[chrismorris730]

What are some of your guy's opinions on water cooling? When should it be used? How it should be used? What are the best complete systems out there (meaning how much it covers without buying extra water blocks, ease of expansion etc.)? Anything else you can think of?

I ask because at some point in the future I will eventually get my ultimate gaming rig and since I will be in college it will probably be in a very small room, and keeping all those components cool will be a challenge.

[thingie2]

well there are 2 reasons for water cooling that usually go together (A+B), and a seperate one:
A) You want to overclock alot, but don't want the noise/expense of pase change.
B) You want bragging rights.
C) You want a quiet (almost silent) cooling solution.

As for you other questions, from my little reasearch into watercooling I did a while ago when thinking of getting a new computer, I realised it would be cheaper (and probably perform better) if I bought everything seperatly (like computers, you can go the easy way and but from Dell etc. or you can spend the same amount, and get a better computer but you have to build everything yourself) so rearly consider if you want a kit or build it yourself.

Also, what is your main purpose for watercooling? (from the list above, or do you have another reason?) and what sort of watercooling do you want? (internal or external, Fanned or Fannless)

[Carbon]

It has very little use. Modern systems can be effectively cooled with air even at insane overclocks, and most consumer systems will fry or have difficulty predicting accurate values (due to quantum effects) at those voltages anyway. It's more of a showing off thing. It also, as thingie pointed out, works well (but is expensive) for silent PCs (though there will of course be some noise from the pump).

[Bubba]

I'm paranoid and just have this aversion to water running all through my electronics. It may be 99.9% percent safe and leak proof, but I guarantee I WILL have the .1% that fails.

[Carbon]

Originally Posted by Bubba

I'm paranoid and just have this aversion to water running all through my electronics. It may be 99.9% percent safe and leak proof, but I guarantee I WILL have the .1% that fails.

"Liquid cooling" is the preferable name - fluid used in all modern systems is non-conductive and nobody actually uses water.

Still, a leak's not so great :p

[thingie2]

Originally Posted by Carbon

"Liquid cooling" is the preferable name - fluid used in all modern systems is non-conductive and nobody actually uses water.

Still, a leak's not so great :p

Isn't most stuff a concentrate stuff you buy, and add water to it?

[serverguy]

Originally Posted by Carbon

"Liquid cooling" is the preferable name - fluid used in all modern systems is non-conductive and nobody actually uses water.

Still, a leak's not so great :p

Except for the clever clogs who save a few quid using distilled water and screen wash

Theres no real reason for it to leak once you have prooved it dry the first time.

I doub't the pipes would crack for 10 years, especially at relatively constant temperatures with no flexing.

[Bubba]

You don't know my luck (or lack thereof) serverguy lol. Murphy was an optimist in my opinion. (Murphy's Law: anything that can go wrong, willgo wrong.)

[chrismorris730]

Basically wanted it so that's it's quiet, and as cool as possible no matter how hard I run my stuff. I'm not an overclocker and I don't plan to be (maybe a modest overclock sometime, but other than that...no) so the overclocking is out of the question. Maybe I want to put a quad core with 8 gigs of RAM and a 4870X2 into a mid tower...the only way (honestly) to keep it cool would be water cooling.

I'm going for the best performance I can get in the smallest package, meaning I don't really want a full tower case if I can avoid it. I would still water cool even if I had the big one, I'm just saying.

[Carbon]

A compact HSF along with a large diameter, slow spinning fan in a Thermaltake Lanbox (it has a 120mm mount but you could Dremel out a 200mm mount and add a $20 "replacement" Antec 900 top fan) will achieve nearly the same thing and be a hell of a lot cheaper.