Water cooling? Should I bother?

[50]

Hey, I was wondering, how could I make my system nearly dead silent (like at least as silent as my old pII compaq 200mhz system). Water cooling was an idea. But I really don't think I am prepared to do a job like that, I do not know which parts I would need either. The Koolance EXOS system has all the parts and you just need to plug em in but it's pretty expensive (or is it for water cooling? dunno). I would want to put water cooling on my 9700 pro and my CPU. I guess I should buy a quiet HD too. I've heard Barracudas are pretty silent. Thanks

 

[mrzed]

Unless you get really esoteric, water cooling isn't going to be any quieter than excellent air cooling. Virtually all water cooling systems still use fans to cool the fluid in the radiator,. These can be big slow quiet fans, but my case for example (Antec SLK 3700AMB) is cooled by one big slow fan quite effectivly. Water cooling also involves a small but real noise from even good quality pumps

What water cooling can do is allow you to overclock higher than you might be able to with excellent air cooling. If you are really cranking the voltage and pushing the limits of the chip, it gets you an edge on somthing like a SLK900 with a moderate fan.

It is possible to have a water cooling system with no fans, by using huge radiators, or pumping the fliud into an underground reservoir or something.

IMO, you can get just as silent as normal water cooling with a moderately overclocked, high end system using the best HSF like a Zalman 7000, or SLK 800/900 and a case with excellent airflow and slow fans. If you want to push the absolute bleeding edge, water can be more silent than air, but for average sane overclocking even, air is still up to the task.

 

[Corporate Thug]

a watercooling setup will give u similar performance to top of the line are cooling. not worth it in my opinion

 

[1sikbITCH]

Watercooling with a Peltier, now, that's where the performance kicks in. You can have your chip seeing minus degrees celcius. We've all seen the pictures of frost-covered Peltiers.

But it's like a car. Most people just get in and drive it. It has some power, handles nice, and oh those soft leather seats

Other people aren't satisfied with that and have to put a racing cam in there and put big fat 60in tires on the rear and mount nitrous bottles on the motor after they bore it out to 500 cubic inches... Just so they can look cool cruising the hangout spots on Friday night gulping down a gallon of gas every 30 feet.

With that said I must admit I'm starting on a watercooled system and soon I'll have the biggest and baddest computer in the living room

 

[Chucko]

Water cooling project

 

[poMONKey]

Originally posted by: shady06
a watercooling setup will give u similar performance to top of the line are cooling. not worth it in my opinion

my load temps dropped 25° from when i was using my awesome slk900u and a panaflo 92mm fan ( even with a vantec tornado strapped on, it couldnt cool half as good as water ). i had 5 more 80mm fans in the case and a 40mm on the NB... no comparison!

why do you think they use a watercooling systems for most engines? its efficient!



oc forums... read all about it!