Water Cooling is it really worth the expense?

harris1986

harris1986

harris1986

Soldato
Joined
4 Aug 2005
Posts
2,676
Hi guys now i mite just be hitting a bee hive with a very big stick here and stirring up a whole load of controversy but who cares :D, after having a freezer 64 pro and overclocking my opty i have got load temps of around 41c.

I have wanted to go water cooling for so long, but now with the high standard of air cooling products out is it really worth the money? as i have seen water cooled setup's with load temps around the same?

Please give me a insight into this, also if you could post your clocks, cooling and temps? :D thanks guys
 
weescott said:
Watercooling still has the advantage of silence over air though!
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's basically the whole reason I went to water. It's a lot quieter, because I have my PC on for days at a time it was pretty hard to sleep with the air cooling. Even with all of the case fans set to low on my Musketeer.

I do get pretty good temps though. Around 24C idle and 30 Load. :)
 
Last edited:
weescott said:
I have to agree with Marvt74. It's certainly the case with AMD, less so with Pentium. Watercooling still has the advantage of silence over air though!
Click to expand...

It depends though, my pc case is almost inaudible, if i went watercooling id have the pump noise, which would be noisier than the arctic freezer and zalman both at 7v that ive got just now.

I think silent air can be quieter than any watercooling system, in a silent system the noisiest thing your liable to have is your hard drives, indeed thats all i can hear on mine, absolutely zero fan noise.
 
hmm this is stiring up a cufuffle, well if i was to go water it would probably cost somewhere around the £150-£200 mark as i'm going custom, do you think this is justifyable?
 
And you can put things under your water blocks to make things really interesting - who wants a chip at 35C when you can have it below zero? :D

I guess the original point is valid though - do you really need the extra grunt you get from water, and is it worth it pound for pound - personally I doubt it, but it is great fun, all adds to the entertainment value! (Though I always have at least one rig stable, on air, and available for when it all goes pop :rolleyes: )

Edit: Looking at your rig - you probably won't get more than a 200/300Mhz extra, if that - not sure that's really value for money for an outlay of £150, would you really notice the difference?
 
I think the most performance gain you'd get would be from the 7800 if you chose to cool that. Can't see much more than 200mhz extra on the cpu though.

If you really want to get a decent performance increase get a mach 1 prommie for about £130ish if you can find one should get you a good increase in performance if your happy with sub zero temps.

Cavemanoc people here seem very anti-tecs so best off not mentioning them :p
 
I was considering water cooling too, but too get noticable differences over good air it will be cost close too £200!!! Then i noticed you can pick up second hand prommie mach 1's for sub £200 :D. and temps of -30C make waters sub ambient temps absolutely pointless (except for noise levels)
 
The way i decided when cooling my new system, you can obviously cool and overclock a cpu more on water than on silent air, however spending an extra 60 quid and getting a 3700 instead of a 3000, allowed me to overclock the cpu to the same speed water would get with the 3000. The only problem is now i wouldnt mind seeing what difference water would make to the 3700 :D
 
Much as I love Mach 1's (obviously), they are not the be all and end all - the head may well get down to -35C (And that's just the starting temp :p ) but that doesn't mean your chip is at that temp! My XP-M hovers around 0, and probably get up towards 6 or 7C under heavy clocking - there's no doubt that this is pretty bling and great for the old bragging rights - but TBH I never really got it stable much above 2.9Ghz (not really ready to put that many volts through!) - considering I could easily get 2.65Ghz on air... you see where this is going!

On top of that, the new chips really are starting to get beyond my little Mach 1(sniff) - I wouldn't dream of sticking my new Opty 165 under it - simply too much heat without a regass (£150) probably worth a new compressor and head (£200) - oooo... see where the 'cheap' Mach 1 is now!

And, of course - it isn't the CPU that really makes any difference where it count (games) - it's all down to the GFX card - so, if you really wanted to get somewhere, you could always pick up a cheap Mach 1 and get it modded to fit your fully volt modded 7800GTX - now that would be worth it :D

Edit: Having said all that - and yes I know people don't like Pelts - I used the setup in my rig on the LE without and hardware modding and you can see the effect - and that can be done with a standard kit that goes for £35 used (Pelt+block+insulation foam) - now that's value for money!
 
Last edited:
Heh i think a mach 1 would be awesome for an opty since they're cold bugged to hell and back :p

Be useless for an x2 or fx55/57 though.

Problem modding Mach 1's though is that the controller thinks something is wrong if evap temps get below -50 is it needs to be messed with so your left without temp measurement unless you get a new controller.

Gotta agree with a pelt on the gfx being very good value though since with a decent PSU you can just run it off that (i did anyway and it held good rails)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom