Water Cooling

Marky Mark

Hi

Has anyone any experience with water cooling, how effective is it and is it difficult to install? I had the Aquarius II water cooling in mind.

silverski

Checkout Maplins.

They have a catologue on Modding PC's and also for Water cooling kits

SouperComputer

its HIGHLY effective if done right. very quiet too

BabyEater

My Temps at the minute are 38C Load on a 1900XP @ 1.85v doing 1764

elexes

aint maplins very expensive for ordering tho ? anyone got a few sites of intrest i could try for water cooling kits . ill be buying one shortly . btw i dont speek german so they will need to be in english

PPC

Watercooling.de - English Index

The maplin one gets laughed at on OcUK so i wouldnt say its the best, and its for like €100 or something ridicilious.

elexes

ye gon there due to the post in tecky board thx

Vexorg

You could also check out www.elara.ie for the Thermaltake Aquarius 11 complete water cooling kit. Worth considering if you are not going too extremes in water cooling, its cheap for a complete kit, doesnt need a seperate power supply, so you wont forget to switch it on, and got reasonable reviews.

Depending on your needs tho'


Vex.

elexes

is that the one for 165 euros ? u sure thats a complete kit

Vexorg

Yup the eur 165 item...

According to the Thermal Take site the The Aquarius 11 kit includes:

Pump and Resevoir , additional resevoir, radiator and fan, waterblock and universal clip, tubing... I can only assume it also includes some sort of clips to attach the tubing to the various parts as well.

What else would be required?

Do you have any reason to think its not a complete kit?

Just curious, never did watercooling before...

Im looking for convenience, something I dont have to remember to switch on or off with my pc, and quietness. I know that a large passive rad would be quieter, but would require too much work from me to make it neat and have it attached to the pc and my overclocking does not generate much extra heat.


Vex.

elexes

ye i went to that site also to look and i think its a full kit ? ur buying 2 aint ya ?

well ill be doing the same if this works out good like if it keps max load temps below 40 ill be well impressed . it says it can do it at 30 so ill take that as bs and watch for myself ordering one myself thx for letting me know that its there vex

PPC

It autostarts when ya machine comes on aswell.
My machine came on the otherday and while i was out it turned on and ran for hours while i wasnt there and destroyed the chip and board
It melted the perspex on the block and water leaked out too, but it was so hot it evaporated on the way out \o/

Praetorian

There are countless disasters when it comes to watercooling!

The guys on the "expert" forums do not often admit when they have accidents. How much are you really going to benefit?

Pro's

---

Ability to overclock (lots when done correctly)
Silent running

Con’s

---

Risky (lots of people experience leaks which can be fatal for your hardware)
Expensive (relatively speaking)
Allot of work (setting it all up & testing etc etc)

Alternatives

---

Use the money you were going to spend on watercooling to buy a faster processor (only applies if you don’t already have the CPU :P )

Buy a nice fat copper heat sink and overclock accordingly.

Leave it the way it is, its not going that slow after all!

BioHazRd

Originally posted by PPC
It autostarts when ya machine comes on aswell.
My machine came on the otherday and while i was out it turned on and ran for hours while i wasnt there and destroyed the chip and board
It melted the perspex on the block and water leaked out too, but it was so hot it evaporated on the way out \o/

Sorry to hear about that, (no, really.....)

I have rigged mine to autostart, by soldering the mains cable of the pump to the terminals on the power supply switch. That way, it is physically impossible to have the pc on without the pump running. If you are not confident soldering mains connections, don't do it - ask an adult, or some other competent person - mains can kill

Bio

oh, and I also have the innova kit from watercooling.de - sweeeeet. (and they give you jellies too )

koneko

Praetorian you're totally missing the point of overclocking. If you're happy running stuff at stock speed, that's grand, no worries. But others like to tweak and get the max out of anything they can. It's a hobby.

Besides, watercooling isn't as risky as you make it out to be. I haven't had any "incidents" at all so far, really.

Praetorian

My post was in response to Marky Mark's post (who incidentally started the thread). He's obviously not used water before...and I was trying to warn him of the potential danger. Admittedly, I've no personal experience using w/cooling but I know very competent people that have had disasters…imagine ending up with a grands worth of damage to your PC!

