Yet another watercooling thread :)

neokenzo

I've decided that I may go down the watercooling route. At the moment, I'm in thinking either getting the innovaSET XS or the Waterchill KT18. I'm leaning more towards the Waterchill as it has the complete set and cheaper than the innovaSET.

Here are my questions:
1. Consedering I'm a noob, is it hard to install? Would I need to take out my mobo, not something I would like to do. Also, can I install the radiator in the rig or does it has to be outside the rig?
2. Since the main components are being cool, ie cpu, northbridge and vga card, does that mean I can remove some fan from my case, esp the one that makes the most noise?

Also, I would like to hear anyone's experience with the watercooling especially with the Waterchill. Any advice is welcome

Thanks in advance.

Col_Loki

I have the Innovatek XXS water cooling kit for my PC. Its all contained in my sonata case (which is small), but its only cooling the CPU at the min. Temps are good and im happy with it. The waterpump makes noise so your rig wont be silent, but its barely noticable.

If you cool the GFX, NB, CPU then the only fan/fans you will need are the ones on the radiator (120mm ones prob @5v). If you want to be sure put a passive cooler on your HDrive and thats all you need to cool in your system.

For installing the kit you will need to remove all components including the motherboard. Main reason beign that you have to drill holes and more than lightly cut a blow hole for the radiator (commonly fitted on the top of the case). Chips and fileings you dont want near your Mobo . After you have the cutting and drill 4 holes then its very simple to fit. Innovatek have great instructions, and the kit performs better than the waterchill (last time i checked).

Hal1

Hey COL_LOKI, I too am considering moving over to watercooling and Im a n00b , I am curious to know what kits are reliable and quiet at the same time. I have done a bit of reading up on some of the overclockers sites and it seems fairly straight forward once you stick to the guidelines, I was consider a vapochill but to dam expensive and they still give out a fare bit of DBl's. So peeps in your experience of watercooling what would you recommend to us n00bs :? I am looking to spend about E300, cause I dont want something thats gonna fall apart in about 6 months. Any suggestions greatly appreciated tnx

Col_Loki

Well i found www.hitide.ie etremely helpfull (jow here on the boards was alot of help with my questions) when i was starting out with watercooling.

Ive had my kit for about 8months now without even the slightest problem and i use my pc alot. The quality of the stuff is fantastic and the fitting guide was very detailed and clear (made up by hitide themselves). Performance wise i really cant complain either as it has given me great temps at highly overclocked speeds.

It all depends on what your looking for TBH, if your looking for performance without noise reduction then watercooling is going to do a great job. If your looking for complete silence then id look at a non overclocked almost totally passivly cooled rig. Performance and a very quiet rig then water cooling is a good option, especially if you want to cool everything like the GFX & NB aswell.

A cheaper option is to get the Zalman 7000 Cpu cooler, Zalman NB cooler, Zalman GFX cooler (or artic cooler) and a 120mm case fan......... performance wont be as good as the higher end water cooling kits (200+ range) but it wont be bad.

Innovatek are a good place to start for beginners as the kit comes complete with everything your could want or need, a gerat installation guide, quality performance products......

Waterchill are also known for good products but when i was buying mine the innovatek had a nice lead performance wise over almost every other kit (with the exception of the corsair hydrocool at full power). have a look at this link, its from overclockers.com

http://www.overclockers.com/articles373/waterkit.asp .

The top kits being the corsair and innovatek (even better model is out now)......

neokenzo

Originally posted by COL_LOKI
For installing the kit you will need to remove all components including the motherboard. Main reason beign that you have to drill holes and more than lightly cut a blow hole for the radiator (commonly fitted on the top of the case). Chips and fileings you dont want near your Mobo . After you have the cutting and drill 4 holes then its very simple to fit. Innovatek have great instructions, and the kit performs better than the waterchill (last time i checked).

I didnt realised there was a lot of modding involved?

CombatCow

well neo the ammount you mod really depends on your case and if you have the room to fit a 120mm and rad,otherwise it would have to be put outside the case or at the drivebays.you would have to drill holes tho for the innovatek pump to mount it on rubber silencers.I recommend the Innovatek XXS water cooling kit aswell.Btw do you have all 5 fans going in ur Damier case ?


CombatCow

neokenzo

Yeah I have the 5 fans going at the moment in my case. When I was tidying the wires up I must have wrongly place a few of the wires and it and I'm not able to control the speed of 1 of the fans and its set at maximum so its a bit noisy

I was thinking either taking out the back or the top fan for the watercooling radiator but either one would probably require some drilling or mod to my case which I'm not sure I know how to. Ideally I would like to put everything in the case and I could probably find room for it. But then again wouldnt I need to drill holes on my mobo for the cpu?

Jammer

Originally posted by COL_LOKI
Its all contained in my sonata case (which is small), but its only cooling the CPU at the min.

Why have u only hooked it up to the CPU?

Im thinkin of the wtercooling stuff myself, noisey fans are starting to wreck my head.

CombatCow

Originally posted by neokenzo
But then again wouldnt I need to drill holes on my mobo for the cpu?

Sweet jebus no,a waterblock just sits over the cpu like a heatsink with a special retention bracket that usually clips to all 3 lugs on the cpu socket ( like the pic i attached ).It's probably not as difficult as you think.Here check the innovatek casemod forums for ideas and nice pics --

http://www.innovatek.de/forum/viewforum.php?f=11


CombatCow

netman

Hey COL_LOKI, did the Innovatek radiator fit into the Sonata case or did you have to mod anything?

