requires tilting your case - something I thought we should really move past).

In all honesty, water cooling is expensive and time consuming. Not much quieter than air either (more radiators equals more fans equals more noise). The cooling is better, don't get me wrong - if you want to run an overclocked Bloomfield CPU at sub-50 degrees, a custom loop is your best option. But what's the difference between 50 degrees and 70 degrees? And there's always the possibility of leakage or pump failure.

If you're interested in water cooling, but are concerned about the risks, you might want to think about a self-contained sealed loop. The two best options for that probably the Corsair H70 and the CoolIT Eco 240.
 
I second the above really. Been there done that, a few times in a couple of different cases. I don't regret doing it, but I kind of grew away from it after 2006/2007 when air cooled cases became...basically, better. It's extra maintenance and hassle running water. I couldn't recommend it these days really. You end up spending a couple of hundred more than air for a good custom loop in some cases, and it ends up being cooler for around the same noise levels. It depends how much cooler you want/need.
 
I would just stick to air tbh get a decent cpu cooler+gpu cooler+paste (diamond) and your temps will be much lower and you wont spend a lot of money /time doing it compared to watercooling.
 
Coolants are conductive, any coolant manufacture saying its non-conductive is misleading, as soon as the coolant starts moving around the blocks it'll pick up tiny particals of metal, and so your coolant is then conductive.

100% pure water would be ideal, trouble is it wont stay pure for any length of time.

Having said that I have had a compression fitting leak a few drops of bi-distilled water onto a HD5850 and it was fine for 5 days then the GPU driver stopped responding, I then noticed the leak, cleaned it up, left the GPU to dry for 3 days and then it worked fine.
 
trisp said:
I would just stick to air tbh get a decent cpu cooler+gpu cooler+paste (diamond) and your temps will be much lower and you wont spend a lot of money /time doing it compared to watercooling.
Click to expand...

are there any decent GPU air coolers though that make my 480gtx run cooler and quieter?
 
I built my first loop last summer and really enjoyed it. Provided you read up, ask a lot of questions and are patient it is very rewarding and a lot of fun.

I'd go for a simple custom loop, parts are very high quality and barbs/compressions are about as fool proof as you can get. Just take your time and double/tripple check everthing while you are building.

Coolants will conduct, there was a guy that tested them and they all conducted. Just use distilled water+a silver kill coil to inhibit any nasty algae growth. If you want colour get coloured tubing.

A decent cpu+gpu loop will cost anything form £200-400 depending on what you buy. My loop is a cpu+gpu and is linked in sig. Very detailed build log and will give you decent insight into what to expect.

Heres how i got started, I read the ocuk advanced overclocking sticky
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17803239
Trawled the xs forums
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=70
and the stickies there
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=202394
and then discovered skinnee and martin, two of the best reviewers of watercooling gear. This is where delta temps and watercooling clicked in my head, the graphs and tables didn't mean much to me at the start now i go straight to them to see how many watts can be disapated at XXXrpm fan speed
http://www.skinneelabs.com/
http://martinsliquidlab.org//
Be clear on what your goal is. Silence, performance and aesthetics and match your hardware to your needs. Think about your future cooling needs as it will probably save you money in the long run and most of all be patient :)
 
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Some tips on water cooling:

Buy the case first and take measurements. This will prevent buying radiators only to find that they don't fit. For example, a key measurement for roof-mounted radiators is the distance from the inner roof to the top of the motherboard.

Cases that can realistically take 2 radiators are few and far between. For example, the CM 690 II advertises itself as being able to take a 2nd radiator in the bottom of the case - but there are a LOT of caveats to that. The TJ07 can support multiple radiators, but requires modification to do so. Probably the best case that can take 2 large radiators (360mm and 480mm) costs £350.

Most people change graphics cards more frequently than they change their CPU. Thus you will probably want a CPU-only loop. Maybe a CPU + motherboard. Keeping the loop in the top of the case will also help with tubing overload and enable you to have access to swap out PCI-E cards (like graphics or sound).

Stock 120mm fans (i.e. that come with the case) suck ass for radiators. The most important criteria for radiator fans is ability to overcome static pressure. Enermax's Twister range are good, as are Yate Loons.

