Watercooling Kits Help

Cina

Just a few questions, as I'm planning on getting a w/c very soon. There seems to be good ones on watercooling.de (and the fact that they have UV dye is a nice bonus) , namely the waterchill stuff, and their own stuff. Was looking at the medium one, 150 euro, it's one of their own. Doesn't say whether it's s754 compliant though, are the brackets you can get for s754 universal or restricted to certain waterblocks? Is that a good kit?
Also, I'm only planning on getting CPU kit atm, but I want to get a new gfx card and a VGA block sometime in the future, if the kit has already been set up and ahs water in it, does much draining or anything difficult ahve to be done then to add the VGA block?

Jammer

u wud have to drain the system, but its not difficult. i've never read the "right" way to do it, i just put the tube from the pump into a bottle and turn it on.

I dunno about their own brand kits, but i have waterchill antartica, and its very good.

Cina

Jammer wrote:

u wud have to drain the system, but its not difficult. i've never read the "right" way to do it, i just put the tube from the pump into a bottle and turn it on.

I dunno about their own brand kits, but i have waterchill antartica, and its very good.

Yeah I was thinking about just getting a waterchill, but they are 100 euro more. Thing is, with 64 bit, and without an nForce 3 mobo, just how overclockable is my CPU, not very, surely? what is the antartica like in terms of silence? Loud fan?

unklerosco

Try Hitide.ie... He's a tiny bit more expensive than watercooling.de but u dont have to wait a week r two for ur kit(u can just go n pick it up) and if anything goes wrong he's very helpfull....
http://www.hitide.ie/catalog/product_info.php/cPath/21_22_37/products_id/181

Thats the kit I have, with two silent papst 120mm fans... I cant tell its running thats how quite it is.

Also, using uv dye invalidates the warranty on most WC systems, using Uv tubing is easier.

Jammer

very quiet...can only hear a small humm. thats with 2 x 120mm fans in the case

Col_Loki

Most of the watercooling kits round here would be Innovatek (from hitide.ie) or Astek Waterchill ones. Ive had mine for a little over a year now and im very happy with it i must say. Very quiet and im very happy with the overclocks ive been getting. The kit i have is the Innovatek XXS one.

Generally you find that the cheaper kits compare to top end air cooling and the higher end watercooling excels above that. What spec PC do you have?

Cina

I have a 3400+ 64 bit 1mb cache AMD, GeiL Ultra 2 x 512 sticks of PC 3500, Radeon 9800 PRO, Abit K8V Deluxe SE Mobo, 550W LC Power PSU, Antec Super LANBOY case, that's the important stuff anyway. I have no interntion of chipset overclocking, just cpu and graphics, and I'm not paeticularly worried about being able to overclock my cpu, as I don't have an nForce 3 mobo, more interested in silence and the looks through my transparent side window!

Col_Loki

Ok, given the fact that you have a KT800 chipset, your prob talkin 10% overclock before the hard drives start giving trouble..... which would leave you round the 2.4ghz mark. It would also be running your Ram at the right speed....... so thats good.

You have to overclock the chipset (FSB) to overclock the CPU , theres no other way on the AMD64.

Do you have an Artic cooler for the 9800pro? Might be a very good option as there silent and cool far better than the stock one does. You could always add a GFX waterblock either?

Im not sure how good the power supply is, should be fine but just keep an eye on the voltage rails if you get any restart problems .

How do you find the Super Lanboy? Looks like a very nice case, 120mm fans might come in very handy to help fit the Radiator!!

Cina

The Super lanboy is excellent. i really like the look of it, although some don't . Very very light, yet sturdy, good stroage space, 4 HD's, three 5 1/4, two floppy slots, the 2 fans are great, and very silent. Putting a lot of UV stuff in it soon aswell

Hmm, overclocking the chipset, I spose I better get a chipset waterblock aswell? Or could I risk not having it WCed?

My 9800 PRO is FUBAR so I'm getting a 5950 ultra with a waterblock off my friend who is getting a nextgen card for a very reasonable price instead.

My Power Supply is excellent, very silent, would deffo recommend LC Power, marclar has the same one, no problems on his either.

Jammer

i like the super lanboy, although the Antec P160 is deffinately my next case!! A fair bit of UV stuff is making its way to me right now...dunno if i'll stay too long with no window in the sonata!

I have my chipset/cpu overclocked a fair bit (almost 25%) and it just has a heatsink on there...the artic cooler is cooling my gfx and just the water is cooling my cpu. I have a 120mm fan blowing onto the chipset heatsink/pci cards too.

netman

i'd suggest you read up on watercooling first, overclockers.com have an extensive library of articles on the subject.

while most watercooling kits are quite sufficient to cool a cpu, things get more complicated as you start adding more blocks into the loop.

pump:
most kits have quite a weak pump, in general look for 600 l/h for 2 blocks and 1200 l/h for 3 blocks or more.

tubing:
for some strange reason innovatek go against all evidence in the field and ship their kits with 8mm tubing. it's flow restricting and the tubing they ship out kinks very easily. just replacing the fittings with 12mm ones and getting new tubing improves performance quite a bit.

noise:
in general watercooling is a lot quieter compared to high-end air cooling, and you usually run 120mm fans at 7v or through a fanbus to reduce the speed and noise. on the other hand if you have a quiet aircooled setup there's not much to be gained here. if you end up with a starter kit and add more blocks (gpu and chipset for example) you'll find out you're getting worse performance than with air cooling, and the only way to get any better is to wind up the fans to 12v - a lot of noise.

performance:
on average, watercooling kit will perform the same or slightly better than a good aircooled system. just be aware that a bad watercooled setup is worse than a decent aircooled setup.

flow rate:
as you'll see on overclockers, they measure performance at 1 gph (gallon per hour) flow rate, and then give comparisons with slightly higher and slightly lower flow rates. 1gph seems to be the "sweet spot", and sacrificing flow rate by using flow restricting components (L-fittings, narrow tubing, flow restricting blocks etc) can have quite an impact on performance.

chips & clips:
most good kits out there have a separate mounting mechanism, making it relatively easy to upgrade. so going from socket-a to socket-754 or socket-939 is as easy as shelling out 15-20 euro for a new mounting mechanism. just keep in mind that these new processors get hotter and hotter and a starter watercooling kit might find itself unable to handle all the heat.