MUNKY

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i have my current rig set up pretty nice right now and am pretty set with it, but i was wondering if anyone here runs with liquid cooling? pros or cons or suggestions on em? never used one before, and looking for some help

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xan

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ok honest advice. I have in the past. If your the kind of person that is completely anal about your PC, and you plan on overclocking, etc - then the watercooling rigs out today are simply amazing. You need to change the water at some point, check hoses, etc - on a somewhat frequent basis, but if your anal that wont be a problem. If your looking for a major improvement from water cooling you wont be that impressed. Yes its very quiet. VERY quiet, and very efficent, but your gonna spend around $500 for a decent rig and not see a huge difference in PC performance. Unless your looking to squeeze that final last inch of speed out of your CPUS - I'd personally say its not worth the time/effort/monies.

On a positive side - it looks amazing, and if your good about making your case clean your e-cock will grow to a tremendous size if you start posting pics.

MUNKY

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yah i know the 295 vid card can run warm and that is my only concern if it will keep it cooler on a consistent basis over just the fan it has and normal ventilation. if that wont, then it would be of no need. that is my only concern.

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-Omerta-

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Been using liquid cooling for my processor for over 5 years now(cooler master). Mainstream liquid cooling is normally for processors and not Gcards but they sell water blocks for them. most running for a hefty price. My processor temp is normally at a steady 20-21c but since i dont have liquid cooling for my cards they like to heat up to well...at least 60-70c. My systems old, including my cooler master and over time they get loud as fuck.

MUNKY

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yah that is my thing i hear good things about em, but if i wont notice a huge difference for the gcard, that is my dilemma

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-Omerta-

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Nothing that a PCI slot cant do. Maybe 1-2° tops. You're best off removing your 295's housing. 295's run really fuckin hot, i donno if you're SLIing. Edit: just read you have a 295 and a 280? Sli that shit, become a badboy like me. That or use duel monitors lol.

General questions...
Tower on the floor(carpet or hardwood?) or elevated?
your 295 spread out or cluttered with other shit?
does your ramsticks have heatsinks and or is the card anywhere near the processors heatsink?

What you should be looking at is. Elevated(or hardwood floors) 295 should be farthest away from other heatsinks and at least separated from the tower bottom and other pci slot hardware by at least 2-4 inches.

Remove the 295's housing, get your self a pci slot fan(10-30$)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835704001 this product here is for hard drives but with the size of the 295 would work out pretty well(just gotta find a way to mount it/ if you have spare female end power ports)

That or http://www.xoxide.com/fancard.html <--- personal favorite. Super thin, good RPM's. and cool LED'S oooo woooo woah. Slip this fucker on top of your 295 and you'll be rockin(take the housing off first)

I mean look at this badboy.

Oh one more thing. NZXT towers & or the cooler master HAF tower. Way to be.

My next PC is gonna be using this tower. things a fuckin wind tunnel, has huge ass fan in the front, sides ect. The USB slots being on top though is no bueno. NZXT has them on the lower right hand side near the front. So helpful, also the HAF is only 16$ but figuring all those fans running at at least 20-25$ a pop would hit you for over 120-140$ in fans alone.

Jerkstore

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- Setting it up is a bitch.
- You usually need to buy new parts if you upgrade hardware that it affects, and then go through the bitch of setting it up again.
- Upkeep: you need to keep the water and coolants fresh.
- More expensive than a good case/heatsink/fan upgrade.

The benefits are lower temps and less noise.

My computer can handle all games at high quality, I only overclock my CPU which has a very good heatsink, temperatures are low-average, and the noise from my case doesn't bother me. If you're in a similar situation, there's not a great reason to get water cooling. I'd rather save the money and get hardware upgrades.

If your 295 is running so hot that it crashes, you might consider water cooling, or a case with good cable management and airflow would help keep it cooler too. Make sure the back of your computer isn't too jumbled up as well so it can ventilate.

If you're not having terrible issues with noise or heat, stick to air. The cost/benefit ratio isn't worth it to me.

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-Omerta-

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Water doesn't need to be replaced that often(done it once in 5 years), especially if you're using thermaltake. also a little bit of Thermal grease will do you wonders along with some electric cable ties(what jerkstore said about cable management)

Also, i didn't set up my own liquid cooling. I had NZXT do it for me before delivery so take jerkstores word for it being a bitch.

