Water cooler recommendations wanted

darrenkarp

darrenkarp

darrenkarp

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16 Apr 2010
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Hi All,

I want bore you with full system specs but I have a Cooler Master full tower case, i7 920 2.66 proc on a GB EX58 UDR3 MB with a Zalman copper fan cooler and want to replace this with a water cooler to achieve a stable OC.

Can anyone recommend a suitable unit?

TIA
DK
 
You got 2 choices. Balls deep custom loop or a aio like the h100 etc.

Overclockers kits are a good place to start with a custom loop, i myself started with a v12 kit and have expanded from there with gcard blocks and extra rad etc

Hth

Steve
 
How big an overclock, and what are your temps now?
A good system to sort of test the waters as it were with water cooling is with OCUK's Fathom watercooling system, it's built with a pump on the cpu block, and is designed to be expandable system. Or you can just jump right in for a custom loop.
 
I'm not sure how expandable the Fathom is tbh as according to RJK:
we dont plan on doing a larger rad than 240 as in my opinion it would cause the pump to be inefficient
Click to expand...

Unless you were happy to stick with just cooling the cpu and you didn't fancy putting a loop together, I'd go with a kit or separates if water was a must.

If it came down to all in one units, I'd save a bit of cash and stick with aircooling unless you wanted the look of a water cooler like an H80/100.
 
Last edited:
Custom loop all the way but 2 problems with this...

1. It is expensive to buy everything at once.
2. You will never finish your loop (always wanting to change things).

Water cooling is great and will keep temps much lower than air cooling and will allow for higher over clocks (allows more voltage to go through). The specialty CPU water coolers (h100i) are a good alternative but still not a replacement for a custom loop.
 
aio coolers are a little better than big air provided the fans are decent and have a good case airflow

The advantages of them are

No interferance with ram heights
no pci lane interferance
No cooler height limitations (case just needs to be able to accomodate a 120 fan or 2x120mm fan which most do)
can look good though that is personal, i prefer large air coolers.

Disadvantages
price compared to large air coolers
Chance of pump failure can cause overheating though this is mitigated somewhat by modern processors ability to shut down before damage is caused and the pump speed can be detected by the motherboard so allow a warning should it fail
Not a massive gain in performance compared to large air
can be very noisy though this is often due to the fans provided


Those are the ones I can think of atm.
its just personal preference.
Its just personal preference, the aio coolers aint bad really
 
I have a Zalman Respirator 1 plus water cooler which I used a few years ago to keep my old P4 processor cool and a lot less noisy than the stock supplied Intel fan. Does anyone know if this can be used with an i7 920?
 
I have reset my BIOS to default (no OC) settings and have run OCCT very briefly to show you the temps I got with my stock Zalman air cooler. The system is around 5 years old and I do occasionally vacuum over the fan.

If someone could tell me how to insert some images that would be helpful as I'd like to show you some before and after temp shots.
 
NoobCannon said:
You got 2 choices. Balls deep custom loop or a aio like the h100 etc.

Overclockers kits are a good place to start with a custom loop, i myself started with a v12 kit and have expanded from there with gcard blocks and extra rad etc

Hth

Steve
Click to expand...

^This is what I did. I did use the self contained units like the h-100 but changed them every year. I only changed them cus I'm still not 100% trusting on them, but that's me

Once you go down the custom loop you prob will never want to go back to air, however it will cost a far bit. Like gregster said "you will always want to change things."
 
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