Is There Still a Need for Water-Cooling?
Posted on 13th Jul 2011 at 07:41 by Antony Leather with 142 comments
For me, water-cooling began out of necessity. I water-cooled my first PC nearly ten years ago, when, living in a house with a flat roof, my bedroom got incredibly hot in the summer months. I was already hooked on overclocking at the time and strove to save money by buying cheap, but very overclockable hardware. Unfortunately, the combination of the house's architecture and high system temperatures meant that my PC was intolerably noisy and unstable.
Infuriated, I made the move to water-cooling - not a particularly easy one as there were few guides and even fewer off-the-shelf components back then, which resulted in regular trips to the local DIY store to search for parts. I initially water-cooled my CPU, and my overheating and noise issues were solved instantly - my PC went from a hot, noisy box to a cool and quiet machine of wonder. I had more overclocking headroom than before too.
Every one of my main rigs since then has also seen me spend entire weekends building and leak-testing. In fact, the last three PCs I've built have had a water-cooled CPU and GPU, as well as the various hotspots on the motherboard too. However, a lot of today's hardware simply doesn't need water-cooling as urgently as its equivalent back in the day. People still want water-cooling, but it seems to be a desire that's separate from the need to actually cool the hardware.
Even as far back as the release Intel's first mainstream quad-core CPUs, such as the Core 2 Quad Q6600, air coolers were quickly becoming potent enough for newcomers to question the significant outlay involved with water-cooling. The new heatpipe-clad tower coolers were becoming more efficient at every step, and there's usually an air cooler that will enable you to push all but the hottest running CPUs to the max, albeit with additional noise.
However, with Intel's LGA1155 CPUs, we've seen time and time again that air coolers such as Thermaltake's Frio and BeQuiet Dark Rock Advanced are more than able to provide just as much overclocking headroom as a decent water-cooling kit, and with similar noise levels too. Our current LGA1155 thermal test kit is a case in question - we've overclocked our Core i7-2600K to a lofty 4.6GHz, and both the aforementioned coolers handled this overclock admirably.
Graphics cards are a slightly different matter, however, as we've found just as much reason to water-cool the current graphics cards such as the GeForce GTX 590 3GB as any previous generation. In fact, even mid-range graphics cards such as the GTX 560 Ti 1GB get quite warm and noisy under load, and many third party coolers haven't been able to tame them significantly.
Motherboards are a bit of mixed bag, though. I'd go as far as saying that I've had far fewer failures and stability issues since I've been water-cooling the motherboard in my PCs - the hot-running chipset on LGA1366 motherboards, for example, is almost certainly the reason for quite a few dead systems in our lab, as well as other problems I've read about in various forums.
However, water-cooling your motherboard is an expensive business - full cover blocks can retail for over £100, and most LGA1155 motherboards simply don't require shedloads of voltage either. With Intel and AMD's next-generation high-end CPUs on the horizon, it will be interesting to see how future families of motherboards fare on a day to day basis - will LGA2011 be another hot-running LGA1366 for example?
Aside from noise reduction, where water-cooling still has the edge in a few key areas, there is one other reason to invest in water-cooling. It looks fantastic. There's a reason why we award points to cases that look good, and why modding projects are so popular. Lots of us want to have a cool-looking PC and are willing to spend money achieving that goal. Thankfully, the water-cooling industry has taken notice and strived to meet the demand for a diverse and flexible range of hardware.
You only have to look at websites such as Aquatuning, Chilled PC and FrozenCPU to see the huge the range of components on offer these days, which makes it very easy to make a unique water-cooled PC. In addition, the huge range of gear is appealing to those who want to go one step further than just bolting a load of off-the-shelf parts together, and instead want to either mod their PC or even build it from scratch.
Even if the next generation of hardware doesn't notably benefit from water-cooling, there's always a small gap between air cooling and extreme cooling, and there will still be a huge market for it, for the simple reason that it's cool.
What do you think the future has in store for water-cooling? Have you been put off for any reason, or do you swear by it? Let us know in the forums.
Infuriated, I made the move to water-cooling - not a particularly easy one as there were few guides and even fewer off-the-shelf components back then, which resulted in regular trips to the local DIY store to search for parts. I initially water-cooled my CPU, and my overheating and noise issues were solved instantly - my PC went from a hot, noisy box to a cool and quiet machine of wonder. I had more overclocking headroom than before too.
Every one of my main rigs since then has also seen me spend entire weekends building and leak-testing. In fact, the last three PCs I've built have had a water-cooled CPU and GPU, as well as the various hotspots on the motherboard too. However, a lot of today's hardware simply doesn't need water-cooling as urgently as its equivalent back in the day. People still want water-cooling, but it seems to be a desire that's separate from the need to actually cool the hardware.
Even as far back as the release Intel's first mainstream quad-core CPUs, such as the Core 2 Quad Q6600, air coolers were quickly becoming potent enough for newcomers to question the significant outlay involved with water-cooling. The new heatpipe-clad tower coolers were becoming more efficient at every step, and there's usually an air cooler that will enable you to push all but the hottest running CPUs to the max, albeit with additional noise.
However, with Intel's LGA1155 CPUs, we've seen time and time again that air coolers such as Thermaltake's Frio and BeQuiet Dark Rock Advanced are more than able to provide just as much overclocking headroom as a decent water-cooling kit, and with similar noise levels too. Our current LGA1155 thermal test kit is a case in question - we've overclocked our Core i7-2600K to a lofty 4.6GHz, and both the aforementioned coolers handled this overclock admirably.
Water-cooled PCs such as L3p D3sk - Silent Workstation certainly look coo.
Graphics cards are a slightly different matter, however, as we've found just as much reason to water-cool the current graphics cards such as the GeForce GTX 590 3GB as any previous generation. In fact, even mid-range graphics cards such as the GTX 560 Ti 1GB get quite warm and noisy under load, and many third party coolers haven't been able to tame them significantly.
