Suggestions on cooling companies?

[Fonzo]

Hey everyone, I'm new to the forums. I'm planning out my next build and I'm looking into the cooling system's right now. I was wondering if anyone knows of any good companies that market components for Phase change cooling and watercooling. If I decide to go water cooling so far the best company i've found is Koolance however I would appreciate everyone's thoughts on this. I'm budgeting for about $1000 for a cooling system so that will give you an idea of how badass I want my next build to be. Anyways hook me up with some feedback!

[Stonerboy779]

Whats the specs of your rig?

Would you like CPU, GPU and possibly mobo all under water?

Is phase change cooling a requirement?

Where are you located? Links to stores you can buy from will help?

Case, what case?

[ir_cow]

no one company is best for everything so you need to list your system specs and what you want to watercool.

 

if you got a $1000 to drop on some watercooling than i would suggest full system converge with cpu, gpu and mb waterblocks, but they probably only gonna get your to $600.

[Drdeath]

It is not that easy. You need to post the specs of what you have or what your building. For instance SandyBridge processors will not benefit a hole lot from phase change. Watercooling will be your best option (custom). Koolance is not the best BTW. I have seen a few problems with their new waterblocks.

 

 

Post your specs and then work on the cooling. Why spend $1000 when you can buy an extreme processor for $1000 and get better performance from the chip and more L3 Cache?

Edited April 28, 2012 by Drdeath

[Muchoman1]

good companies are danger den, ek (avoid their nickel blocks though) and aquacomputer.

 

there is probably some other good companies i have missed, but koolance isnt the best

[Fonzo]

Well as for specs I was thinking about going with the Maximus 5 Gene and an i7 3770k with GeForce GTX 680 and 16gb of Corsair Vengance ram 9 9 9 12.

 

Keep in mind I'm still doing my research on my build so these products might not be the most compatable with each other, I've only got about 800 saved up for my next build and i'm anticipating spending close to 3k on it.

 

I am kinda thinking about switching up the processor to the AMD FX 8170 but I haven't found an Asus motherboard for the AM3+ processor that has pcie 3.0 I'm hoping come september they will have that.

 

Currently I'm running an amd Athalon 64 x2 6000+ overclocked to 3.24 ghz

M2N E Sli motherboard

Corsair ddr2 ram 4 4 4 12

a Nvidia Geforce 8800gts, which i also slightly overclocked

I don't know more details about my power supply then its a 700 watt. I am too lazy to open up my case and pull it out right now and i threw out the box for it years ago. However I am doing a completely new build from the ground up so I can have two independent computers and my current pc can be used more for recording/downloading and my next rig for gaming.

 

Why are the spec's of the computer so important when considering alternative cooling? Is there more to it then just having the right mounting plate for your component?

[ir_cow]

once you figure out your finalized build it will be a lot easier to help you ( i suggest making a thread in the system build section for help)

 

if you are going to cool everything you can guesstimate costs:

 

CPU block: $70

GPU block: $150

Mb block: $80

360 or 480 rad: $100

pump: $80

tubes: $30

fittings: $15

 

Total: $525

[Waco]

I wouldn't bother with a motherboard block. They don't produce enough heat even when massively overclocked to make it worthwhile unless you just like the way it looks.

 

Also - a 3770K is going to run into thermal problems rather quickly even under water. The switch from soldered on heatspreaders to using thermal paste makes them a lot harder to keep cool. Granted, it'll be better than air, but you're probably still going to have heat issues even with a badass watercooling setup.

 

I'd definitely recommend against getting an AMD FX CPU. I had one for about a month and was so disappointed in it that I jumped ship to Intel.

[Fonzo]

Why would you reccomend against getting an AMD FX processor? What are the disadvantages in comparison to the intel processors? I'm definately not so keen on the heat issues with the 3770k but I definately want the best bang for my buck when I do this build.

 

The amd FX processor I was thinking about is the FX-8150

Edited April 28, 2012 by Fonzo

[Waco]

The FX series chips are quite a bit slower at the same clock speeds versus Intel chips (and even against the older AMD Phenom II chips). They're also power hogs, especially when overclocked.

 

My FX8120 rig would pull over 400 watts just for the CPU when I had it running at 4.5 GHz.

[Fonzo]

Wow, that is a lot of power usage. I was definately intrigued by seeing the AMD FX 8150 get overclocked to 8.42Ghz, so that is part of why I'm interested into it. Also I've been reading a bit about how the AMD graphics processors are better then Intel's and the main focus of my computing is directly gaming related, although i think that goes without saying for almost all computer enthousiasts. A big turn off in going to an AMD FX chipset is that there isn't an Asus board that supports that chip that has PCI-E 3.0 and I'm definately going to buy the GTX 680.

[Waco]

The FX chips aren't better for gaming in any sense of the word. AMD's integrated GPUs on the Llano chips are quite a bit better than the integrated GPUs on Intel CPUs...but if you're going to be gaming you'll want to run a discrete card anyway.

 

The overclock to 8.42 GHz was a publicity stunt, nothing more. It was also done with 3 of the 4 modules on the chip disabled and they used liquid helium. A normal overclock will be in the mid 4 GHz range and even at those speeds a stock clocked 2500K/2600K will beat the snot out of them in games.