I have the same rad, started off with an Innovatek set and changed a few things since then. I was looking at the Sonata, it looks very neat and I like all the noise dampening features. Having said all that, I'd prefer to have the rad sitting at the top of the case blowing air out, instead of pushing hot air into the case, which means cutting blow holes in an otherwise beautiful case.

jow

Hi,

Originally posted by neokenzo
I didnt realised there was a lot of modding involved?

it really depends on your case.
when you have a midi-tower or bigger (like the chieftecs) it is possible to install the rad under the harddrive cage in front of the case.
Then you only need to drill four holes for the rad and four for the pump. (some people like to install the pump with velcro tape (is this the right word??? ).
This works out well...

I have even seen some guys who glued the rad into the case with a hot glue gun...
but I wouldn't rely on that in a long run

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Regards,
jow

Col_Loki

Why have u only hooked it up to the CPU?

Well TBH, i have the NB passivly cooled and its fine (i dont need increased FSB as my ram is workin at Pc3500 and id have to loosen timings to get it any higher), the graphics card has an artic cooler and im pretty happy with it..... it adds no noise to my setup. CPU was the main area i wanted to cool so i never bothered with the others, might add on at a later date.

Hey COL_LOKI, did the Innovatek radiator fit into the Sonata case or did you have to mod anything?

Its a very tight squeeze, i had to bang up the PSU rail a bit (hammer) and slightly drill the holes upward for the PSU to fit again. I also had to remove the locking mechanism on the door of the case (leaving the handle). Its very close to not fitting (a few mil from the graphics card) but its perfect. The 120mm fan is holding up the rad with another one on the other side. The power connectors fit lovely also . It involves a little modding but just keep the air blowing outward through the rad and temps are quite good i must say.

Plus the sonata's PSU is very quiet especially under light load. One thing to watch is you have to fit the water pump and res as close to the edge of the case as possible (if you have it at the end) or you risk blocking your PCI slots..... my audigy is actually touching the res :rolleyes: .

There are some pic's of the inside of my case .... In this thread , just to give you an idea.

[edit] PS neo, make sure you get an AMD64 kit

neokenzo

Originally posted by Combatcow
http://www.innovatek.de/forum/viewforum.php?f=11

Those are really some sweet rig. Dont know whether I have the guts to buther my rig like that but at least it gives me some kind of idea. Thanks dude.

Originally posted by jow
Then you only need to drill four holes for the rad and four for the pump.

How big of a hole are we talking here? As big as the tube? How hard is it to drill a hole?

Originally posted by COL_LOKI
[edit] PS neo, make sure you get an AMD64 kit

Aye sir, will do


I would want to cool my cpu, gfx and possible the NB as well. So if I were to take the innovatek route, it would mean some serious money. Probably do it in phases.

netman

Thanks for the info COL_LOKI... it looks pretty good!

I've recently replaced my 1048 with a 1250 eheim, not knowing how big the pump is.. Suffice to say, it dominates a big tower case.

But I'm happy enough with the looks, worst case I'll have to sacrifice a few PCI slots to fit in the big pump, but Sonata looks pretty good.

I'm not that worried about the power supply, got an antec truecontrol 550w in the states cheaply so I think I'll run with that. It's pretty much silent when set at the lowest speed, and with nothing producing heat in the case (everything watercooled) there shouldn't be any issues with the fans speeding up and getting loud.

BabyEater

For a pump I would recommend a maxijet 1200 cheap at 20 sterling very small quiet with better performance than a 1048. Buy 2 and hook them up in serial and you have a very powerfull pumping system with 10' of head.

jow

Originally posted by neokenzo
How big of a hole are we talking here? As big as the tube? How hard is it to drill a hole?

The holes are 4mm for the M4 screws that will hold the pumps mounting plate in the case. Nothing serious.
But is is always better to remove everything from the case as a even a small "drilling-job" will produce small metal particles and everybody can imagine what they are able to do. :ninja:

As long as you install the pump in the case, you wont need holes for the tubing.

I would want to cool my cpu, gfx and possible the NB as well. So if I were to take the innovatek route, it would mean some serious money. Probably do it in phases. [/B]

That is the best way. Cool the CPU first and then install the other components later.

jow

jow

Hi,

Originally posted by BabyEater
For a pump I would recommend a maxijet 1200 cheap at 20 sterling very small quiet with better performance than a 1048. Buy 2 and hook them up in serial and you have a very powerfull pumping system with 10' of head.

ok, I do not know your installation, but normally the cooling efficieny is not dependent on the amount of water your squeeze through the tubing.

I would always recommend a decent "normal" pump (like the eheim 1046) before installing a big pump or connect two pumps in a row (which makes no sense, most of the power of the first pump gets lost in the second, and the result is simply more noise).

For example: the 1046 is able to pump around 5 litres per minute. When used with 8mm tubing the amount is reduced to around ~3 litres.
This is more than enough. A lot of tests have shown that the only result in installing a more powerful pump is more noise, not more waterflow.

Most of the good watercoolers are designed to work from around 2 litres at their maximum efficency. You will normally not gain a better cooling, because it take some time for the water to absorb the heat.

Second: the hoisting depth is only valid for open systems. In a closed watercircuit (when using a closed watertank) the hoisting depth is only valid until you have removed all the residing air. The you can lift the components to almost any height without problems. The important part is the filling with water, there all components should be at the maximum hoisting level.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Regards,
Jochen