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Water Cooling used to be the realm of urban legends, absurd tales of the most determined technomancers achieving insane clocks via arcane watery arts. Whether it's tales of submerged PIII systems occupying a bathroom or hooking up your own homebrew tubing with an old car radiator, water cooling has a general perception of being unwieldy and dangerous. Only those with too much time and money can make it work. That's changed today. While custom loops still remain a bit more challenging, requiring larger wallets and a bit of work, the advent of closed loop coolers (or All In Ones) has brought water cooling to the masses. Coolers like the Corsair H50 were the first to seriously bring water cooling into the mainstream, allowing you to simply mount a CPU block/pump to your motherboard, and a radiator to your case. Even customizing your water cooling loop has gotten easier, with open, expandable coolers like the EKWB Predator allowing you to purchase additional blocks (in some cases even pre-filled) and install them in your existing AIO. On the custom side of things, more and more manufacturers are offering professional, quality solutions to tubing, blocks, fittings, and radiators. No matter what you're thinking of, cooling your parts with water has become easier and sleeker. No longer is it the realm of virgin wizards experimenting with leak-prone equipment. For the most part, though, water cooling is about aesthetics, about the hobby, and in some cases about the noise. Temperatures on good, modern heatsink+fan solutions are more than enough for most overclocking setups, provided you have decent airflow. Plus, the HSF solutions are cheaper, too. If you're looking to save money, you're in the wrong place.  I only recently got my PC watercooled. I'd run my 2600k under an H50 for five years, and finally put in an EKWB kit. It runs great, and I hope to get a GPU block sometime soon, but I still have a lot to figure out. If I get everything figured out (or if someone else wants to  post) I'll put a guide or something up. The hardest part is figuring out what to buy. Any goons thinking of using water? Any else already cooling with water?
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Aug 11, 2016 07:20
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 11:23 |
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People talk about pump noise, but even when I was testing the loop and had only the pump running I couldn't hear anything. I believe it's a ddc pump; I used an ekwb l360 kit. By the way, kits are a great way to save money on building a custom loop.
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Aug 11, 2016 23:41
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Aunt Beth posted:Water cooling is only practical IMHO at scale, and generally only at infrastructure rather than component level (I.E. back of rack radiator cooling). It only makes sense to cool via water at the chip level when talking enterprise-class RISC machines, mainframes, or supercomputers. Consumer stuff is all designed to be air cooled because air cooling Just Works. Oh definitely. If someone wants to cool a component, it's air all the way. If they want to cool a little quietly or don't want a big heat sink hanging off their mobo, they go AIO. You only build a custom loop if you want to build a custom loop. They're super expensive and only provides a small boost in cooling performance. My kit for cooling a CPU cost 270 USD. My H50 was 80 retail, and I only got it because it was 50% off. Even so, a good HSF performed as well and would be five bucks cheaper at the time. Water cooling is a hobby, not a necessity. (Though that h50 turned out to be a great choice, given how lovely my air flow was in that htpc case I used)
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Aug 12, 2016 01:17
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Failures?
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Aug 12, 2016 16:10
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Oh, sure, definitely. I do just wanna say that it's not some leak-prone nightmare, though. My H50 performed well despite being bent and twisted this way and that, and the custom loop I put together as a first-timer worked.....first time. It's all actually relatively straightforward. It's just that watercooling is generally something you do for the sake of watercooling.
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Aug 12, 2016 16:37
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Custom water blocks are expensive. I think the one I need for my 1070 is around 140 shipped.
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Aug 12, 2016 21:42
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Hey now, some of us run custom loops!
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Aug 14, 2016 07:03
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I've had more air coolers fail than water coolers, actually. My arctic freezer pro 7 (iirc) failed; I had to replace the fan with one I harvested from a case fan and super glued on to the heat sink. I've had two coolers fail similarly on my xfx 6870s. That said, it is true that water cooling failures could be much worse, if a leak is involved. And I have had a lot more air cooled devices than water cooled.
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Aug 14, 2016 08:13
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Wouldn't you just be running water in your loop, then? And have to deal with the problems associated with running only pure water.
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Aug 17, 2016 04:11
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I've seen some loops sharing a reservoir between a cpu and gpu loop.
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Aug 18, 2016 22:21
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The order of your parts in a loop doesn't really matter much, right? Other than having your res feed your pump.
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Aug 21, 2016 15:22
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Those are always face palm inducing.
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Aug 22, 2016 22:13
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"Back in my day" you had to pay a thousand dollars to get an unlocked multiplier. FSB OCing, for when you need the entire machine to run faster.
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Aug 23, 2016 01:04
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Isn't Mayhem's nano coolant supposed to not have those issues?
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Aug 23, 2016 18:15
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The answer is you don't use aluminum in your loop ever. Common metals are copper, nickel (usually plated on copper), and brass. Parts are easy enough to source, but typically only available from a few retailers. For instance, in the US, you're limited to Frozen CPU (which had a very wonderful bit of drama and unprofessionalism, look it up) and Performance PCs (which has had many customer service nightmare stories told, but worked fine enough for me). As for leaks, you avoid them by just doing your connections properly. I built my first loop this summer, did the 24 hour leak test and found nothing. The compression fittings in the kit I used (L360 from EKWB) worked great, and were easy to use.
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Aug 30, 2016 07:11
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AIOs are fun and cheap compared to custom loops. More power to you.
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Aug 31, 2016 08:51
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atomicthumbs posted:what if you just hook up a laser cutter chiller to a cooling loop Chilled loops are a thing and really cool, but require extra effort and cash.