Motherboards are a bit of mixed bag, though. I'd go as far as saying that I've had far fewer failures and stability issues since I've been water-cooling the motherboard in my PCs - the hot-running chipset on LGA1366 motherboards, for example, is almost certainly the reason for quite a few dead systems in our lab, as well as other problems I've read about in various forums.
Water-cooling your motherboard can drastically reduce the temperatures of the chipset and MOSFETs, but the water blocks are expensive
However, water-cooling your motherboard is an expensive business - full cover blocks can retail for over £100, and most LGA1155 motherboards simply don't require shedloads of voltage either. With Intel and AMD's next-generation high-end CPUs on the horizon, it will be interesting to see how future families of motherboards fare on a day to day basis - will LGA2011 be another hot-running LGA1366 for example?
Aside from noise reduction, where water-cooling still has the edge in a few key areas, there is one other reason to invest in water-cooling. It looks fantastic. There's a reason why we award points to cases that look good, and why modding projects are so popular. Lots of us want to have a cool-looking PC and are willing to spend money achieving that goal. Thankfully, the water-cooling industry has taken notice and strived to meet the demand for a diverse and flexible range of hardware.
You only have to look at websites such as Aquatuning, Chilled PC and FrozenCPU to see the huge the range of components on offer these days, which makes it very easy to make a unique water-cooled PC. In addition, the huge range of gear is appealing to those who want to go one step further than just bolting a load of off-the-shelf parts together, and instead want to either mod their PC or even build it from scratch.
Even if the next generation of hardware doesn't notably benefit from water-cooling, there's always a small gap between air cooling and extreme cooling, and there will still be a huge market for it, for the simple reason that it's cool.
What do you think the future has in store for water-cooling? Have you been put off for any reason, or do you swear by it? Let us know in the forums.
142 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyI think that water cooling will become more sophisticated: less huge radiators, big pumps and lots of liquid, and a more balanced application of smaller technology.
Modern case designs are worth a mention here too - these have had a huge impact on temps obtainable by air.
Interesting that GPUs are still the problematic component - I wonder if the next gen of GPUs coming later this year will start to show better results due to the die shrink?
Some people collect stamps or coins, others stand for hours on rainy windswept platforms collecting train numbers. Some people build furniture or restore cars in their spare time.
There are people out there who view PCs as nothing more than tools; a means to an end. Those people have no place on these forums, and have precious little understanding of anything inside that whirring box under their desk. That's fine, whatever does or does not float your boat. Just have the good grace not to display your ignorance by attempting to deride that which you do not understand.
I tinker with PCs.
And I watercool because I can.
In this day and age, and with the announcement by Intel that the standard cpu's for laptops are now under 35w, to me it warns us that with the 22nm tech, we will have very fresh cpu's and new techs will bring the temps down. WC is thing of the past now...
^ +1 to that.
Its not done necessarily for practical reasons, I personally like the feeling that my PC, despite its age, is somewhat more special than a regular PC World crudbox because of the extra time and care and awesomeness of a full water loop.
Also, it depends on your definition of 'quiet' ;)
Truth be told, having your components run at ambient is still impossible for air cooling, that plus the noise makes watercooling a necessity for some.
I myself cannot afford it, but I defintiively would attempt it in the near future, it's just too good of a solution, it's quiet, it's more effective, and yes it is more expensive, but it makes a damn difference.
And while CPUs seem to be shrinking it seems that motherboard chipsets still retain the same process that was used yesteryear, making them considerably warmer. That coupled with a lack of active cooling can cause issues on more expensive boards.
While this is an elitist statement of sorts, this is the truth, Watercooling is a hobby, an expensive but quite awesome hobby. I know a few watercooler builders myself, and I'll be frank, I envy their top of the line near silent PCs, it's something that just can't be done with air, not now, not ever. Until they make components that don't eek out any heat. And for that reason (just like people who buy insane packages on nice cars for that extra oomph) for that small increase, watercooling will still exist. Because there will always be people who desire the most of out anything.
Also, water cooling can always top air cooling, because using water to carry the heat away from the CPU, means you can have a much bigger radiator, with much more surface area than any air cooler, which is limited by the space around the CPU.
Obvious troll is obvious?
Just because one generation of Intel CPU & chipset architecture is somewhat heat-efficient, you don't go and call watercooling an unnecessary effort.
Absolutely, it's the noise that makes the difference. I know it's a relative thing, but what passes for a "whisper quiet in operation" graphics card sounds to me like a hairdryer under the desk.
It seems to be the one area where CPU/GPU reviews just cannot be taken at face value. Maybe because the acceptability noise levels is a subjective thing?
Anyway, I find that only watercooling gives the combination of performance and noise levels that I find acceptable.
I've been watercooling since about 2004. I once tried going back to air cooling because my water systems were getting out of hand (5 gallon water reservoirs and experiments with peltier cooling).
I was on air cooling for about 3 months and it bored me silly. It was ugly to look at and all the heat was being dumped inside the computer case. I went back to water cooling and have stayed there. No longer using water but vegetable based coolant. My liquid system is a little extreme... Pump, triple rad and reservoir (500mm XSPC heatsink tube) sit beside window and the rad sucks in outside air through open window (in summer).
This means the heated air isn't recirculated and it helps to keep the room cooler and the water rad never sucks in stale heated air.
The liquid is cooling an i7 860 at up to 4,2ghz, 2 x MSI GTX 560Ti Twin Frozr II and a hard disk.