MUNKY

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no not sli, i just run the 295 by itself. will try that though removing the case and a fan that definitely would help out. i got the coolermaster "sniper" case, big lots of airflow, and i sit on a tile floor. not getting that hot yet i just know on extended hours of play that bitch gets warm. looking at it more for preventative stuff i can do to keep it cool. thanks for all the infos though, will be ordering me up a fan tonite!!!

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-Omerta-

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You cant go wrong with that xoxide fan. Prob one of the best i've come across. GL :D

Jerkstore

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Only bitches order pre-built.

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-Omerta-

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Hey, i was too lazy to put the cooling on my self. Everything else is omerta guaranteed.

rehpyc

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Well this should be fun..

First, there's a pic of my liquid cooling setup attached, and I've done this for a few years now and cringe at the ignorance that some share. It's all right, though, cause I was once there myself.

If you use tubing with a smaller ID (inner diameter) than the size of barbs you put them on, you won't have to worry about them coming off. If you use tubes with the same ID as the barbs, using a worm or plastic clamp keeps your mind at ease. Water cooling still has great improvements over even the highest air cooler, if you build a decent setup, whilst keeping things excessively quiet. You don't even need to spend $500.. could do far, far less than that dependent on how many pieces of hardware you want to put into your loop and aren't against using used parts (which is not really unsafe at all).

How is mainstream liquid cooling normally only for processors? CPU/GPUs are both part of the mainstream. If anything, it's ram and hdds that aren't mainstream. It also depends on the type of GPU block you care to get (chip only vs. full cover + bling). The former costs no more than a good CPU block..

Setting it up isn't that much of a bitch.. unless you're just lazy or don't plan ahead of where you want to place things. You also don't need to necessarily buy new parts each time you upgrade if you plan ahead, unless you water cool parts on your motherboard. CPU/GPU blocks (non-full cover) will only need a new bracket to be purchased due to the screw hole design changing between hardware. The cost of a new bracket is very minimal. You also don't need to "keep the water and coolants fresh." Either you don't have real experience cooling and just go based off random stuff you've read, or you never handled things properly. The main reason people ever need to flush their loop is either a) they're changing a water block out, or b) they were lazy and didn't keep up on the biocide to keep algae from forming. Good news is, silver is a natural biocide and so a tiny piece of cheap 99.9% silver is all you need.

I'm hoping by Thermaltake you don't mean you have the Thermaltake water cooling kit.. those things are a huge rofl and will get you laughed at on any of the major liquid cooling forums. They're not even better than top air coolers, and the parts the kit is comprised of are awful.

By Xoxide I'm dearly hoping you simply mean the vendor. Otherwise, they have few fans that are their own, and they each are beyond awful for their price and their CFM/dB ratios vs many, many fans.

[/end rant]

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions, else I'll probably just continue to debunk fallacies here as I see them. I may have to pull out some benchmarks/temperature charts from different forums for people heavily overclocking their CPUs (q6600s, i7s, etc.)/GPUs to show how a decent liquid cooling setup can outrun even the top air coolers. It's laughable when reviewers only give statistics from idle temps or very, very mind overclocks. Liquid cooling isn't particularly used for idle temps; it's used for a better means of dissipating the heat during times of heavy load keeping a small delta.

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aetch

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scythe Gentletyphoon
scythe S-Flex

in that order for good airflow and quiet. GentleTyphoons are about $15 each, but are absolutely amazing.

rehpyc

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Yay, someone who knows fans :] +1 for aetch.

Downtown1

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Ah man I totally want a new water cooled rig.. to go along with my 3x23" EyeFinity setup that I wish I had.

Is there like a guide for people new to water cooling? I've been assembling rigs and understand the hardware as good as the next guy, I just don't want to get a noob pre-made kit or anything like that.

What I'm looking for is something that works really quiet and can power a quad core i7 + dual 5970s and has an extra PCIexpress slot or two for sound cards.

rehpyc

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Downtown, pm me on irc sometime.

aetch

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Its basically just being an informed buyer

I have a friend that did a major review on all types of fans.

tested them from everything from dB ratings to airflow
with/without radiators
with/without dust filters (different types)
and also tested them with different heatsinks.

