Water Cooling is it really worth the expense?

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.
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Testiculars. That only happens if you don't pay due care to mount the pump with sufficient anti-vibration material. Watercooling is as silent as the end-user chooses to make it. Nothing else defines it but your choice of components and how you mount them in your case.
 
In my eyes water cooling has one significant advantage over air cooling.

With water you can remove the heat from the case entirely. Granted, a separate rad box is required to achieve this, but nonetheless it can be done.

Hav
 
Watercooling today is worth it if you want to use it to have a fairly fast system and have a quiet system, for pure speed it's not that good as the modern CPU's do not really work better with a lot of VCore.

In the past with Socket A CPU's you could run them at 2.1V as that would still give you a higher overclock and with watercooling the difference between ari and water gets bigger the more heat is produced.

At the moment I'm beginning to think about getting a good aircooler and giving up watercooling, especially now I have problems with my waterpump being a female dog and making noise.
 
I was looking into watercooling my pair of BFG 7800gt's as they are horrendously noisy and the heat was starting to build up in the case due to them both exhausting air towards the front of the case and against the intake fan. The ideal solution would be to build a rad box and remove the heat from the case altogether. I started scouring the net for the components and the cheapest i could come up with was £229 + delivery from several online retailers. They were quality components, DD maze4 LP blocks x2, Eheim 1250, Alphacool Nexxxos Extreme lll triple rad etc but the cost is ridiculous and to my mind was not worth the hassle. In the end i got a AC Nvidia silencer 5 rev.3 for the bottom card which dumped the air out the back and as i did'nt have enough room for one of those to fit the top card i got a Zalman VF700-CU for the top. Both together cost me less than £30 delivered and has solved half the problem, as in the noise and part of the heat. When summer comes i may have to think of something else but until then i am fairly happy.

Got an extra overclock out of it as well. Before i could get 492/1.20 but now i can get 502/1.26. Not a great deal i admit, but it all helps. :D
 
The pump can create a whining noise which is incredibly annoying. I did have watercooling and went back to air because I purchased a case without a window and did not want to worry about leaking. Also with 65nm technology available, there is less heat to dissipate and the best air coolers ie. Scythe Ninja 1000, Big typhoon and zalman 9500, can all manage what internal watercooling can do. If you want to cool graphics card SLI and the cpu then there is more benefits than just a cpu. It’s pointless spend an extra £100 over air cooling just for 4-8 deg C. I’m happy with my ninja 1000 with the fan spinning at an inaudible 540rpm and do not miss watercooling. It was good for the Prescott 478 because than dissiptes a lot of heat. But my dual core intel 820 @ 2.94Ghz I can turn off all my case fans an I get 21-29 deg C idle with only azureus bittorrent program and anti-virus software running.
 
good shout dutch guy, i'd also be interested in this, i think that while idle temps are near enough the same (possibly slightly better on water) load temps will show a smaller increase with water than with air, i think. someone correct me if i'm wrong?
 
Gfx cards really benefit with watercooling, as they are getting so noisy these days.
My x1800 hit 80+ degrees on load with stock cooler. Now its a cool 38 ish on load which is a massive difference.

Tom
 
harris1986 said:
i think that while idle temps are near enough the same (possibly slightly better on water) load temps will show a smaller increase with water than with air, i think. someone correct me if i'm wrong?
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Yes, watercooling can handle increased heat output a lot better, at idle or running at stock there is little difference.

The difference becomes big when you are overclocking with increased VCore and the CPU is pumping out >150W of heat

Watercooling with the rad external also stops the heat the CPU produces heating up the ambient case temp.
 
I use an Asetek Extreme LGA775 kit and my temps were about 40 degrees on a P4 3.73Ghz oc to 4.5Ghz. I have just changed my cpu block though as it had internal fractures in the perspex (Asetek are replacing it). I have just bought a new block from OcUK whilst I send the old one away and the temps dont appear as good for some reason. I'm now running about 49 Degrees C. I've taken the block off and re-applied AS5 and refitted it and its the same. Whether the block is a bit warped I dont know.
Before I bought the replacement block I used the standard Intel LGA cooler and the temps at idle were 55 Degrees at idle.

I think that water cooling is certainly better than air cooling if you are intending on overclocking and have the dosh to do it. The down side for me is that my LianLi case is fully open both sides and the water cooler is sat next to it (outside of case). So the whole thing looks a bit messy. A zalman bracket with a couple of TT Thunderblades shove air onto the board inside along with a case load of fans.
 
ChrisUK said:
I have just bought a new block from OcUK whilst I send the old one away and the temps dont appear as good for some reason. I'm now running about 49 Degrees C. I've taken the block off and re-applied AS5 and refitted it and its the same. Whether the block is a bit warped I dont know.
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Remember that AS needs ~72 hours to fully settle so perhaps the temperature at load gets lower after a while?
 
No 2x mounts on the CPU are the same. Dismount and remount the block a few times, noting temp differences each time. To match previous blocks' performance you have to precisely match the amount of downforce exherted by the thumbscrews / springs etc to the amount used on the previous block.
 
Typical.

I've just checked my cpu temp and it is running at 37 Degrees idle. I have only had the pc on for a short while but it wont go up mpore than that now unless under load.

That temp is ok with me. I guess it must have just been the AS5 curing. It has been 5 days or so since I last applied it.

Happy now.

Cheers
 
harris1986 said:
haha probably not, but yeah phase is seeming interesting, i have seen some bargains go on a well known auction site recently, a vapo LS for £70 :o
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There's an OCZ unit coming out shortly which should retail at under $300 , thats possibly something to look into as it fits into your price range.
 
very true, not sure what kind of temps the ocz comes with though :S, i'm really tempted to pick up a vapo ls or promy mach1 cheap then get the chilly1 conversion on it :D will save myself so much money and have a near enough future proof cooling solution
 
harris1986 said:
very true, not sure what kind of temps the ocz comes with though :S, i'm really tempted to pick up a vapo ls or promy mach1 cheap then get the chilly1 conversion on it :D will save myself so much money and have a near enough future proof cooling solution
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Save money? Have you any idea how much a chilly1 and regas costs?

The OCZ uses R134a so it doesn't have the heat capacity of a R404a system e.g. Mach 2 GT. Still looks like a good system for the money though!
 
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