I didn't plan on buying an SLI setup. I just went a bit nuts after buying one 560ti and then decided to buy a second. I had been led to believe by various review sites that the MSI Twin Frozr II was a very effective cooler that was quiet running. What a lot of bullshit that was. Even one of those coolers was annoyingly loud in game and my PC case temps shot up and the GPU was running 75 to 85C+ on kombustor 3d test.
Turns out that the MSI Frozr II was more hype than anything and had I stuck with my original plan of Gigabyte super overclock 560Ti I would have had quieter and cooler. But anyway, I bought 2 x EK VGA waterblocks and fitted to the 560's, the temps dropped from 80c+ down to 35c full load. Idle temps on air had been 43c+, on liquid they now idle at 27c or lower. Average in game GPU temp is 30c.
And the noise? The awful MSI Twin Frozr II fans? Gone. My liquid cooling can cool the MSI even with rad fans at 55% or less. Silent SLI gaming.
For me, liquid cooling means a near silent system. When I walk into the room it sounds like the computer is switched off.
The other thing is I don't have a massive ugly piece of metal taking up most of the space inside my PC case. I mean, these large heatsinks are an absolute joke.
So, no to air cooling. Air cooling sucks and it doesn't do it well enough for me.
And their is something that everyone will admit .... everything looks sexier with water ; P
Even though I have built my own, removing the coolers of graphics cards has always seemed an ominous and risky prospect.
My previous gen 8800 GTS ran fairly quiet and my current 6850 card runs admirably quiet by comparison and only becomes noticeable when truly under load.
There may eventually come a time when water cooling tempts me over to the dark side and may start small with one of the sealed no maintenance units and see how it goes from there, for now though, air cooling works well enough and quiet enough for my HTPC needs.
Air cooling blows. ;):)
The problem I have, it once you get on a serious watercooling binge, it tends to spiral out of control and the cost spirals upwards...
Agree. There are times I question why I'm fitting a waterblock to a 220 pound GPU when it could all go wrong. But once it's fitted I'm glad I did.
I have fitted full cover waterblocks to some GPU's and also the GPU only type cooler. Removing the air cooler on a GPU is very easy. The screws used to secure it are easy to undo and the heatsink slides off easily. If it's a full cover waterblock then it will come with mosfet heat pads and you apply thermal paste to the GPU and GDDR. Whilst it's great to have a full cover waterblock that's chilling all of the GPU parts, they have become too expensive. I don't want to pay £75 to £100 on top of the cost of my GPU (in this case 2 x 560Ti) for liquid cooling.
The much better option is a universal VGA waterblock. I was able to buy 2 x EK VGA waterblocks with 560 adapter plates for less than the cost of 1 x full cover block. In the case of the 560Ti, the heatpipe it comes with only cools the GPU. The ram and mosfets are not cooled by the heatpipe so this means the 560Ti is absolutely perfect for universal VGA waterblock.
It was a simple job removing the MSI Twin Frozr heatpipes and then fitting the EK waterblocks. I actually did buy some low profile GDDR heatsinks that were approx £5 per set of 10 or something. The mosfets on the 560Ti have no heatsinks. I have a 120mm fan hanging off the top 560 which blows air from the side over the mosfets of both graphics cards. The fan is a low noise (silent) one.
Having GPU temps from from 80c down to 30c in game and with hardly any noise is well worth the effort. The universal VGA blocks cost from £35 each.
When the GPU is at max speed, I cant even hear it because the blasts from blowing up buildings within my game are way louder.
I think that goes for everything, doesn't it? ;)
I'm overkill watercooling a 1090T with a triple radiator at the minute; it wasn't so much I wanted it watercooled, as I wanted to prove that I could fit a triple radiator into the roof of an Antec P180 and still have room for all the rest of the system I wanted in there.
It's got SLI GTX470s running in it at the minute, and while I want to watercool them, I'd want to put another radiator in there to do so, and right now I can't be faffed.
The things I really do want to watercool are my 2GB GTX460s in my Surround rig; the fans on them are pretty poor - not loud, just not great - but equally I want to see if EVGA get those 2.5GB GTX570s to the UK for a half-reasonable price soon, because I'll probably swap out the 460s in preference to them. So I don't want to buy GTX460 blocks only to replace the cards in a few weeks/months.
A universal VGA waterblock costs £35+ and can be used on both Nvidia and ATI.
Filling and draining? To plumb in another waterblock? Only if you're a muppet. If you know what you're doing then you have inexpensive shutoff taps so you can stop the flow at key points. When I plumbed in my 2 x 560 waterblocks, I didn't need to drain anything. I shut the taps to off position and disconnected the relevant tube sections so I could plumb in the new blocks. Easy.
Flow taps on ebay for a few pounds each.
Once I was water cooled I much preferred the fact the my PC had one noise level it didn't rev up or slow down under load like running two gpus on air, now I remain watercooled as I have the kit already, its doesn't cost me much to stay that way, whether I need it or not, a GPU running at 40degC under load rather than 90degC under load has to be beneficial from a reliability point of view.
It was a bonus that the water allowed me to extract more performance from my parts and keep temps in check.
Adding a water cooled heatsink to a cheap GPU now i have the kit in place won't set you back much more than buying a higher specced air cooled variant of the GPU you are looking at but you are much more likely to get better clocks out of the cheapo WC'ed GPU than the highend aircooled GPU, so once you've gone to water there is not much point turning back.
Enough has already been said here to demonstrate why Watercooling is important. I do love the article cause it provokes thought.
Air cooling has one disadvantage and that is DUST. If you dont clean your fan assemblies out regularly, your system performance will diminish. Watercooling is great because you can get low-cfm fans that do a great job.
.................but apart from anything else, watercooling rocks
This. One of the main reasons I went back to air.
Every component you buy comes with an air cooler, and seeing as I'm a little strapped for case 360 days of the year I couldn't keep updating my rig with new blocks/rads etc. So I gave up on it. Although saying that, I'd love to get a nice beastly case and watercool everything.
