water cooling?

[otogrim]

Is really worth it?

 

[mgob]

if you are a serious overclocker.... definatly.

 

[otogrim]

So you're saying if you're not planning on overclocking then don't bother

 

[JEDIYoda]

depends...
some poeple water cool passively just so things will be a whole lot quieter!

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Someone here remarked in the recent past that water-cooling may allow you to squeeze and extra 300 Mhz in processor speed from the system. That seemed like an observation grounded in experience.

Tom's Hardware Guide reviewed some 20 water-cooling kits a year ago, and the measured thermal resistance data on all of them was not impressive. I think the best of them showed a thermal resistance value of 0.20 C/W, which is higher than that of many heatpipe coolers now.

A top-of-the-line Swiftech kit achieves a thermal resistance of 0.125 C/W with sufficient fan-speed and throughput at the radiator. This barely "trumps" our best heatpipe coolers.

It may be that overall motherboard and CPU idle temperatures are lower with water-cooling, but if a heatpipe cooler shows corresponding temps just a few degrees Celsius higher and the idle-to-load temperature spread is the same or smaller, I just don't think it makes sense anymore, unless you're striving for noise reduction.

However, unless you grab one of those Reserator or "ThermalTake Rocket" kits, with the umbilicals from the external radiator to your computer, you still have to push air through a radiator, and you still have fan noise.

Water cooling requires periodic attention to fluid change, biocide and other features. Air-cooling requires the occasional application of canned-air for cleaning dust or "kruft" from the heatsink fins.

For my part, if I do it, it will be "chilled-water" cooling, because I just don't think water with a minimum temperature at the room-ambient is worth either the trouble or the expense. But that doesn't eclipse the 300 Mhz observation, either.

 

[otogrim]

guess that answers my question

 

[Dragoon42]

kits are good to get your feet wet. But go with custom water cooling, and it'll give you better cooling than air will. Just check out the xtreme forums.

 

[mindwreck]

Get it if you want to overclock alot and/or to slightly quiet down your computer.

The system I made has the best of both worlds. It allowed me to overclock my sempron 150mhz more than my xp90 and allow me to run my system passively excluding psu fan. but the only time i run it passive is to impress people . Its usually at 5-7volts.

 

[H0witzer]

It really depends what you plan on doing with it. The best water cooled system can still only bring your temps down to ambient temps unless using a chiller of some sort. A well designed water cooled system has the capacity to remove alot more heat than air does though. Meaning while you might not be able to go lower than a good air cooler, you can adsorb alot more heat, meaning overclocking potential is greater.

Also as someone else stated, a really well designed water cooled system can be alot quieter.

I started with a kit and have been adding to it, modifying to suit my needs. (Quick disconnects and a temperature controlled Peltier is next)

 

[ROJAS]

It's another toy to play with. I have two Koolance water systems, and I love them. They are alot quieter then running massive fans when you are overclocking.

 

[HardWarrior]

Originally posted by: otogrim
guess that answers my question

From a very limited perspective, perhaps. Don't believe for a second that even the best air can approach a well-designed, ambient-based water-cooler. If you're willing to put forth the effort, in terms of knowledge, water isn't hard to maintain either. If I jerk about with my cooler between upgrades it's because I want to tinker with something, not because I have giant microbes smiling at me from my res, or I sprung a leak that's hosing down my PSU. It just ain't that serious. The strange thing is that the doom saying seems to radiate from those who don?t know much about water-cooling.

If you're interested and don't want to be brow beaten out of the idea by people who don't use water, stop over by here.

It's an aggressive place, but you can get your questions answered without someone else's justifications for using air layered on top.