Anybody experienced with watercooling?

[katushkin]

So I've created threads about moving my storage PC into something smaller, and I'm leaning now more towards just taking the HDDs out and make an insane mATX show rig in a Fractal 804 (I need the HDD bays).

So what I would like to do is dip into the world of watercooling. I would like to do a single loop, one seriously decent (probably nVIDIA) GPU that will also be watercooled, and I'm just wondering what people's experiences are of it. How easy it was to put together, reliability, temperatures etc.

<3

[suicidal_orange]

I've been watercooled (motherboard chipset and CPU) for about five years so can share some experiences, though I went this route for quiet rather than pure performance hence the lack of a GPU. 

My loop consists of a roof hole straight into a reservoir (hanging loose behind the DVD drive on jubilee clips) with a pump hanging off that going into a front single 120mm radiator then across to the chipset, up to the CPU, through another single 120mm radiator on the back then back to the reservoir.  This makes filling it really easy but emptying is not fun as the pump quickly becomes useless.

It's not hard to put together but you should plan your loop and not skimp on the testing (motherboard up, with a towel underneath) because water and electric don't mix - the only time it's caused me grief was when I struggled to fit some RAM beneath a tube, which caused a small leak onto the motherboard which I didn't notice... Time for an upgrade!

I haven't changed my water for about two years - haven't even thought about it.  The fans are PWM and not spinning up so it must still be working OK.  I've had my pump and one of the radiators the whole time, the other radiator I punctured while cleaning so had to replace, so reliability is good I would say.

Thanks for the reminders, I will get some water and check out what the life of a pump is supposed to be )

[baldgye]

I've never water cooled a PC but I lived with two guys who did, and honestly, it was a total hassle and achived almost nothing.

It's time consuming, adds very little performance and if there is any hardware issue, requires a whole lotta time bleeding ****.
In the current world with heat syncs as good as they are, I wouldn't bother tbh.

[Novus]

Doesn't water cooling actually negate the purpose of a smaller pc?

[katushkin]

Doesn't water cooling actually negate the purpose of a smaller pc?

What do you mean?

[suicidal_orange]

Doesn't water cooling actually negate the purpose of a smaller pc?

If you have a case that's too small for a huge heatsink you might be able to get it running cooler using water (assuming drive bays free for reservoir and short RAM so the radiator fits inside) while still taking up less desk space.

Water is not light so it's not good for portable though, if that's your reason for going small then look elsewhere

[fanpeople]

I've been watercooled (motherboard chipset and CPU) for about five years so can share some experiences, though I went this route for quiet rather than pure performance hence the lack of a GPU. 

My loop consists of a roof hole straight into a reservoir (hanging loose behind the DVD drive on jubilee clips) with a pump hanging off that going into a front single 120mm radiator then across to the chipset, up to the CPU, through another single 120mm radiator on the back then back to the reservoir.  This makes filling it really easy but emptying is not fun as the pump quickly becomes useless.

It's not hard to put together but you should plan your loop and not skimp on the testing (motherboard up, with a towel underneath) because water and electric don't mix - the only time it's caused me grief was when I struggled to fit some RAM beneath a tube, which caused a small leak onto the motherboard which I didn't notice... Time for an upgrade!

I haven't changed my water for about two years - haven't even thought about it.  The fans are PWM and not spinning up so it must still be working OK.  I've had my pump and one of the radiators the whole time, the other radiator I punctured while cleaning so had to replace, so reliability is good I would say.

Thanks for the reminders, I will get some water and check out what the life of a pump is supposed to be )

What is the temperature range of where you live?

I was considering water cooling, but after researching seemed more of an enthusiast/show thing (I don't over clock or anything like that so seemed like a lot of money for no benefit). I just disconnected my fan controller and three fans. Turns out having 2 fans at full speed is much better on the ears than 5 fans running at snails pace.

[katushkin]

Doesn't water cooling actually negate the purpose of a smaller pc?

If you have a case that's too small for a huge heatsink you might be able to get it running cooler using water (assuming drive bays free for reservoir and short RAM so the radiator fits inside) while still taking up less desk space.

Water is not light so it's not good for portable though, if that's your reason for going small then look elsewhere

I guess you are right. I think to start I would probably keep the performance low as a media storage unit, then maybe ramp it up to a high performance build with water cooling.

[suicidal_orange]

What is the temperature range of where you live?

I was considering water cooling, but after researching seemed more of an enthusiast/show thing (I don't over clock or anything like that so seemed like a lot of money for no benefit). I just disconnected my fan controller and three fans. Turns out having 2 fans at full speed is much better on the ears than 5 fans running at snails pace.

if it gets over 30c it's hot and if it gets to 5c it's cold, some years it hits 35c on a bad summer day here.