Water blocks and heat spreading design could be a matter of future progress. Pump speed and capacity of moving the liquid could be also but these are not of such great importance on performance increase, IMO.
In general, development of cooling performance will follow designed TDP of CPU, GPU etc.
A CPU/GPU etc etc will generate a certain amount of heat under load. With air cooling, that heat gets pushed out the tower via a fairly direct method. With water, surely it gets pushed to the reservoir...and then dumped in to the air from there.
So how does it result in a cooler room? Mainly interested as my room goes up about 5-6 degrees C after a gaming session, which simply isn't pleasant...so watercooling may solve this.
Agree. Noise and heat are my greatest cons with PCs. For me it was like you said - I admired the WC, reading about it for many years and one day it was decided - I purchased the WC system to be put together. It was very easy to made it with so many tutorials out there.
I have it for three years with few months without it when I get from s. 775 to 1156 and it is great thing. I always try to improve it or mode it. It's fun if you know what are you doing.
Good luck
You can't get more direct than liquid cooling. Liquid absorbs the heat and carries it very directly to the radiator which removes it (ironically with air). Most liquid cooling systems dump the air out the back or top of the computer case depending on where the radiator is located. On my setup the radiator sits by open window sucking in fresh air which means the rad never breathes in recirculated air.
Even with a conventional water setup where the rad dumps the air into the room you will still get lower temps especially if the room is well ventilated.
On a completely different note: I once drilled a hole through the middle of my water-block and added a rubber gasket around it. Fitted to CPU without thermal paste it sprayed the coolant directly onto the CPU heat-spreader.
It doesn't make any difference - the heat can't disappear. But you could always make a ventilation channel to make the way for a hot air from the radiator fans out of the room. This is if you don't have the AC. If you have it, doesn't matter.
I've thought about this loads, did it actually work?
Go for used parts rather than a new one for CPUs and mobos. Look for used VGAs with water blocks and not for the newest. This is a best buy method. If you are not happy with performance - get the one more VGA for SLI or Crossfire etc. Never buy the new things if possible.
Good luck.
It did work. The rubber stopped water leaking around the cpu and I was able to overclock the CPU that bit higher. It was back on one of the pentium CPU's I think. It was a 2.4ghz Pentium whatever and I used to overclock it to 3.1 but I was able to go higher but it was so long ago. My favourite cooling was peltier though. I really miss the days of chilling a CPU with liquid and thermoelectric plate. I used to run my P4 down to about -7c. I was able to overclock higher and with less voltage. Initially I started with a 130w peltier and eventually to a 274w and that is when it got out of hand because the energy consumption was crazy.
I went liquid cooled to cut down on the noise because my tower is on my desk about 2 feet from me and noise was getting annoying.
However after some careful cable tidying, UV coolant and fancy lighting it's more about aesthetics now.
So I get a nice silent system that looks really nice and still has a bit of a WOW factor from friends who don't understand the idea of liquid cooling.
No changing fluids for a year or so - fluids don't disappear. Just cleaning dust every few months more or less.
Stock is good for most of the people but there are PC enthusiasts also :)
One can hear the music but with appropriate HiFi headphones it could be a new world.
Dust and noise - I want my PC as quiet as possible, and low maintenance - high air flow = higher dust levels, or more frequent cleaning of filters.
DIY v Shop bought - how easy is it to buy a Corsair all in one! Don't have to worry about anything, leaks, kinks, bleeding, corrosion... Even modern cases are designed to house a 240 rad for the 5% of users who will ever water cool - it's too easy now and the cost of entry level is too low to ignore.
Don't have to worry about those things when u choose separate water parts either. To start with we no longer use water. We use vegetable based electrically inert coolant. Secondly kinks don't happen with most modern tubing. I use 12mm ID and it's very soft and flexible. Thick walled. If any tube is in danger of folding then buy some anti-kink coils. Hardly expensive and they look good in UV light.
Leaks? Ummm, no. Not unless you don't know what you're doing. I tend to prefer hose barbs with nylon hose clips. Very secure. I use plumber tape around nozzles. Even with push fit you have a secure system. Corrosion? How? Why? Not using water any more remember?
The 2 piece coolers have made cooling cheaper and easier for many people though. For me the downside is that you can't add extra blocks. I don't want a system limited to CPU liquid cooling. I advised my friends some years ago to go for XSPC kits rather than any 2 piece systems. They're still using their kits today but have expanded them somewhat.
I prefer large diamter 12mm (garden hose size) tubing.
maybe you missed the big piece about EK waterblocks: http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2011/06/13/ek-halts-production-of-nickel-plated-waterb/1
The only weak link for me is the graphics card, but that only becomes audible when it's being pushed in a game, and in those situations I have my sound turned up anyway so I rarely even notice it.
So for me the only thing I would want to water cool would be my GPU and that would just be if I had money to burn. Although my GPU is an HD 5870 which is surprisingly quiet. I think if I end up upgrading to one of the top end nVidia cards at some point, I would probably be more keen on water cooling that to keep it quiet.
By turning the fans up and fiddling with the overclocking options, 4.5+Ghz wouldn't be too hard. Don't think I'll bother though.
Noise? Well 129mm fans are not really noisy! The most noise comes from my 4870 when I play Wittcher 2. Happy with it.
Water FTW IMHO. It's 24/7 stable - temperature changes in components occur gradually - an external radiator _CANNOT_ be beaten in the summer months (exhaust waste heat to the outside air directly - no 40C bedrooms :-) ). I like not having blue screens from OC'd systems in the summer months. :-)
Performance GPU's really benefit from watercooling as the article states.
Watercooling is more fun - aircooling is so mundane...
I read a bit about it. I don't think I will be worrying just yet.
