Watercooling expectations... room temp?

DrMekon · 22 May 2009 at 10:08

Always umm'd and ahhh'd when it came to watercooling... but as Im lokking to possibly get some kit for some serious overclocking.. I thought I would do a bit of research...

I would imagine the "best" you could ever get from watercooling is room temp or thereabouts...??

I dont want to spend lots of cash, as I dont see the point of spending more on cooling for overclocking than it would cost to actually pay for the speeds I would hope to achieve, or get close to on air...

I know liquid would proivde better heat disipation, and reduce system noise, especially on the gpu... but on average, how much cooler would it be than a decent air cooling system? Ive always fone for chunky heatsinks, usually from thermalright, and a good 120mm fan, which have always performed well... but I fancy getting my fingers wet (so to speak), an dhopefully not the cpu...

shadowscotland · 22 May 2009 at 13:23

35-45 degrees load is normal for a quality (and expensive setup) so 10-20c over ambient.

DrMekon said:
I dont want to spend lots of cash, as I dont see the point of spending more on cooling for overclocking than it would cost to actually pay for the speeds I would hope to achieve, or get close to on air...

I have a E8200 I got second hand for £55 its runs faster that a E8600.
But my loop is way more that £150 and thats with second hand parts.
But I watercool for ultra quiet (my pc has no fans and almost no moving parts) but a £50-60 air cooling solution with acheive E8600 speeds and quieter that the stock cooler.

If Oc'ing to change E8200 to E8600 with out the price tag - air cooling every time (a £20 cooler will do this)

Click to expand...

.:SAmSuNG:. · 22 May 2009 at 13:37

Water will be alittle better when you start getting to high voltage etc but Decent air is very close. Water is more of bling factor and noise.

Greebo · 22 May 2009 at 15:25

Using 2nd hand watercooling bits mainly bought from this forum which in their day was some of there best I managed to put a watercooling loop together for £75

It's maybe not the best watercooled setup money can buy as my q9550 overclocked at 4ghz hits 59C after 8 hours prime but it only has two slow fans on the radiator and also now cools the nb and graphics card.

If it was just cooling the cpu then I am sure it would be better.

Originally I got a the following:

Swiftech Laing d5, swiftech 240 rad, all the tubing I needed, Danger Den cpu block, 4 x quiet fans (only use two) £60

Swiftech mini res £9

Feser £6

Total £75.

Since then I added a fuzion gpu block for £20 and bought a mobo with built in nb water cooling.

So that meant my total spend on watercooling both the cpu and gpu was only £95.

So by buying quality 2nd hand bits you can build a custom watercooling rig which will perform miles better than any kit bought.

Of course, I got the bug since then and picked up an XSPC Delta v3 for £25 and a full cover waterblock for the graphics card for £50.

Once selling off the cpu and gpu block it still only takes my total spend to £130 so not bad.

Oh and the biggest boost is the silence