Fans can be very different - I have a couple that at full speed you would struggle to talk over )  If your fans don't like going slow and tick or whine then you may well prefer two at full speed, but I'm running two at low speed with a passive PSU so can hear when my data drive spins down (roll on reasonably priced 1TB SSDs!) 

My fans are set to go faster at 50c and if I'm pushing a multithreaded app they do so, but I'd rather quiet than lowest temperature so I can't report anything amazing.  I'm modestly overclocked on an old i7, haven't looked into the latest CPUs so you may well be right as they keep pushing for smaller/lower voltage the cooling requirements should keep dropping and watercooling may well be pointless, but a waterblock to add to my existing loop was cheaper than a great heatsink when I was forced to upgrade, so I kept it

[fanpeople]

What is the temperature range of where you live?

I was considering water cooling, but after researching seemed more of an enthusiast/show thing (I don't over clock or anything like that so seemed like a lot of money for no benefit). I just disconnected my fan controller and three fans. Turns out having 2 fans at full speed is much better on the ears than 5 fans running at snails pace.

if it gets over 30c it's hot and if it gets to 5c it's cold, some years it hits 35c on a bad summer day here.

Fans can be very different - I have a couple that at full speed you would struggle to talk over )  If your fans don't like going slow and tick or whine then you may well prefer two at full speed, but I'm running two at low speed with a passive PSU so can hear when my data drive spins down (roll on reasonably priced 1TB SSDs!) 

My fans are set to go faster at 50c and if I'm pushing a multithreaded app they do so, but I'd rather quiet than lowest temperature so I can't report anything amazing.  I'm modestly overclocked on an old i7, haven't looked into the latest CPUs so you may well be right as they keep pushing for smaller/lower voltage the cooling requirements should keep dropping and watercooling may well be pointless, but a waterblock to add to my existing loop was cheaper than a great heatsink when I was forced to upgrade, so I kept it

Nice, I love the look of water cooling and the concept of designing it yourself, I guess it is the diy aspect that appealed most to me. I had an i5 2500 for like the past three years and got the urge to upgrade, I was going to jump into all the new hardware but then found an i7 3770k for $190 and sold my i5 for 2500 for $120 effectively recovering most of the cost and suppressing the urge to upgrade.

I had a bitfenix recon controller, well it is still in my rig just not powered. I noticed that on cold days here (which is like 20 degrees) the controller wouldn't power one of the fans and it would start beeping at me for a bit and then eventually power up. I ended up getting a Seasonic PSU with the hybrid function, I believe the fan is yet start spinning in the PSU its a great improvement on the Thermaltake T2 timebomb. This is the same time that I disconnected the other fans and controller. One is a Phantecs 140mm and is quiet the other 120mm is not to bad.

The other reason I abandoned the idea of water cooling was because summer is a donkey here and I reckon I would need a massive radiator with loud fans going off their chops to achieve  probably only minor improvement.

Anyone have experience with water cooling in relativity hot conditions, that might be able to bust my myth?

[Glod]

haters going to hate
quadfire 6970 and 4.8Ghz 3930K, low 900 RPM fans almost silent



seriously though, i spent more on cooling than i did on my base computer, it doesn't show it in my recent photo that it costed that much here but there was a LOT of trial and error and replacement of cooling parts to improve flow and some stuff you cant see in the picture like the aquacomputer flow/temp monitor is expensive. i've built 2 other water cooled rigs for people as well which were really expensive parts.

to water-cool you must realize
1. there is zero reason to make a water cooling rig if you just want to do your CPU, literally no reward for just doing CPU, you can buy a closed loop liquid cooler that takes minutes to install and works just as well. The reward comes when you cool those GPUs and motherboard (luckily the days of the "north bridge" is pretty much over), those things give off so much heat and you can crank those GPUs up real high that you couldn't do on air cooling. my final rig was rewarding, i have it cranked way up and i stand by my decision because i did all 4 GPUs and motherboard and CPU in a single high flow loop.
2. you must hate your money and love spending it because it gets expensive, you really want a good case too.
3. you love risk, like i said the biggest benefit is doing a full loop to your system, motherboard and GPUS, the monent you take those stock cooling parts off your motherboard and gpus you have voided warranty and putting the coolers on is not as easy as the CPU is, its really easy to **** up a graphics card putting on a waterblock, i know because i ****ed a 6970 putting one on.
4. DONT HALF ASS IT, you **** it up, you end up with leaks you are in for pain, you have to make sure you have good flow and good connections and properly installed fittings.
5. for the most part it takes up space, you don't have to go 30" case like i did but if you make a full loop of your GPU and CPU you will need some sizable radiators. i've seen some creative micro-atx watercooling rigs though, you just have to be good at it.
6. some say a benefit to water cooling is the sound, and yes that is true, my system proves that, but the only reason i get way with 900RPM fans is because i have dual radiators, a 3x140 and a 2x140 and high flow. most systems still require high rpm fans.