:)
Totally agree. I was bored for the few months I went back to air cooling.
You can mod a liquid cooling system in so many ways also. I've just recently noticed pink tubing. Also may consider an in-line water chiller sometime.
Well that's the thing isn't it... Your CPU fans may be quiet but your 4870 not so much. I have a coolermaster cosmos. The one with the soundproof side panels. I've replaced one side panel with a windowed version but it's still a pretty quiet case. No amount of soundproofing could quieten those MSI 560's when I had them on air.
I don't want a lot of noise and heat when I play games.
But if I had to consider doing it all over again I would probably not go through all the trouble.
I have been very surprised at how cool Sandy Bridge architecture is. And thus i have been puzzling over the very issue, are Water cooling days numbered.
And i have come up with this. The question now is more like, How do you use your PC ?
Some people may do a little stress test in Prime, and run a game, let me tell you, Games do not push a CPU to 100 % load and keep it there for hours on end.
So if you like me and do some serious graphic rendering, yes i`m keeping my PC`s watercooled so that after 6 hours burning all cores at 100 % loaded and overclocked, they will still be okay.
you need to get a controller though.. adjust all the fans and have some good airflow into and out the case.. aftermarket coolers are a must- and what I like to do is run a duct to the graphics card and spot cool anything that needs it
true it's not as quiet as water, but you can get some good overclocks without crazy noise and no worries when your not there.. multiple fans in a system builds redundancy
It's a hobby itself, seperating average from serious, and is as much about aesthetics as functionality.
Take a water system and instead of circulating liquid, circulate cooled air through the tubes. Then you have the nice aesthetics of liquid cooling with the simplicity of air. Anyone got an air pump laying around?
Wow yeah I'm sure it was a bit of a nightmare getting pc water cooling bits 10 years ago, I tried about 4 or 5 years ago & was a bit limited then even, well compared to now anyway :D I'm sure it has a bright future still as like you said it can look cool :D & especially with intels beefy parts that should be out this year, could well be a return to the need for more adequate cooling.
Tried it once & it gave slightly better temps took up heaps of case space costs far more than air cooling & had me nervous it would leak at some point so dismantled it all & sold parts & stayed with air since .
And this 2500k is rolling on sweet on air at 4.5ghz & I'm sure I could tune it a bit higher with safe temps :) if chips keep being made better & produce less heat then it will end up being purely an aesthetic thing unless you live somewhere where it's rather warm all year round or most of the year.
If ever I'd have gone back to trying it out it would have been if I'd have got a gtx 480 as the stock cooler on that was awful & barely did it's thing, the 580 seems to keep temps fine & isn't noisy even when having a heavy gaming session :).
I might do water cooling some time in the future but unless theres a real need to then I'll leave it alone :).
So... any chance of a roundup of WC gear, either in CPC or here? Last full WC feature was in the June 2008 issue.
I'd love a definitive article on the maths involved, for example what flow rate, head pressure and radiator size chip x rated at y TDP requires to maintain a sensible temperature, etc. I appreciate something like this would probably be pretty difficult to write due to subjective differences in radiators, coolant and block performance.
I guess the team may not feel this worthwhile, but thought I'd mention it anyway.
The main advantage of water over air is the ability to absorb heat. Water can absorb about 4 times as much heat as ambient air at the same temperature.
If you could find an air with the same ability to absorb heat like water/liquid, your idea would be pretty cool.
Since I don't overclock, water-cooling turned out to be a non-starter for me. I just did some better cable management to enable more efficient air flow, which allowed me to slow down my existing fans to an acceptable sound level.
Many motherboards have limited fan headers that can be speed controlled so you need to wire multiple fans to a single header. This is ok though since most motherboards can deliever 1200ma per header.
I make my own fan adaptors so I can fit maybe 4 fans per header.
Water is about 25 times better than air at conducting heat.
I agree that the cool factor is one of the impellers to this cooling solution, there's an infinity of water solutions when compared to air cooling which you can do so much with.
I say water cooling will become more mainstream and aircooling will be left for OEM companies.
In the end, Watercooling simply because I can
Yes but air cooling fans won't care about that. I am gonna start selling liquid-less water kits on ebay right away.
Also dont the rads nee to be toped up regularly??? Or is that jsut a misconception??
Nowadays with all this professional stuff sold it's way easier to watercool your rig, but on the other hand it get's less and less interesting to watercool the equipment actually, if you're not after benchmark highscores. Modern CPUs and GPUs are powerful enough at their factory clocks for 99% of the people outthere, so the reason left to watercool a PC would be noise for for the majority of people, not overclocking.
Kits like the Corsair H50/60/70/80/100 opens up watercooling for even those, who don't want to break their warranty or aren't confident enough to install a loop on their own. The thing that's missing is watercooling-kits like this for the GPUs, as they're actual problem of modern rigs.
Nevertheless, I think that watercooling isn't all that interesting anymore, as hardware get's more energy-efficient and doesn't require that powerful cooling anymore. Reasonable hardware like in my rig can be easily cooled by air and it can even be done silently with good air-coolers and fans.
So if you're not after a system ment for benchmarking, playing games at max settings on a 30" panel or whatever, there's absolutely no need for watercooling anymore these days.
4870X2 + Watercooling = Awesome
I have had it also, now I am running GTX470 with EK block. At 31°C in the room I have only around 55 max at GPU under load and no noise at all :)
Then you should read the tutorials and watch how it's made on youtube. I've learned from these and nobody showed me live and succeeded. You shuld go slowly for the 1st time. First make the plan to place the system to your existing case, put it on the paper, buy a water cooling kit if you like.
Custom parts are always better so pick the parts according information around the web. The most general advice would be to connect the pump after the reservoir - it is a must. Secure the connections at the barbs with plastic strips or use the compression fittings. Use 3/8" or 1/2" tubes and measure before cutting etc.
