Just A Personal Question About Liquid Cooling

[bg8780]

Im running all air cooling right now and ive been very happy with it. With the build of my next rig im going to go liquid cooling. (which probably wont be for a year or 2)

 

Just wondering how it is maintaining a liquid setup and as well as its durability and pros/cons

 

Such as:

Procedure on cleaning the loop and purging that such thing

Moving around (LAN parties and stuff)

Adding new parts (having to take apart the whole circuit to add a new piece of hardware)

All around additional cost compared to air cooling (cost of WB compared to regular high end heatsinks such as the TRUE) also cooling GFX cards probably two at the most.

 

This new building will obviously consist of a X58 chipset so i dont expect you guys to show me parts for it cuz i dont even beleive many exist as of now.

 

I am just inquiring about and overall setup cost, maintenance and procedure so i know what im getting myself into when the time comes. Also an honest opinion whether or not is a straight pain in the . for the difference in temps compared to a top-end air set-up

 

Thanks so much guys!

[My_Inner_Fred]

I heard that water cooling is overrated...

A decent water cooling system would be around $200.

 

For example if i got my E7200 to 3.6Ghz on air cooling, could probably get 4.0Ghz and up with water cooling.

correct me if I'm wrong.

[Queenz]

Let me sum it up for you. Watercooling is really worth it, but only if you plan on putting a descent amount of money into it. Expect to pay atleast $200 or more on parts. Kits are trash, and custom setups are the best. Compared to high end air, watercooling is alot better when the right parts are put together. A watercooling setup is not hard to maintain at all!! As long as you use the right liquid in the first place don't expect to have algae or anything. Most of the time plain distilled water, and some type of biocide is what will give you the best results without the worry of sludge, micro organisms, and other filthy bacteria in the loop. Let's say you want to add another block in the loop or take out the parts and stuff, you will need to drain the loop. It's not hard if you do it the right way, and most of the time the easiest way to drain a setup is through the fillport. I wouldn't recommend water to first timers cause if done the wrong way you can screw your stuff up like if you have a leak all over your components. Remember water and electricity don't mix lol. There are always important steps to doing a setup like leak testing, purging, and some other things. But in the end it's all worth it. Looks and performance are always awesome! Remember if you plan to cheap out on descent watercooling parts you might as well stick with high end air then, if not then I say go for it man :thumbs-up:

[bg8780]

I never go for the cheap stuff. If i cant afford the best i will put mroe hours in until i can. IMO the people that say "brand doesnt matter" (a lot of my friends actually) i believe are complete idiots. In this world and especially the computer industry you get what you pay for. So if i go water cooling i will spend as much as it takes to get the best setup as possible. Other than that i will just need the know-how as for setting it up and maintenance.

 

Beautiful car BTW ive always been the fan of the g35 then they came out with the g37s and i almost . myself lol

 

Also how is that Core i7 treating you?

Edited November 24, 2008 by bg8780

[Queenz]

I never go for the cheap stuff. If i cant afford the best i will put mroe hours in until i can. IMO the people that say "brand doesnt matter" (a lot of my friends actually) i believe are complete idiots. In this world and especially the computer industry you get what you pay for. So if i go water cooling i will spend as much as it takes to get the best setup as possible. Other than that i will just need the know-how as for setting it up and maintenance.

 

 

I told you how the maintenance would be already

[bg8780]

I told you how the maintenance would be already

 

 

lol i know that, but i think you would agree it would take more research then just what you have described. I dont want to jump into something like Liquid cooling with out doing more research

[ccokeman]

I run two rigs water cooled and really have had not one issue. One is going on 5 months of up time and the other 2 months. Distilled with zerex racing antifreeze and nothing else. No algae no buildup,no leaks

[RA1D]

Im running all air cooling right now and ive been very happy with it. With the build of my next rig im going to go liquid cooling. (which probably wont be for a year or 2)

 

Just wondering how it is maintaining a liquid setup and as well as its durability and pros/cons

 

Such as:

Procedure on cleaning the loop and purging that such thing

Moving around (LAN parties and stuff)

Adding new parts (having to take apart the whole circuit to add a new piece of hardware)

All around additional cost compared to air cooling (cost of WB compared to regular high end heatsinks such as the TRUE) also cooling GFX cards probably two at the most.

 

This new building will obviously consist of a X58 chipset so i dont expect you guys to show me parts for it cuz i dont even beleive many exist as of now.

 

I am just inquiring about and overall setup cost, maintenance and procedure so i know what im getting myself into when the time comes. Also an honest opinion whether or not is a straight pain in the . for the difference in temps compared to a top-end air set-up

 

Thanks so much guys!

 

I would suggest checking out some liquid cooling build logs on various forums. They can be a good source of the type of information you are looking for and will also give you an idea of how others have set up their loops. Making the jump to liquid cooling can be scary at first and the initial cost to get started is not cheap. But the good part is that you should be able to use the same pump/res/rad for years to come while only having to change out the cpu blocks mounting bracket when new socket types come out. GPU blocks usually need to be updated when you upgrade videocards though.

 

Watercooling loops can be tedious to set up and maintain but that all really depends on what you consider a pain. I enjoy tinkering with my system but if you want easy and simple, stay with air. My point is that nobody can really answer your last question for you. The time and money spent on liquid cooling is worth it for some but not all users.

Edited November 24, 2008 by RA1D

[NoSnipeLimit]

Water cooling is a lot of fun to build

Specially if you get the best there is and everything works, I've bought crap and i've bought the best.

And the crap was crap, and the best was the best

 

But considering that the crap one I bought cost me only $20. and the expensive one was around $200,

the crap one actually didn't do all that bad, but it wasn't beter than just plain air cooling, but was quieter.

 

The expensive one used a dc to ac converter if i remember correctly but that gave in and i replaced it

with a transformer of the correct volts and that was fine. Was an eheim 1200 or something, also very quiet.

 

The performance on the expensive one was good, better than any aircooling. clocking was obviouslly better.

All and all i've not had any problems as a result of water cooling, maintaining the system isn't a job.

 

The one time in i think few years i had to add water, was kind of easy to notice, because the temperatures

rose and you could hear the pump moaning ok so this is probably not the best way to maintain but just goes

to show you Same thing happens with fans though.

 

Even when i did manage to get watercooling liquid onto the components, (i'm clumsy) simply drying it off with toilet

paper worked fine. Oh and when addeding coolent i also didn't stop the system and accidently spilled some on my gfxcard

didnt do much harm though, just turned it off and cleaned it. and was good to go

 

But i figure it's cause the pcb has a layer or something over to protect against shorts and stuff

 

Also it's not out of per portion big, fits neatly in my case. And have not problems going to lans.

Sometimes a few air bubbles, but the system works that out very quickly.

[bg8780]

Thanks for all the input guys! Im definitely gonna look into liquid cooling more. Seems to be worth it and a lot of fun to build and tinker with