Widescreen Gaming Forum

I know nothing about watercooling for computers and was wondering if it's worth it.
-Is is a lot more silent than using fans?
-Can it cool the video card as well?
-Do cheap models work well or do i have to spring for a 300$ unit?

I know nothing about watercooling for computers and was wondering if it's worth it.
-Is is a lot more silent than using fans?
-Can it cool the video card as well?
-Do cheap models work well or do i have to spring for a 300$ unit?

1. It is only more silent than when you use fans if..... you don't use fans. There is also the issue of pump noise, but as far as I know there aren't many pumps that make that much noise. Keep in mind that if you don't use a fan on your radiator the water wont cool off that much.

2. Yes it can cool the video card as well. You can buy water blocks that fit your video card.

3. Essentially you get what you pay for. If you buy a cheap kit, you might get a little better cooling than what you got with fans. If you are willing to spend 300 bucks, don't buy a kit; just buy all the stuff separately, you will get exactly what you need and probably higher quality parts too.

Check these out...
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=PC+water+cooling+tutorial
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=202394

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EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SC ACX 2.0 3.5GB | 3 X LG Flatron 24EA53VQ in Nvidia Surround | Optoma HD20

Mobster just about answered all your questions, like with overclocking its best to properly look up this information yourself before doing anything and your better off asking on an overclockers forum you'll get more replies. You do get what you pay for, I bought a case that had an inbuilt watercooling system, it was fairly cheap but did a decent job however it had a small design flaw.

The pump and the reservoir were effectively to different parts that had just been slotted together, the result was while it would happy run normally, when it came to swapping my graphics card out I had to move it out of the way. The extra pressure caused by moving it outside of the box was enough to make the pump and reservoir pop apart socking my carpet with coolant. It also had a problem that you couldn't fix the pump/reservoir down in the case with larger graphics cards.

My computer was fine, I was lucky that most of the coolant landed on the carpet, so after the card was in everything was cleaned up and the reservoir topped up it was running fine again. I don't use that case anymore but only because I upgraded to a Core i7 system and didn't want to buy a new CPU water block, so I got a HAF instead.

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Recommend Fesser One cooling fluid (review / example of colours avaiable) as it is non-conductive, had a leak once before covering a good chunk of my mobo about 2 years ago, mobo still going strong to this day no worries.

Bit-tech review...

When handling the compound, it even felt like water...enough so that I tested the non conductive part—Warning, don't try this at home—by spraying a bit on my motherboard and a couple drops on the OCZ GeForce 8800 GTX that's on my test bench. I'm happy to report that it's all still functioning quite well, despite letting it puddle a bit. Once I shut the system off, I wiped it off to no ill effect.

You may also like to check out http://www.coolingconfigurator.com/home which is a site setup to make a virtual waterloop of all the parts you require, this is handy for newcomers as it can confirm which parts match and work together for best compatability :)

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| Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi Skt2011 | i7 4820k @4.4GHz Watercooled (Ivy Bridge-E) | Corsair Vengence 32GB @2133MHz 11-11-11-27 2T Quad-Channel (8x4GB) | AMD R9-Fury-X 4GB @1140/505MHz + EKWB Watercooled | 256GB Crucial MX200 SSD | 8x 1TB Samsung F3 SATA-II | Corsair 850W TX PSU | 3x Dell S2209W 22"wide TFT's (5760x1080res) | Logitech Z-5400 5.1ch speakers | Win7 Ultimate x64 |

watercooling is based one the concept of either quiet with little performance over fans, or high performance with noise. Like a car they require air to pass through the rad.

So one way or another, there will still be fans involved...

Well you can get loops that are fanless, although not cheap or as effective as fans of cause.

However the fans used are often 120mm instead of 80mm which are found on a lot of cases still, the 120mm can run at low speeds and thus lower noise.
The Noctura P12 fans appears to be perticuly good at this.

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| Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi Skt2011 | i7 4820k @4.4GHz Watercooled (Ivy Bridge-E) | Corsair Vengence 32GB @2133MHz 11-11-11-27 2T Quad-Channel (8x4GB) | AMD R9-Fury-X 4GB @1140/505MHz + EKWB Watercooled | 256GB Crucial MX200 SSD | 8x 1TB Samsung F3 SATA-II | Corsair 850W TX PSU | 3x Dell S2209W 22"wide TFT's (5760x1080res) | Logitech Z-5400 5.1ch speakers | Win7 Ultimate x64 |

Fans are still involved but the gist of it is you can do some passive cooling to less effect and water holds a lot more energy without increasing in heat that much so your cpu is likely to stay cooler for longer. You can also have multiple radiators that have large fins (basically a thick radiator so the air from the fans has lots of surface area to flow over thus they can flow more slowly)

By having lots of radiators with large surface areas you can make less airflow/fan necessary.

In the end all your heat has to go into the air at basically the same rate once the water eventually heats up. If you have 3 120mm fans of area diffusing heat into air via the radiator instead of 1 120mm fan you can have 1/3th the airflow per fan thus making it quieter.

If you want a reservoir you could also get one like this that will passively cool the liquid while it sits in there.
http://www.frozencpu.com/products/2235/ex-res-90/XSPC_Passive_150mm_Reservoir_-_BLACK.html#blank

Zalman also has a passive external radiator and pump all in one though I am not sure how good it works. http://www.zalman.com/ENG/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=183 It does hold a lot of fluid so it should dissipate semi well as the heat will transfer throughout the fluid.

Also another thing of note. Mixing copper and aluminum can cause galvanic corrosion if the liquid in the loop conducts and it doesn't take many ions (such as salt) to make liquid conduct. If you are mixing copper and aluminum make sure you get non conductive liquid and an anti corrosion agent. Or just avoid mixing them, so if your water blocks internals are copper make sure your reservoirs and radiators have copper tubing.