He's won a few global overclocking competitions, so, obviously knows what he's doing,lol. so once again, just being informed

rehpyc

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Older, but still not really outdated much, quality test of fans http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=223391

Also, for any interested in the idea of liquid cooling, those forums are great to learn the ins & outs from.

Jerkstore

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No need to indirectly call me an idiot baby.

I did my water cooling kit custom; I'm aware there are much better packaged solutions today, but I'm narrow minded and can hate something from a very limited experience. There was a forum thread back in 2004 that I followed for directions to make a relatively cheap water cooling setup. Only ordered a CPU cooling block, the rest was from Home Depot. The water would get filthy after a few months and performance wasn't worth the extra effort. I know about filters but I was dumb and nearly bought a dremel to cut a window into my case, which explains why I was also dumb enough to buy water cooling.

My advice is: if you hate money, water cool your computer and jerk off over 5 extra fps.

aetch

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to me, water cooling has no real meaning unless you are heavily overclocking and pumping extra voltage through your hardware. eventually, air coolers just can't keep up with good water. There is always the silence factor, but you are going to have fans in your case either way. make informed decisions

if you are going to go water, read up on it, the forums rehpyc posted are a good place to start in the water cooling section. most of the stuff is custom-built from the pump to the blocks to the radiators.

rehpyc

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But you'll be able to have less fans, and ones that are inaudible for the most part :D

I just hate when people give false info, whether it be because of their own poor experience that's due to laziness/carelessness or just because they are simply ignorant of the matter. No worries, cutie ;]

aetch

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well, partially, but if i were to water-cool my case, i'd still have at least 5-6 fans. and my case was built for water-cooling (not being used for it, but still)

the only fans i'd lose would be the 2 i have on my cpu heatsink, and the fan on the GPU (which would probably be the best one to replace).

i'd still have 4 exhaust fans (3 top-exhaust, 1 back), 1 fan from the psu section of the case blowing cool air to the top, and then the PSU fan (which can also be annoying depending on the PSU)

obsidian 800D if you're wondering (amazing case fwiw)

rehpyc

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My next build will most likely either use the famous TJ07 or newly loved Obsidian 800D.

MUNKY

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thanks for all the infos, will be hitting you up cypher

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Downtown1

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My computer right now is a pretty loud beast (core 2 duo e6600 that runs on max fans all the time due to running close to overheating, and a jet engine ati 4870 x2) and to make it even worse I have to run it open case or sometimes it'll get too hot while playing games (my CPU sucks!!!).

So I want to get watercooled so I can stay with EyeFinity-grade gaming equipment while at the same time having it be super quiet. Not to overclock my CPU to 4GHz or anything crazy like that (though I suppose it wouldn't hurt with all these Valve games nowadays being cpu-limited).

I looked into 'silent' fanless/'semi-silent' fans for a while and they just don't really have anything that works for the high end video card it seems like. Great for my HTPC where I can stick in a mid-range video card like a 55xx and have it be enough to play games at 1080p, not great for playing at 3x monitor resolution.

aetch

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you can get it quiet with the right heatsinks and fans on air. the two fans i mentioned earlier in the thread are good for that. I can barely hear my case as it is and i have my i7 running at 4.2GHz. heat dump from this is at least 3x over my OC'd 4ghz core 2 used to be.

pic of my case below actually have 7 fans running, 9 if you count GPU as well as the PSU


honestly though, if i think about it, your problem with your case being loud is your GPU fan. i remember the stock heatsink on the 4870 was insanely loud

rehpyc

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The 48xx series still consumed a lot of power even while idle vs. GeForce cards, and the fans subsequently ran faster than needed at idle as well. But, yeah, the air coolers were excessively loud as well.

Aww, Downtown, I have the same CPU as you running at 3.7. The damn thing is one hot CPU to deal with, but it performs and can overclock like a beast. It doesn't help living in SoCAL where the avg ambient temp is decently warm+ :[

aetch, is your graphics card bending? :o

aetch

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dont remember it bending, its dead atm, so i'm back on the 8800GTX till i get a job. then i'll get a 5850 or 5870 more than likely.

MUNKY

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removed housing on vid card, installed dual fan card. it is running smooth and a hella lot cooler. thanks for all the help peoples!!

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