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Sep 2, 2016 19:01
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Just keep your box dehumidified, duh!
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Sep 2, 2016 23:52
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atomicthumbs posted:http://www.electronics-cooling.com/2005/11/advances-in-high-performance-cooling-for-electronics/ ...That's a lot of cooling.
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Sep 3, 2016 04:30
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Numinous posted:Back in the day I had an 80W peltier cooler connected to a dangerden water block and radiator. Kept my CPU at a nice and cool 60 deg F all day long. Went the full monty with vaseline in the CPU connector and silicone sealant around the whole setup - custom water reservoir made from home depot components and brass barbs. Good stuff! Subambient is loving awesome even if it's a headache. Did you take any pictures?
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Sep 3, 2016 08:21
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Peltiers seem scary/unproductive in the end, though. They generate heat right in the same spot.
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Sep 6, 2016 06:08
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Fragrag posted:Reading this thread while on vacation in South East Asia makes me have crazy ideas on water cooling my hot rear end bedroom at my grandma's until I remember LinusTechTips did it and it was an absolute disaster. I wouldn't hold anything linus does as an actual representation of the thing in question.
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Sep 8, 2016 16:26
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Alereon posted:Linus was using a bedroom as an office that was full of a bunch of high-end computers that heated the room up very badly. The idea was to make a massive shared watercooling system that would pump the heat from all of the systems into a radiator outside the house, keeping the room and thus the people and computers inside cooler. It turns out that it basically didn't work for poo poo. It was way more work than expected, there were leaks, and most of the heat was lost in the pipes before it got outside anyway so the room was still hot and cooling still sucked. And then after it was all done they got evicted and had to tear it down to move! Here's the start of the saga: LinusDrillTips is great for comedy. They used copper piping for the whole thing. If you remember, copper is an excellent material for transferring heat. 
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Sep 8, 2016 19:20
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Deuce posted:Well, a big part of LTT's whole thing is "can you do this?" To which the answer very often is "technically yes, but you shouldn't." This particular example ended up as "not really." They put that same approach to hardware/software solutions that are vital to their business, though. Look at their dumb saga with their server. That raid setup was the dumbest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSrnXgAmK8k
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Sep 8, 2016 19:51
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VulgarandStupid posted:I saw the Linus water cooled room thing and another streamer who ran his radiator down to the basement, but it got me thinking. Why not just put the computers in a basement and then run thunderbolt and whatever else I/O you need up to the room you need it in? That way you pretty much just have monitors and hubs in your work space, and you can run the cheapest, loudest air cooling you want. This is definitely a thing people do (when they have money to have nice solutions). Monoprice and other retailers have what you need to run poo poo like USB and HDMI and DP through walls, so you could stick your PC in a room that's kept at a low temp, and only have accessories and screens and whatnot at your desk.
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Sep 9, 2016 21:09
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I wouldn't mind sticking my NAS in a closet.
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Sep 9, 2016 22:42
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...You don't have those maglev fans, do you?
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Sep 9, 2016 23:25
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Don Lapre posted:Nah I have ek Vardar f3 120s. Oh. Got a few of those in my kit from them. They seem rather nice, speaking from a fan-ignorant perspective.
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Sep 9, 2016 23:45
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rage-saq posted:The corsair ml120s (which I have and have also had Vardars) also don't have bearing noise so they are much quieter at sub 1000rpm where you don't hear the noise of the airflow What's the damage on them? I imagine it's not nice to your wallet.
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Sep 10, 2016 03:36
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rage-saq posted:Watercooling.jpg Huh. Guess I should consider them, then. I'll buy anything with a shiny sticker on it.
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Sep 10, 2016 17:53
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Does anyone know of a good fan controller?
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Sep 19, 2016 18:09
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PromethiumX posted:I feel like one of those radiators might be completely unnecessary. More radiators is never unnecessary. 
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Sep 25, 2016 06:57
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What kind of system is it? I'm almost certain it's an all-in-one/closed loop cooler, but we need to know for sure. Basically, just check that the pump and fans are plugged in. Should be some wires coming off of them. AIOs typically have pumps as a double unit, sitting on top of the coldplate. This means the pump power cables should be coming from the CPU. Also, have you noticed any high temperatures? Honestly, my Corsair H50 AIO was so quiet I couldn't tell if it was running by listening.
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Oct 1, 2016 07:35
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It should be moving, but it'll be difficult to tell. Is there a reservoir that you can look at to see flow? Sorry, phone posting.
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Oct 2, 2016 17:40
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If it looks like there's flow in the res, then it should be cooling. What are your temps like?
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Oct 2, 2016 18:47
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That sounds fine. See how high they get.
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Oct 2, 2016 19:12
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Which types of tubes do you have to worry about dissolving plasticizer with?
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Oct 24, 2016 23:54
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Welp. Ordered the parts for my 6 month flush/upgrade. Adding on to an EKWB L360 kit, into a Corsair Air 540 case. Hope I didn't miss anything...
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Nov 27, 2016 02:04
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The back? As in a backplate? I already have an EVGA SC 1070, which comes with a backplate already. Should I have ordered the EKWB backplate then? Also, the ML120s are twice the price of the SP120s. Sixty bucks for a pair of fans is a bit much.
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Nov 27, 2016 03:29
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 11:23 |
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...What the gently caress, Performance PCs. http://www.performance-pcs.com/corsair-120mm-ml-series-ml120-pro-single-pack-fan.html Welp, lemme see if I can cancel part of the order. e: Wait, Performance PCs has the Pro fan. What's the difference?
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Nov 27, 2016 03:43
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