[fanpeople]

Nice information Glod, and sweet rig. Makes me gooey inside.

[katushkin]

Holy **** dude. That is an awesome rig! FOUR 6970s, that is so cool.

I think in my mind, I thought the step up to full watercooling was going to be a short one, an easy one. But looking at what you have done, and what you are saying, it's more of a leap. Probably one that I'm not willing to take at the same time I for out about £800 to downsize...

[Geroximo]

Since I'm buying a new GPU soon, I also thought about going water cooled.

Long story short:
A well executed air cooling setup with fan control is sufficient.

But: If you have the money and like something fancy in your system: why not. Quieter under load and (if set up properly) cooler than air cooling.

[tp4tissue]

If you got any Nvidia Gpu in the 7 or 9 series.. don't bother with water..

If you have a 6 series and below.. you could water it...


Cpu , if you're not delidded,  water,  if you're delidded, don't bother.

[Findecanor]

Doesn't water cooling actually negate the purpose of a smaller pc?

A closed-loop GPU cooler would be perfect for some smaller PC cases, actually. The performance of a tower cooler but without the space, and the radiator fan could double as the case's exhaust fan.

Slim cases though... that is much harder.
I have been trying to plan an open loop for CPU+GPU in a vintage pizza-style case. I figured that I would have to modify a 120 mm wide radiator and its fans to fit inside 110 mm width.
I came up with an alternative way to air-cool the GPU, so I might abandon watercooling altogether if I could only find a way to air-cool the CPU and motherboard well also.

[Korth]

I've had a few and seen a lot of liquid-cooled rigs over the years.

For a single component it's better to just buy some sort of premade All-In-One closed loop cooler.  A custom loop isn't worth the effort unless you cool all the hotspots - the CPU and GPU(s), maybe also the mobo VRM and even the chipset hub - and you actually expect to consistently run heavy-duty performance loads.  It is a necessary cooling upgrade if you plan to push overvolts and overclocks enough to generate serious heat.  And it's not really of much use on components like SDDs, HDDs, RAM, and audio chips unless you're really pushing unrealistic extremes, insist on spending money, are constrained by undersized form-factor tradeoffs, or are just going for looks.

If you push your system hard and hot then your fans will spin up and make noise, and that noise tends to occur at annoyingly noticeable frequencies, it's just unavoidable.  Watercooling just moves the fans off the components and onto the sides of your case - albeit typically better, quieter, higher-quality fans - they'll tend to be better-placed for efficiently pushing heat out of the box, but they'll push their noise out along with it.  A few fans are still required to move air internally, across all the sundry un-looped mobo electronics (even the PCB itself can overheat without airflow).  Pumps also hum along and add a little (not a lot) to noise levels.  Any fitting or block where the liquid gets pushed from some particular size or flow geometry into another size or flow geometry also generates a bit of noise, volume increasingly exponentially along with flow rate but generally unnoticeable to most people since it's embedded deeper in the chassis.  The advantages of liquid cooling are basically only apparently under heavy performance.

Air-coolers basically need a thorough dust blowout every few seasons, maybe a few drops of bearing lube or a replacement fan every couple of years.  Liquid coolers require the same servicing (to keep those fans and rads clean) and new fluid every year or so (some people say every season because the coolant gets contaminated with all the metals and plastics it erodes off the tubing, others say never because the system is sealed).  My experience is that both systems are roughly equivalent in the context of long-term maintenance.  But custom liquid cooling becomes a real hassle whenever you need to swap or upgrade any parts attached to the loop - it all has to be drained (and maybe cleaned) and filled and leak-tested all over again, which takes time.  If you plan to switch parts a lot then prepare to spend lots of time building and rebuilding your loop.  I no longer find them worth the worry, I find that just buying a quality PSU, quality fans, and a little soundproofing (thicker chassis panels, securing all vibrating or rattling parts, etc) is generally adequate for my uses.  Same overall cooling, similar overall noise, generally lower cost, substantially fewer hassles.

