Watercooling, harder or easier?

Netvyper

Netvyper

Netvyper

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Folks,

I've been around the overclocking world for a few years now, I've had a couple of High-End air setups, and a couple of Water-Cooled rigs too.

Having just decided to move on from my Q6600 rig, as in sig, I've been looking at the Socket 1366/Socket 1156 debate, and many boards, to try & find a suitable rig. I'm sure you all know the pro's & cons of both i860/i920, but the cooling attached to the boards seems to be causing me some serious grief :/

Looking at a couple of 1156 boards;

Asus P55D Evo
Gigabyte UD3-R

They both have the chipset incredibly close to the GPUs, or Underneath, making a chipset block impossible.

In addition; looking at lower end X58 Boards;

Asus P6T SE
Gigabyte X58 UD3R

They both seem to have heat pipe connected Mosfet coolers, making chipset cooling again difficult.

I realise there are things like the full cover chipset/mosfet blocks for the X58 UD5, but thats a £200 board, with £100 of single use block attached. Are the manufacturers deliberately making this awkward, or is it simply a by product of the current design from Intel?
Has watercooling finished a transition from the value conscious, building rigs to extract all possible performance for as little cost as possible; to the rich & image conscious due to over capitalisation?
 
Silly thought for you, but seeing as the memory controller is now built into the cpu is chipset water cooling required anymore on i5 and i7?

E-I
 
Evil-I said:
Silly thought for you, but seeing as the memory controller is now built into the cpu is chipset water cooling required anymore on i5 and i7?

E-I
Click to expand...

This is a good point....
A Very good point in fact....

I did notice that they have pretty hefty heatsinks on though, more so the x58 units. And in my case, airflow is essentially zero, due to the watercooling.
Certainly in the past, the chipset would get over hot, even with 3rd party heatsinks attached.

Anyone with a watercooled i5/i7 had any issues with chipset temps?
 
To be honest, even on my air cooled case with a corsair h50 cooler, the ambient and chipset temps aren't stupidly high.. though I think the antec 900 does have decent airflow with proper cable management.

I think a lot of people just go for a high end aircooler with the i7 and i5 chips, I think proper watercooling is saved for those OC junkies who have money to burn ;)
 
My p55-gd65 chipset sits around a comfortable 30c, I have very good airflow though.

However don't be put off by the large heatsinks on the p55-gd80 etc, they don't really do much. 30c with the tiny heatsink thats standard on the gd65 is more than enough imo.
 
Running through the architecture diagrams for X58 & P55, it looks like the P55 would be fine with no cooling on chipset, it only does USB/Audio etc.

But looking at the X58, the PCI-E lanes are all routed through the IOH, which I guess is the larger chip just below the CPU... does this warm up during use? significantly?
 
One thing to note is that the mosfets on the X58 throw out a lot of heat when overclocked. I think this is why the chipset heatsinks are often combined, the sinks on the processing chips help dissipate heat thrown out by the mosfets.

Watercooling cases tend to use fewer fans than aircooling, as they can get away with it. The fans also tend to be blowing through radiators, so not much airflow coming out the back. I'm having overheating issues with my x58 board while the processor is at 60 degrees (under cpuid monitor). I can probably solve this by strapping fans all over the board, but sod that for a laugh, I like it being quiet.

Aircooling the motherboard is probably easier. It'll be louder, and less effective. Watercooling is tidier aesthetically and acoustically, and will outperform the air.

I am speaking exclusively for X58, as the P55 is targeted at those who are less likely to watercool and this is likely to make chipset blocks rare. Plus I've no idea about the board layout on them.

I'll be getting chipset blocks at some point.
 
JonJ678 said:
One thing to note is that the mosfets on the X58 throw out a lot of heat when overclocked. I think this is why the chipset heatsinks are often combined, the sinks on the processing chips help dissipate heat thrown out by the mosfets.

Watercooling cases tend to use fewer fans than aircooling, as they can get away with it. The fans also tend to be blowing through radiators, so not much airflow coming out the back. I'm having overheating issues with my x58 board while the processor is at 60 degrees (under cpuid monitor). I can probably solve this by strapping fans all over the board, but sod that for a laugh, I like it being quiet.

Aircooling the motherboard is probably easier. It'll be louder, and less effective. Watercooling is tidier aesthetically and acoustically, and will outperform the air.

I am speaking exclusively for X58, as the P55 is targeted at those who are less likely to watercool and this is likely to make chipset blocks rare. Plus I've no idea about the board layout on them.

I'll be getting chipset blocks at some point.
Click to expand...


Jon,

Thats exactly what I was afraid might happen, I have essentially 0 airflow. Even something like Thermalrights Mosfet sinks may well end up a little too warm;
Unfortunately it seems incredibly hard to get waterblocks for mosfets on the lower tier boards, UD5, Rampage, P6T Deluxe etc are easy.
I already have an MCW30 in my loop, so that'd go nicely on the NB, but the rest of it might be a problem :(
 
You've got slightly limited options then I'm afraid. Need to get more air through the case or watercool the board. Murfi has a point, though the block on the gigabyte ud5 extreme is aluminium and uses weird threads. I've seen a few mips blocks which replace parts of the heat pipe assembly on asus boards, so there may well be a copper, sensibly threaded aftermarket thing to fit to the gigabyte.

That said, as a cost cutting measure, the eol extreme gigabyte or the asus rog boards + single block is probably a failure as it's likely to cost more than the UD5 + £70 of blocks. The prices look very bad if going with the cheaper X58 boards, hard position to be in.

I'm air cooling my board until I find £80 to throw at it, shouldn't be too much longer. At least the blocks are there when I'm ready
 
@ netvypter - why not just use the koolance mosfet blocks - they are universal and can be modified with different spreader plates. MVR-40 - not cheap, but what in watercooling is.

As to the zero airflow issue - this is the very reason I gave up with my fanless build.
I needed to water cool the psu/hhd/mosfet as well as all the normal stuff - single fan makes a world of differance
 
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