Watercooling Worth it or not??

Two (sorry three) reasons to want to watercool.
1) Overclocking (Dumb at speed and performance of todays hardware)
2) Sound Not the mp3 playing. Sit where you are after some time on the net and then suddenly switch off PC and all then HEAR the silence. silence... serene...relaxing
3) Hobby To be different, new topic and making Your own setup.

Of these 2) warrants the expenditure

I have not done it yet but will do on the next Upgrade soon. endeavour for silence.
 
i have a coolermaster aquagate, its a nice unit to start off with but its noisy and not too much of a performance increase over good air
the zalman resonator thingy is silent but massive.
both are good starter kits, easy to install and available in sa
the zalman also has readilly available gpu blocks.
if you want serious performance you might have to import a really good one
my 2c oops 5c (do they still make those?) :p
 
you can try opening the window...lowering the ambient temperature will probably help.

secondly, watercooling by itself doesnt make you pc more quiet. the heat is still there, and typically, still needs to be removed. and this is doen with a fan. Kits with external radiators will need a fan to blow air over the radiator...so all you have achieved it to move the fan from inside the case to outside.

There are valid reasons to watercool, but from what you tell me, i dont think it is the right step for you. Spend R'ssss on the kit, find out your temps are 5deg lower (coz of a cr@ppy kit) and the noise is the same=bigger e-penis and not much else.
 
I currently have a ThermalTake Big water installed on my PC.
This setup is AMD Barton 2500+(1.8Ghz), which ran on a idle temp of 47.5 c and the big water took it down to a nice 38 c with a lot less noise than my stock cooler.
But it only started to realy showing it's worth on load, after an hour running prime95 & folding@home the temp was only 45c vs 53c on the stock cooler.

I have since then overclocked my AMD to run at 3200+ specs(2.2Ghz), which is an impressive 22% (400Mhz) overclock.
My current temps are 41c on idle & 47 on load, which is realy not bad for a processor with a thermal threshold of 85c.

The other thing you need to remeber when looking at water cooling is how easy it is too install the kit, and I found that the bigwater was a realy easy kit to install, an at about R1 200 for the kit it was worth it.
Check out the kit at

http://www.ngrcomputers.za.net/thermaltake-water-liguid-cooling-system-amazing-p-1389.html
 
imo water cooling is a waste of money period.
i would like to hear from any members who have thermo electric peltiers installed?
 
Do you know how expensive peltiers are and how much room they take? If youve got the money you can get phase change cooling its by far the mst effective but they start at around R10000, but you can get sub zero cooling.
 
hahah yes i supose $31 for a peltier is very expensive lol :p
there is also a company in sa that does them cheap but you have to mod/fan them up your self.
 
vrapt0r said:
Do you know how expensive peltiers are and how much room they take? If youve got the money you can get phase change cooling its by far the mst effective but they start at around R10000, but you can get sub zero cooling.
Click to expand...
not that expensive R300 - R400 for 1 watt to 4 watt from RS electronics just in case people dont know where these peltiers are used - commonly in the plug in car fridge / freezer .
 
methinks some people here should do more research into peltiers.

To the thread owner, are you trying to get really cold cpu temps? if so, get a peltier, and an extra power supply to run it, and some bigger fans to keep it cool.

If you want a quieter setup,with increased cooling, go invest in some 120mm fans and a heatsink that takes them, and run them at 7volt (either via wire swopping, resistor mod, zalman fan controller or speedfan software)

And also go read on how much heat a cpu can handle. Running your average cpu at 60degrees constantly isnt going to cause it any harm. That is being realistic.
 
@ werner - do you have any good sites . I deleted all my links can rmember one where there was a aircon type unit which attaches under the PC case , pricey but the performance very impressive.
 
Unless your really hardcore about it, there's not much point.

If you can squeeze an extra 6 to 10fps outta your favourite game, sure, great idea.
A 15% performance increase is great - but at what cost ?

It's an enthusiasts area where the cost should be lower than upgrading your CPU/System.

You need the skills to be able to customise existing and build new cooling equipment so that cost is lowered, performance is higher and you now spend all your time trying to make your computer go faster :D

Hotrodding ...
 
If you dont move your pc around then you can always go to passive water cooling (no fans) there is an awsome kit called the aqua box, lowers your temps allot and comes with an added gpu/chipset cooler, but i dont know if its avalible in sa
 
Angellus said:
Well I don't really want to overclock. Just want my cpu/gpu to run cool. MOST IMPORTANT though want the PC to run almost Silent if it can.
Click to expand...

Have you looked at the air flow in your case? You want the air to flow in the front bottom and out the top back. Make sure that all your fans are blowing in the right direction to achieve this. If for example, you have a fan both at front and back blowing out, this is wrong and actually very little air moves in the case.

Also, try to get all cables out of the way etc to improve air flow. Rounded cables help for this.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X