Good luck
There are links to tutorials on water-cooling in the 'Useful Links' thread in the Hardware section. Several of them, with detailed information. Read them well, young Padwan, so you too may achieve the exalted state of water cooling enlightenment.
I use 12mm ID hose and hose barbs. I wrap some plumbers tape around the hose barbs before pushing the hose on, then the hose is secured with a plastic hose clip (you can use metal screw ones but the plastic ones are easier these days). I often buy from specialtech.co.uk but sometimes from other places like chilledpc or watercooling-uk.
When buying VGA blocks make sure it will fit your GPU. Although a universal VGA block fits most GPUs, sometimes an adapter plate is needed. This is the case with the EK VGA blocks I bought for the 560Ti. EK told me I needed a 460 adapter plate. This is because 460 and 560Ti use the same board design.
Fortunately with the 560Ti GPU you don't need heatsinks on the mosfets. You can optionally fit little ramsinks on the GDDR but it's not essential. You will need to have a fan blowing air over the GPU but it can be a low speed silent one (I use a 120).
I use Thermochill EC6 coolant. Electrically inert so no need to worry about leaks. Leaks only happen when you get careless. If you make sure all the connections are secure you will be fine. I would avoid the Feser UV coolant if I were you. Despite what Feser say, it will fry your components if it leaks.
watercooling is awesome and id love to try it sometime, but i cant see the point right now (or ever).
I recently bought a 2TB Samsung F4 internal and have been really pleased to find it doesn't vibrate at all even with regular mounting.
All my fans are speed controlled via the motherboard and Speedfan software.
To be honest, I have not noticed enough of a difference with WC to make me want to use it again 24/7.
I love the looks of a decent watercooled loop - you just can't get that with air.
However, with decent case fans, a Gainward Phantom GTX570 and a Coolermaster V10 (replaced fans) - my system is pretty much silent for day to day use (even with an i7 2600k o/c'd to 4.5GHz). When gaming, the fan noise increases, but I can't hear it over the explosions, and even my old loop made a similar noise level.
If I get a chunk of money I can spend on the PC, then I might consider a nice loop, but until then, it's good ol air I am afraid...
The difference is with my liquid setup, the PC is near silent and by that I mean I currently have an 80mm fan sitting on top of an external usb hard disk to cool it. The 80mm fan is not at full speed, is near silent but still makes more noise than my pc. My triple rad fans idle at 30% whilst case fans idle at 50%.
Your CPU is more efficient and cooler running than mine though and uses less power at 4.5ghz than mine does at 4! In fact I got a belgian friend to measure his i7 2600k at 4.5ghz full load and it too was using far less power than my 1st generation i7 at 4ghz with speedstep enabled.
My dream has always been to have a totally passive cooled liquid cooling system. I'm pretty close to that now since my reservoir is the 500mm heatsink tube. If I ever added a second one of those I could simply stop the rad fans rotating.
I guess my liquid system would show a greater difference than a standard liquid setup because the rad sucks in fresh outside air.
I've done a lot of TEC cooling in the past on P4 up to 274 watts but they were liquid cooled. Air cooled TECS are generally a no-no but I guess if it's a low powered one. The problem is the TEC coolers generally show worse performance than the top air coolers like the Noctua. It's bad enough trying to remove the heat from a CPU let alone a HOT TEC as well.
What are your idle and full load cpu temps with the TEC cooler?
I won't be able to replace my m/b, CPU & RAM for a couple of years at least so the water cooling has helped a lot (especially in the current hot weather).
I'm running my 2500k on the stock intel cooler, its stable at 4.5ghz and even under load its not too bad.
"Air cooling works just as well as watercooling, give or take a bit of noise and temp. " - Give or take a lot of noise and temp actually. I would agree that the difference between the best air versus a standard water setup are relatively small.
If you have the inclination to build a more extreme liquid system then the difference in performance can be significant. I'm cooling 2 x 560Ti which are factory overclocked to 880mhz, 4ghz i7 and these parts are cooled silently without heating the room. I don't like how an air system or a bog standard liquid system dumps the waste heat into the room.
Liquid cooling isn't something that has to be all at once. I used to buy some of my parts used on ebay. Used hard disk water block, discounted cpu block, water pump, rad etc. My water pump is a very powerful EK 4.0 which happens to be very inexpensive. The great thing about liquid is that as with PC hardware, you can change parts one at a time. Take my waterblock for example, it was a socket 775. When I changed to socket 1156, I bought an EVGA FTW 657 motherboard which also has 775 mounting holes and thus I didn't have to buy a new CPU block. A year later I upgraded the CPU block to a Swiftech Apogee XT v2. It came with 1156 and 1366 mounting holes and Swiftech also posted me a 775 adaptor for it as well. Some waterblock makers will release new adaptor plates so you don't have to buy a whole new waterblock.
My VGA waterblocks are universal and cost £35 each.
Liquid cooling done right surpasses the best air cooler by a significant margin. When I run Bc2 in SLI, I can open the side of my case and it's no longer hot. It's cool. When the 560's were air cooled the noise was awful and the PC was throwing out a lot of heat. That is not the kind of PC I want. Liquid cooling allows me to choose exactly where I dump the waste heat.
I found when I was watercooling that:
1. it was a bit of a money pit - as I kept dabbling
2. I kept telling myself it was better than air, but when I switched back, it wasn't as much as I had thought.
In reality, surely if the temps are under their maximum then all is OK? My CPU hits 70c ish, if I push the volts a little higher and go to 5GHz, the temps reach 85c - still under tjMax, but close enough for me to back down to 4.5GHz (or 4.6GHz as I am at now).
I am all for watercooling, but don't knock air, unless you re-try it...
