Liquid Cooling

[iviuz]

Just wondering where you can buy liquid cooling units for your processor and video card, or has someone got some links to some websites.

[Darthtanion]

Are you looking for a real water cooling setup or one of these all-in-one wonder kits that don't perform much better than air cooling?

[RenascentMisanthropy]

Where in the world are you?

www.Xoxide.com would be a good one.

[Yawgm0th]

Frozencpu.com is good to, but I'd talk to Darth on actual components. Watercooling is one of his specialties.

[RenascentMisanthropy]

In my old system, I had a BigWater stuck on a 3000+ newie (2.22ghz) and a 6600GT (596/1050mhz).

With an ambient of 26C, rad fan on 7 volts, the CPU would load at 42C, and the videocard @ 56C.

With the cool n quiet feature on the A64, I could run it passive (rad fan disconnected) whilst just doing stuff in windows, or on the internet.

The bigwater was only really good for it's low temps @ near stock speeds and low noise. Would be crap for SERIOUS overclocking!

[Yawgm0th]

With those temperatures, it's worse than a lot, maybe most air cooling. Newcastles aren't the best, but they aren't bad either. Last night my friend and I put together his socket 939 system with an Athlon 64 3000. We used the stock heatsink and the stock thermal compound. I took it to 2.45GHz at 1.55v and it loads around 48c and idles around 44c with ambients around 24c. The video card (6600GT) was at 54c before OCing.

[RenascentMisanthropy]

I'm staying away from H2O for the time being, and trying to sell all my BigWater crap. My system should be fine for a year or so at stock speeds.

[Darthtanion]

As a general rule, those all-in-one wonder kits are only good if you do normal productivity/surfing type activities. Water is pretty safe nowadays, but as long as you understand the basics it isn't too difficult to get something good working. I've been on water for a couple of years now and love it. Fan noise never really bothered me until I got rid of 90% of it, now it doesn't have a place in my systems.

If you decide to get serious about water, make sure to use at least 1/2" OD tubing so the water flow is great enough to be able to effectively remove the heat from your components. Make sure you get a pump that cranks out the pressure so you can take full advantage of the fat tubing. From there you just have to know what order to hook up your water components for maximum efficiency and to let the entire water system run for about 24 hours outside the case to make sure it won't leak. Don't bother spending extra money on these solutions that are supposedly non-conductive. Most are not and the ones that are usually don't have the same cooling abilities as distilled water and an anti-corrosive additive.

If you have questions, just ask and I'll help where I can.

[matm347]

I second www.frozencpu.com . Much more selection than xoxide.

Darthtanion, did you mean 1/2" ID??
I know that wall thickness varies, even within the same brand. I went with 3/8ID 5/8OD tygon, but if you did mean 1/2" ID...would I see a benefit from swapping?

I've got reservoir->MCP650->DD BI Xtreme III->DD RBX->DD Chipset->reservoir

Eventually I may want to get my 7800GTX watercooled as well and would add it after the CPU block.

I have the radiator and pump in a custom built aluminum frame along with 3 stealth fans and a dedicated mini power supply(out of an external HDD enclosure) which sits under my CPU (I have a corner CPU desk where the CPU is in the middle, under the monitor).


I do overclock to whatever the hardware will take while keeping stability.

[Darthtanion]

Sorry, you're correct in the ID tubing size. My mind wanders sometimes in my old age.

As to your water pattern, it looks good from I can tell but I am not familiar with the Danger Den model numbers you use. As a rule, you want your pump fed directly from your reservior. If you have a radiator as well, it should feed into the reservoir. This means that the water in the reservoir is the coolest in the system and will be fed to your heat-producing components. As a rule, I generally recommend cooling to the processor, then the GPU(s), and finally to the chipset if you use a chipset cooler. This allows the most critical components to get the coolest water running through the system. The added reservoir will keep the volume of water at a level where it can be reasonably cooled before being recirculated through the system. Some may argue the order of cooled components, but I've found that this method always gives exceptional results and allows for good overclocking over air.