A lot of higher-end (and factory binned and overclocked) GPU cards are available for liquid-cooling enthusiasts.  Most (like R9-295X2 cards) either come supplied with an AIO cooler or a factory waterblock, others (like the Asus Poseidon-GTX780) offer a hybrid cooler which works well enough on air but even better when plugged into a loop.  GPU-card manufacturers tend to put a lot of emphasis on providing air-cooling implementations which improve on AMD/NVidia reference, which it itself quite adequate for running the cards at reference spec.

EK and Swiftech are the most popular brands for liquid-cooling blocks and components.  Their sites have plenty of guides and advice and calculators which are good references (even if you choose other brands).

[phishy]

I've been looking and reading into watercooling alot lately as I recently embarked on updating my PC (generally do so every 2 years).  overclock.net would be a good place to start reading up on what you want to do.  Generally if you're going to cool CPU and GPU and if you have the room, you'd run a single loop with multiple radiators, you'd need a pump, res, fittings, tubing, etc.  I've been looking into acrylic tubing alot lately.

[Synjin]

I used to build custom loops for friends back then. You would only need a single loop with a single rad to duaal rad if you are only planning on cooling your GPU as well as your CPU. If you are going to make a showrig, grab the Enthoo Primo (Using one currently) and it supports up to a 480 thick rad with very little modifications. It actually has 4-6 spots you can place radiators in just for the sake of making a show build. I also recommend using PETG tubing if you are thinking of doing hard tubing as well as purchasing the hardline bending kit produced by monsoon as it is great in getting the perfect bends if you have no experience doing it manually without assistance. Monsoon also offers great additives for your WC system which is complete together with a biocide if you aren't planning to put a silver coil on your PC (Their additives also comes with some anti corrosion).

[Synjin]

I've been looking and reading into watercooling alot lately as I recently embarked on updating my PC (generally do so every 2 years).  overclock.net would be a good place to start reading up on what you want to do.  Generally if you're going to cool CPU and GPU and if you have the room, you'd run a single loop with multiple radiators, you'd need a pump, res, fittings, tubing, etc.  I've been looking into acrylic tubing alot lately.

Multiple rads for a CPU and GPU is overkill.

[The Mad Professor]

But custom liquid cooling becomes a real hassle whenever you need to swap or upgrade any parts attached to the loop - it all has to be drained (and maybe cleaned) and filled and leak-tested all over again, which takes time.  If you plan to switch parts a lot then prepare to spend lots of time building and rebuilding your loop.

Not necessarily. Since the introduction of the Quick Disconnect fitting, changing out components is much easier. I mean, you still have to add fluid to the system to make up for what you lose in the swapout, but the nature of a quick disconnect makes it so the only time you have to drain the system is during routing scheduled maintenance.

A lot of higher-end (and factory binned and overclocked) GPU cards are available for liquid-cooling enthusiasts.  Most (like R9-295X2 cards) either come supplied with an AIO cooler or a factory waterblock, others (like the Asus Poseidon-GTX780) offer a hybrid cooler which works well enough on air but even better when plugged into a loop.  GPU-card manufacturers tend to put a lot of emphasis on providing air-cooling implementations which improve on AMD/NVidia reference, which it itself quite adequate for running the cards at reference spec.

General rule of thumb involving GPUs and aftermarket watercooling. Always buy a reference design card and always get a full coverage waterblock. The PCB design on a reference card is shared with all watercooling manufacturers so they can design blocks that will hit all the hot spots (GPU, RAM, VRM) accurately. When you get into the specialty editions, such as the ASUS Strix or the K|ngp|n cards and you want to water cool them, you have to make sure that it's still a reference design or, if not, specifically search for a waterblock for that particular edition. Generally speaking, it's easier to stick with a reference design.

EK and Swiftech are the most popular brands for liquid-cooling blocks and components.  Their sites have plenty of guides and advice and calculators which are good references (even if you choose other brands).

EK and Swiftech are the best for blocks.

For fittings, I cannot recommend Bitspower enough.

For liquids, plain old distilled water is all you will ever need.

If you have to have color, I recommend either using colored tubing or using Mayhems liquids.

[The Mad Professor]

I've been looking and reading into watercooling alot lately as I recently embarked on updating my PC (generally do so every 2 years).  overclock.net would be a good place to start reading up on what you want to do.  Generally if you're going to cool CPU and GPU and if you have the room, you'd run a single loop with multiple radiators, you'd need a pump, res, fittings, tubing, etc.  I've been looking into acrylic tubing alot lately.

Multiple rads for a CPU and GPU is overkill.

To be fair, it depends on the size and thickness of the rads, the number of blocks in the loop, and how much OCing you're doing. If you have a quad SLI setup OC'd out the wazoo and your CPU jacked up to 5.2 GHz, a single radiator probably isn't going to cut it unless you have a powerful pump, the rad is one of those super thick ones and you have good push-pull config on the fans.