I have 6 Scythe S-Flex E fans as case fans, which generate very little noise at 700rpm.
I was using 2 S-Flex fans to replace the fans in the Coolermaster, but I have switched back to the stock fans to make use of the PWM controller on the Sabertooth P67. I have just bought two Scythe PWM fans to go back in as the Coolermaster fans do sound quite loud - especially compared to the Scythes.
As for CPU temps - idle is about 35c and load is about 70c. (75c with the stock coolermaster fans back in).
GPU temps - idle is about 37c and load is about 87c - at which point the GPU fans have only just reached 100%.
These temps are both with a room temp of 23c.
GPU temp at load is shocking but exactly as expected with air. If the GPU fan is quiet then it's not too bad though. I like my GPU temps of 35c or less full load. In winter my 560's will be 24c or less full load and maybe 18c idle.
need? no. Want? yes.
Also 85c is heat I'd much rather dump outside than into the room.
My impressions match alot of what has been said with spiralling costs, frustrations with fittings and modifcations to the case to get all the kit attached.
It's cost me about £1000 for the water cooled parts and alot for the hydrocoppers.
I've had to make numerous additional orders after discovering more parts are needed and had to wait countless weeks for stock or imports!.
End result of all this; it has fantastic temps, runs nice and quiet and looks awesome.
But more than anything after the frustration, cost and stress of building it I really feel I've achieved something and it feels very unique to me that this really is my pc designed to meet my exact requirements and technically is an impressive feat that really does feel rewarding.
Downside is now I want to refine it with the lessons learn't and I see more elegant designs in the future :p
I bought a whole load of new fittings and thicker tubing, but then struggled to get it all nicely fitted in the case. In the end I threw my toys out of the pram and swapped back to air. I quickly advertised all my WC bits for sale, and they went pretty quickly - if I hadn't have sold them all I would have tried again and again.
Poking around in the case wasn't doing my neck any good, and I was getting pretty short tempered with it too!
I do still fancy having a go again, but it would be purely as a hobby, and not for lower temps - as they are ok for me now.
wussies xD
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Just a quick update on the V10 - I have just run a load test with the motherboard fan settings set to standard rather than the usual silent setting, and the temps were down to around 68c, with them on the turbo setting, they temps are down to 65c - but of course it is noiser than I usually have. Hopefully this will quieten down with the Scythe SlipStream PWM fans fitted (110CFM compared to 90CFM of the Coolermasters).
That's the advantage of my liquid setup, I don't even try to fit everything inside. I don't need everything squished together inside my pc and I don't want the water rad sucking in heated case air and dumping it into the room. Thus my water pump, reservoir and rad are all remotely located away from the pc by the open window. I have 12mm ID tubing but there is no tight squeeze because I just have 4 waterblocks in there and the big parts are located outside.
One of my friends also followed my setup while another opted for radiator attached to the top of his PC case on the outside.
I don't need to move the PC around so it doesn't matter having the parts several meters away from the case. I would rather sacrifice looks for extreme performance and this setup kills any other straight liquid cooling except for those people who mount their radiator on the outside of the house (I would love to).
I don't think you doing it right if your feet are wet:)
;)
My idle GPU temps were 26 and 27c.
I stopped the 3 x radiator fans (by adjusting their speed down to zero with Speedfan). I ran Kombuster to load one GPU to 88% and noted the temperature increase. After 30 minutes GPU 1 (the one that was being loaded) had increased to a shocking 48c whilst the idle GPU (on same liquid loop) had increased to 43c. CPU cores were between 57 & 60c.
I took my eyes off the PC to measure then radiator and reservoir temps (41c) and the next thing I see the PC had shut itself off within 5 seconds. This is a safety feature I added after my cat disconnected my external water pump some months ago causing the CPU temp to rise to 80c. If the CPU or GPU temps go beyond a certain level then Speedfan is set to start Superfast shutdown. Speedfan shutdown the PC because the GPU temp had reached 48c. Test ended abruptly.
Even with the 3 radiator fans disabled, the system is still cooled by the passive heatsink reservoir.
Ordinarily the rad fans idle at 30% and increase up to 50% speed for a game or other heavy loaded.
I am very tempted to spend some hard earned on another loop - just to compare again, but this time, with a Sandy Bridge CPU instead of the AMD 1090T I used before.
One benefit of water cooling, is the parts do seem to keep quite a lot of their value, and don't depreciate too much.
Your computer can be the a decorative piece to your room. You can bask in its awesome UV glow and gloat all over your friends :)
Apart from that, the noise reduction is considerable. Even though custom fans on graphics cards these days are extremely well made and provide ample heat dissipation, the noise is still subpar compared to what you get with water.
Its not that risky. A leak doesn't instantly fry your computer, a lot of the time the water just washes over the graphics card doing no harm. But leaks are easy to guard against if you just take a little extra precaution.
What would be the minimum kit needed to get better temps (as in worth spending money on to get to)?
I got out of watercooling. by my calculations it costs about $200 to get into a watercooling setup. At that price I can spend an extra $100 on my cpu and gpu each and just stay near stock frequencies.
I got a "quite" case. It would almost be fun to watercool again, but I remember the headaches and maintenance being a big issue. Nowadays my case hides under a desk so looks inside the case mean nothing to me.
I miss the eerily silent systems, but the system only makes noise when gaming and the volume is up or the headphones are on.
Don't miss having to clean nasty algea out of loops and tracking down leaks. Or having to plumb systems
Liquid cooling done wrong.
Who uses straight water? I use Thermochill EC6 which is a vegetable product. No algae, no maintenance. Leaks don't occur at random. They occur after incorrect fitting generally.
" but I remember the headaches and maintenance being a big issue. " - What maintenance? The coolant is filled once a year and there is no algae removal because algae form when you use water and we don't use that any more. I guess things were different in your day grandpa :)
Agreed - my only maintenance was when I bought something new to try in the loop...