Installing CPU blocks is generally pretty easy. Installing full-cover GPU and motherboard blocks is fiddly work - and changing your mind and putting the original heat sink back on is even more so.

A pair of portable G-clamp vices (~£15 the pair) will make your life a lot easier when installing radiators.

Water cooling RAM is pointless.

It's still a good idea to have airflow through the case, to cool the stuff that isn't looped (like hard drives and RAM).
 
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Watercooling is all dependant on why you want to do it as it will effect what parts you buy. The two usual reasons are either overclocking performance or the lack of noise.

These days, especially with sandy bridge, overclocking on air is getting easier though as quiet as they are making gpu's under load they can still be a bit noisey. Personally I did it for the noise, as someone said above the 400 series gpu's were a bit hot and noisey. Have to say though love the silence now and until someone can deliver a high-ish end gpu as quiet as water can I will continue to keep at least my graphics card under water.

I also agree with JeffyB, read those links absorb the information in them and you should have a good idea then of what you want to achieve and how can you achieve it. If there are any questions or spec checks there are enough people on here or other forums who can help.
 
Oh, and whilst I'm at it...

If you ask people for what you should buy, a popular answer will be "Oh, there's just a few degrees difference between them, so it doesn't matter". But if that goes for radiator, thermal paste, water block, flow (i.e. tubing and pump) then it all adds up. Your choice of components does matter. And most radiators are geared towards a rough speed of fan - so if you want quiet, low-rpm fans, you'll need a radiator designed for that (in this case the Black Ice SR1).
 
Most of the downsides are only if you insist on putting rads inside the case.

No matter how little an increase in air temps, there is some, from hdd's, chipset, memory. Why not stick the rads outside the case, thats how I always used to do it and will be again.

Outside the case also gives you other options, the way I'm going, stick rad box in fireplace, block off fire place, so room temp goes into radbox, out the chimney and doesn't warm up the room. Can send it out the window, or just in the room but using room air temp rather than slightly warmed case temp.

I've yet to see a quiet aircooled sli/xfire setup anywhere, frankly if you go external to the case you can at the very least have the radiators and the fans on them further away, and if you want, insulate between you and the radiators/fans with sound proofing of some kind or another. 6-9 VERY quiet fans will be a lot quieter than 99% of the heatsinks you get on gpu's.

The biggest thing for watercooling for me was always to have somewhere more convinient to deal with the heat. With so many cases having holes for tubing, and quick disconnects getting to be very good quality and very low restriction it means the only things I need in the case are easily removable tubing and cpu/gpu blocks. That means installing new kit is hugely simplified, or draining the system, cleaning it out is all so much easier.

The only thing thats not being done well, is custom rad boxes being easily available, its pretty much a case of build your own, wood is cheap and easy to use, and good for sound deadening aswell. Would be good if you could buy a simple but well made £50 case with rad/pump/res mounts, just to make it that much easier.
 
The longest I've been without changing coolant was 2 years. There wasn't any algae/buildup or anything like that - it looked good enough to reuse (but I didn't anyway :))

One thing that only JeffyB pointed out is that watercooling is FUN. I've been watercooling my PC for about 10 years now and has gone through 5 builds since then. I'm currently building my newest and greatest WC loop on my new Sandybridge build. I realise that air cooling is just as quiet and almost as good in many cases, but I'll always watercool - I'm addicted :)
 
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cool. how much did u spend on it and do you install the rad outside your case? Also, how do u drain the water out of your WC? do you have to remove everything and take out the WC stuff off your case and remvoe the water like that?
 
How you drain your loop depends on your setup. I'm fortunate that my case is big enough to house the majority of the wc parts in the bottom compartment of my v2000, so i don't have to worry about water near my mobo when draining. Most would use a simple T-line with a stopper at the loops lowest point and simply remove the stopper and drain the loop into a bowl. I have only drained my loop once and that was to add a gpu block to it. Water has been in there for about 10 months now and from what i can see in the res it's as crystal clear as the day i poured it in. I'll probably have a propper look after a year or so.
 
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