[IvanIvanovich]

I used to be into watercooling, and pushing high OC and stuff... but it's becoming so much less necessary as components become more and more power efficient with much reduced TDPs. When I upgraded I was able to grab good deal on socket 2011 6c/12t cpu with only 60w tdp. I ditched my WC stuff and have my air cooling set to be off until temps hit 35c. evga acx gtx970 does basically the same and keeps the fans off until certain temps/load conditions are met. So while I am doing not much like browsing the net, listen to music and stuff everything is all clocked down and running passive so it's silent. When I am doing something that creates a load the active cooling kicks in but all the fans are still pretty quiet. It's no more noisy that my old water set up really.
While water cooling can look really cool when it's all done well I wholly agree these days it's just a huge cost expenditure for very little benefit these days if you are running intel/nvidia from the most recent 3 generations or so. If you're running AMD spaceheaters and want to OC then sure by all means go for water. Next gen stuff is going to be even more efficient so there will be even less point. I hope things keep going this way as soon you'll be able to have a 100% passive system with no moving parts without having to make concessions for less performance and/or very high costs.

[Korth]

Some card manufacturers, the ones which don't invest into overengineering, just keep on reusing their older cooler designs.  I've been looking at PNY GTX980s which use the same (almost untweaked NVidia reference) cooler PNY used on their GTX780Ti and TITAN models.  Meaning that PNY used a cooling system designed for a 250W card on a 165W card.  Added bonus: I happen to prefer the styling of this reference cooler over the garish LED banks, stupid owl-eyes, and other angular nightmares featured on other "improved" card coolers.  No real need to watercool, only a need to push the hot air out of the chassis.

The overwhelming majority of custom loops place rads inside the enclosure.  Looks better.  Performs worse.  External (top-of-chassis-mounted) rads are generally far more efficient.  Just stuffing rads into every corner on every panel - because they fit - isn't going to improve real cooling unless some careful thought is given to how and where all the heat they radiate is going to be funneled out of the box.  I've seen a lot of systems packed full of little rads and excessive fan banks which ended up making a lot of noise while not really providing better cooling.

More small rads are roughly equivalent to fewer large rads, it's basically just about total radiator surface areas and how efficiently the airflow across each rad can exhaust heat from the chassis.  A single 360mm top rad would be easier to work with than three 120mm rads scattered around the system, it would use about one third as many tubes and fittings.  I would usually go with the thickest rad I could fit into a case to allow greater fluid flow, sometimes even considering thinner (and a bit weaker) push/pull fans when space was tight.  Gotta be copper all the way, of course, although aluminum fins aren't too bad as long as the air keeps moving.  The consensus usually favoured two-pass internal channels for all but a few niche designs, and while products have changed a lot over the years I think the fundamentals are still the same.

Ambient temps can affect the viscosity of the coolant fluid.  A weak pump may not be able to start up well when things are cold, thick, and sludgy.  A weak pump might also be unable to sustain high flow when things are hot and thin and watery.  Awful pumps can even introduce air bubbles into the loop (nobody really knows where they come from).  Thermally conductive but electrically nonconductive coolant fluids (like Midel 7131) are available for paranoid folks.

A more fanatical approach is to direct all the loops out to another, separate box which is nothing more than an external array of fans and rads.  I'm personally disinterested in having one computer sit in two chassis connected by a few meters of tubes and wires, but it is an idea if powerful cooling is your thing.

[Oobly]

Performance gains on older hardware were higher, percentage-wise, than they are now. Most modern CPUs / GPUs run pretty well with air cooling, although there are still gains to be had with water cooling.

I run a split loop system (one to CPU, one to GPU), since then you've got "cold" water hitting each component directly without the heat of one component warming it before it hits the next. I went with a large radiator and big slow fans to reduce noise. Works very well I think I still hold the 3DMark11 record far my particular combination of hardware when I set up the cooler the first time (AMD 555BE@4.2 and 2x 460GTX@1000), partly due to the rarity of the combination since SLi on AMD mobos requires a hack to work well. I was surprised how hot my memory sticks got, but didn't get round to cooling them as they seemed to handle fine without any issue in Memtest despite the heat and the airflow to them and out the case is good.

[Joey Quinn]

Doesn't water cooling actually negate the purpose of a smaller pc?

What do you mean?

I have a closed loop system in my FT03 Mini which is one of the smallest cases I know of, water cooling in a small case is possible but the smaller you go the harder it'll be to build a custom loop.