There is more maintenance than air though, just not as much as some people think.
Water cooling has come a long way. Just the number of specialist fittings, pumps, control hardware, reservoir and radiator options have skyrocketed. Just look at Aqua-Computer's new modular radiator system (which allows you to build a radiator of pretty much any size, with integrated pump and reservoir) to have your mind blown.
Air cooling has made a lot of progress in the last five years, but water cooling is going to catch up...
Plus I got an uncle who's a mechanical CNC calibrator. He's a genius with tools.
I did full watercooling years ago when there was no quiet air cooling alternative. I used Festo pneumatic tube and fittings for it, because it was very convenient to plug in and unplug (just push the tube in the fitting, or pull a ring on the fitting to release the tube), and because I thought "if it doesn't let pressurized air escape, it sure won't leak water". It was expensive and maybe not the most beautiful solution, but it worked. I wouldn't ever want to go back there these days though. Imo it's not worth the effort and the money any more.
It was quite warm yesterday, and my CPU maxed out at 67 degrees after two hours of Prime95 at 4GHz (it was hitting 80+ on air). The hottest GPU hit 63 degrees and levelled out after around 30 minutes of Furmark (high 70's in less than 5 minutes on air). The GPU and CPU have individual loops, each with a 240mm radiator - two fans on the GPU rad and four (push/pull) on the CPU rad.
Yes, it is an expensive hobby, but it isn't without it's practical benefits.
* Reversing the fans so the rads pull air in and the other two 120s exhaust gives me marginally better CPU & GPU temps, but at the expense of a much warmer ambient chassis temperature.
Why are your GPU temps so high on liquid? Are your rads sucking in heated case air and dumping it into the room? My 2 x 560's are on just one loop with CPU and hard disk. Highest they will reach at full load is about 38c with the 3 rad fans at 55%.
After 30 minutes there was a 1 degree rise in coolant temps and the GPU temps had increased to 41 & 42c. Fan speed varied between 65 and 100% according to the speedfan profile I created (I sometimes revise my fan speed profile). Noise level was 38 to 39db at a distance of 14 inches from PC.
I currently have 3 fans on the rad sucking in air but I will add another 3 later. Before I fitted the EK VGA blocks on the 560Ti's their full load temps were 80c and rising and the noise level was awful.
http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/7436/18072011121434.jpg
560 GPUs run cooler than those in the 295 anyway.
That is one seriously nice case for £148. I don't mind that kind of price so much. I don't like the cases priced £250 upwards though.
Before gaming and watching movies was a terrible act of noise.
Look at radiators like Coolgate, they even get more silent optimized, so that you can enjoy your system sounds out of the boxes, not out of the system :D
I'm also no overclocker, I indeed could do this, cause my highest CPU temp was 30°C and highest graphic Temp 50°C, but I'm just enjoying the silence and I hope along with these temps my hardware lives a long life.
Along with the cool look watercooling gives and the low noise, I think it makes more sense, to setup more systems with integrated watercooling solutions
I agree you can get a very quiet watercooling setup though.
To give you some idea, SilentPCReview use around 18db as their idea of silent.
This is interesting. So back when I was chilling my old Pentium 4 to zero C, it wasn't just my imagination that windows felt faster and smoother, it actually was. Decreased resistance and leakage.
Plus, I swear I used to hear a dripping sound ALL the time with watercooling even though it never leaked.
LOL at your dripping.
I guess you have better GPU air cooler than me then because I bought the MSI bullshit (also backed up by review sites) saying the MSI 560Ti Twin Frozr II was quiet and cool. I only chose the MSI because my original planned purchase (Gigabyte Super OC2) was in such short supply. So I now have 2 of the MSI and even one is noisy as **** on air and hotter than my friend's Gigabyte 560Ti Super.
They are very hit and miss with overclocking. One of the MSI goes over 1ghz (stock is 880mhz for these ones) while the other can't even manage 925mhz. Fecking pathetic. At least the little *******s are silent and cool now on liquid.
Eh? Side fan?
I have just built a PC for my GF and I chose an inexpensive case from ebuyer. £29 and I am shocked how good it is. It has CPU cutout, screwless quick fit hard disk & 5/14 bays, bottom PSU, front LED 120 fan directly cooling any hard disks, space for rear 120 fan, space for 2 x 120 side fans as well as space for 120 top fan. The finish is black steel (black inside and out). Absolutely fantastic for the price. Oh it also has 2 holes at the rear for liquid cooling.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/172779
Funny you should mention the MSI 560Ti Twin Frozr II/OC though, I was *just* about to pull the trigger on buying two of them to replace my 460s last week and didn't after reading about possible reliability issues. But every review I saw said the cooler was top-notch - both quiet and cool as you mentioned. Surprised to hear that wasn't the case with your cards, I wonder if there was some sloppy work done mounting the stock cooler to the card? Have you thought about re-mounting one of them to see if it makes any difference?
I suspect the MSI fan and cooler to be inferior compared to the gigabyte. My Gigabyte 260 super OC had a very quiet fan and my Belgian friend says the same about his Giga 560ti. I can't see myself re-fitting now though because I don't want to disturb the liquid cooling.
I wonder if the thermal paste was crap on the 2 x MSI I have? Even so the fans were very noisy. On my giga 260 super the fan had a silent motor (all you could hear was air noise at high speed). The MSI 560 fans produce a whine like a vacuum cleaner at mid to high speed.
If you do go for 560Ti's I would recommend you stick with Gigabyte. Go for the super overclocks. One of my 560 reaches past 1ghz and the other wont go past 925mhz on liquid which is pathetic.
Full cover blocks handle this easily, the XSPC block for the 590 has a cutout for the cap in the middle and everything...