Watercooling

**thingie2** · #1 24th Sep 2008, 03:43

For my build that i'm getting around Christmas (so I can have the new Intel CPU's if they are worth while) I was thinking about getting water cooling for it. I know that like for PC's if you make it your own and select all the components yourself it performs better than a kit, however, I've been wondering, if I'm going to be cooling a CPU, NB, SB, and a 4850/4870, I would need a reasonable sized radiator. However I don't know what sized radiator I would need, so that is one of my questions. Another one is that if it's internal, where do you mount the radiator? as most cases only have 1 or 2 at the most fan spaces at the rear of the case, which I'm almost 100% sure won't be enough radiator space. However if, like the Antec 1200, there are 3 fans on the front, would mounting it there work? or would all the hot air just heat everything up making it worthless having watercooling?

Because of all this, I've been leaning towards an external watercooling kit, as this would save working out where to mount radiators etc, and would be easier to use.

**deldrice** · #2 24th Sep 2008, 15:43

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNagN1PQw-4 That might help. I used a bunch of his vids on the antec 1200 for some visual ideas on how to make stuff fit right. His rig in the 1200 came out very well, so its worth watching a few.

**thingie2** · #3 25th Sep 2008, 00:16

Yea, that is basicly how I was thinking of mounting the radiator, but I still need to know how much radiator I need for a full system, would a 2x120mm rad be enough? or should I use 2 of them, and attach one to the rear 1 fans too?

**thingie2** · #4 25th Sep 2008, 09:51

I had forgotten that I had asked this sort of thing before here and from looking through that again, I've come up with some components for it, and would like to see what people think of it, I saved the complete webpage of the basket, and have compressed it. I've attached it to the post.

I couldn't find any comparisons (like there are for hsf) to see what blocks are the best, so I just had a look through discriptions to see what they are made from, I also looked at the price, because obviously a block costing £5 isn't going to perform very well as the majority are around £40+

EDIT: I know I haven't got any tubes in the basket, I wasn't sure how much I would need and only rearly put the basket together to get a rough idea how much it all would cost.

To open, you need to unzip the 3 files together, it will unzip into 3 Rar files, you need to then extract those, then you just need to view the html document in the main folder. I did it like this because the saved page is about 200kb, and you can't upload rar files, however you can upload zip files upto 97.7kb

**thingie2** · #5 27th Sep 2008, 07:25

is there no one who has any ideas about any of this?

**pete21** · #6 27th Sep 2008, 17:39

get and use the biggest radiator you can get your hands on with fans :) also a large reserver will aid cooling simple as that :) o and use a oil based solution so if you get leaks no damage to components will happen :)

**thingie2** · #7 27th Sep 2008, 17:42

Yea, I chose a coolant that says it's low conductivity. Could you have a look through the basket I made and tell me what you think?

**Bubba** · #8 27th Sep 2008, 21:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by thingie2

is there no one who has any ideas about any of this?

The people who know the best my young brother have already spoken and you have chosen to forge on ahead regardless. What do you expect them to say now?

Personally, I don't know much about water cooling, but I do know that none of the people I would consider "experts" use it, nor did they suggest that I use it when I had legitimate overheating problems.

You are doing it because you want to, the same reason I have 2 9800GX2's and 8 gigs of DDR3 Ram, because I wanted to. The difference between us is that I didn't ask anyone, I just did it. Had I asked and gotten the expert advise you (and now I) have available, I would not have and saved a ton of money. But since you are doing it, I say go for the one that has the sparkly lights and shoots blue and orange fire out it's ass, it will look cooler but from what I have read not make your system enough cooler to justify the expense. But then that's just me.........

**thingie2** · #9 28th Sep 2008, 04:33

Well for starters I haven't fully decided to go water cooling or not yet, and as there are no benchmarks out of the i7 CPU's I don't know how well they will overclock under water vs air. And the main reason everyone was saying don't bother with it was because I wasn't planning on doing any overclocking then, however now I am.

So basicly, I am wanting people to help be get the best value water cooling build, then when the i7 CPU's come out, I will have a look at what they are like for heat, then decide if I will go with water cooling or not.

**Bubba** · #10 29th Sep 2008, 20:13

Hey man, don't let me bum your high. If you want it then go for it. It's your cash and wanting it is a good enough reason to buy anything you can afford.

I would however put forth the proposition that the reason you aren't getting advise on the "best value water cooling system" is because the technical experts that frequent this board think that ZERO dollars would buy you the best value on a water cooling system. I could be wrong, I usually am lol. Although I DO think that if WC were the way to go, these folks would be all over it. Heck, the guy that sold me my parts not only told me I didn't need water cooling, it was a waste of cash, he told me I didn't need 8 gigs of DDR3 RAM and two 9800 GX2's. And this dude gets commission on his sales. The people who give advise here don't get a cent for their advise.

But please understand what I said before, if you want it, do it. If nothing else it will look cool. If it isn't cooler as far as running the machine, I feel that you are intellectually honest enough to pass that along. I look forward to your reports although if it were me, I'd spend the money on something else.