Which watercooler for a noob?

phillai · 15 Jul 2008 at 12:03

I wanna have a go at watercooling when I build my new PC as I'm sick of the noise.

I have never tried watercooling before.

Is there a foolproof watercooling system out there that people can recommend to me?

Is must be as easy to me as possible.

It will be needed for this system, that I'm building.

Antec P182 Super Midi Tower Case
Asus Rampage Formula Intel X48 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 750W ATX2.2 Modular SLi Compliant PSU
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 LGA775 'Yorkfield' 2.66GHz 12MB-cache (1333FSB) Processor
HIS ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI
Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 Dominator PC2-8500C5 TwinX (2x2GB)
Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10000RPM SATA 16MB Cache
2 x Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache
LG GGW-H20L Blu-Ray Rewriter & HD-DVD ROM Serial ATA Drive
Leadtek Winfast DTV2000H Hybrid PCI TV Tuner
Linksys CIT200 Cordless Internet Telephony Kit
Sony Eye Toy

Azza · 15 Jul 2008 at 12:13

Swiftech H2O 120 / 220 kit.

virdee2 · 15 Jul 2008 at 12:15

The Swiftech H2O-220 Compact Watercooling Kit (Socket 775/754/939/940/AM2) is one of the best kits for the cpu mate according to cpc. Its not gonna break the bank and its apparently got room for overclocking too so performance and quietness - double the value :-)

if you want to cool everything, e.g. cpu, nb, gpu etc then i suggest a custom kit so reading the sticky is a good start. its really not as difficult as it first seems when you read it and just jot down the necessary parts. just make sure you have the right sized barbs for each component you add to the loop.

phillai · 15 Jul 2008 at 13:43

What's the difference Swiftech H2O 120 and the Swiftech H2O-220?

And I know this might sound like a daft question but is it quiet/loud?

virdee2 · 15 Jul 2008 at 14:13

its as quiet as the fan speed really so i hear its pretty quiet - no pun intended :-)

as for the difference; the 220 has a double radiator (bigger therefore cooler) as opposed to the 120 which has a single fan radiator.

phillai · 15 Jul 2008 at 14:44

The 220 looks far too big.

The 120 seems OK to put inside a P182 case... I'd like to give that a try but it's sold out!

virdee2 · 15 Jul 2008 at 14:53

did you search these forums about the 220 rad? im sure someone must have your case with a 220 rad in it. You have quite a popular case :-)

phillai · 15 Jul 2008 at 15:04

Nope, not had a search cause I'm suppose to be working!

I did have a look on the 220 though and it looks massive!

I saw a pic of it at the back of a PC case...

virdee2 · 16 Jul 2008 at 12:49

lol, it quite big i know...i have one hanging out the back of my antec 900 but now i realise that i can put it inside the case in line with the psu, so it would probably fit in your like that too - if you havnt used the bottom 2 drive bays.

1kiwi · 16 Jul 2008 at 12:57

Someone recently put a custom kit in a P182 - was it nokindea? It would really pay to search for P182 build logs. Note: For ultimate noise reduction you could also use passive cooling. All depends on your budget really ...

virdee2 · 16 Jul 2008 at 13:15

yeh passive really works too, but if your going to overclock then you need fans for the extreme end. i can run my 3.5ghz E6550 passively but temps get close to the naughty zone :-)

just shows how good it cools passively.