BTW I have nearly always overclocked...Now less than in the past.

Most people who overclock do not use water...it's much more risky than other methods of maxing out your hard ware. Companies don't advertise the failure rate, and the people who have the "incidents" don’t mention it often either because they would feel embarrassed.

BabyEater

Well i had a good accident where me motherboard, graphics card, etc all got wet because someone forgot to turn on the pump .I was lucky tho as i put everything beside the fire and dried them out .That was a couple of months ago and i haven't had a problem since. An easy way to solve this for me was to plug me PC and pump on the same 4 gang plug .So when it is turned on the pump and PC come on together. This is good if you cant solder too well.
A good idea is not to buy those clear poly top waterblocks but get a soldered one it can't leak. I would say there is little risk in setting up a kit one because they are easy to do. Mine leaked because i made the block meself and the exopy melted.

Matt Simis

Originally posted by Praetorian
snipped... Admittedly, I've no personal experience using w/cooling but I know very competent people that have had disasters…imagine ending up with a grands worth of damage to your PC!

BTW I have nearly always overclocked...Now less than in the past.

Most people who overclock do not use water...it's much more risky than other methods of maxing out your hard ware. Companies don't advertise the failure rate, and the people who have the "incidents" don’t mention it often either because they would feel embarrassed.

Well, said people obviously were not too competent after all were they?

If you use a REAL Waterblock (not the totally fanboy Danger Den junk) thats made from all metal then it would cool your CPU adequately to prevent damage even without the pump on. (perhaps not for a day straight of course). When I was watercooling I used the OverclockersHideout stuff, much better build quality than the majority of WC stuff out there. I even tested running it without the pump on, sure it got really hot and crashed, but thats all.

The earlier OCH stuff was rigged to its own mains plugs, so it was permanently on. The newer parts are rigged to your PSU, meaning if the PC is on, so is the pump.

I also fail to understand what all this talk of leaks is about. Dont people use Worm drive clamps? Double up on them and there is no way that hose is going to leak or fall off.

The horror stories from Watercooling, overclocking (and pretty much everything) are from the few idiots that think "me too" and dont put in the time, effort and brain power to do something right. Any decently implemented watercooling kit is as reliable as a heatsink fan.



Matt

Vexorg

Matt

Excellent point about the high quality metal waterblock acting as a sort of heatsink...

Vex.

ManWithThePlan

Hey guys i find this forum very interesting.

I'm building a PC from scratch, nothing too fast.
Planning on overclocking like a motherfncker.

Just wanted to know if any of you know the cheapest stable watercooling option?

Cheers.

Matt Simis

This one is good for the money:

http://www.overclockershideout.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=o&Product_Code=ZIKD&Category_Code=WC

Remember the weakness of the USD vs Euro! The pump is 120v tho, which is a bit annoying but work around able.

Innovotek are pretty good too.


Matt

CivilServant

Matt, is the DangerDen Maze 3 that bad? I was thinking of getting the whole DangerDen blocks cos they seem to have a gotten great reviews on the net. Not sure about them now after what you said. White water rapids seem to be quite poweful, performance wise. But I can't find any place that ships to Ireland atm.

The z4 intercooler kit looks good, but I haven't heard much about z4 so I'm a bit apprehensive about that. A few people on the boards have said that innovatek are quite good too, possibly isn't the greatest for overclocking. I think I might of purchased the z4 system if I haven't already got a dtek heatercore, what do you think is an excellent waterblock?

Matt Simis

Danger Den blocks arent bad, I simply think they designed them to appeal visually better at the sake of functionality. Which is fine for a lot of people/uses.

I think the Swiftech blocks are the best compromise.

Units made out of a single block or two blocks of metal perform better (and offer a little "passive" cooling) than units made from 50% plastic. Adding insult to injury, they all cost about the same.

Decent roundup at the following URL, although the reviewer tends to ignore the fact that as the top 5 units perform within a degree of each other, this implying the measurement tools arent precise enough (never mind the margin of error, which would be about 1-2 degrees too).

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MzU3LDU=


Personally Id use OCH (aka CPUFX), the new Swiftech units or Innovatek at a push.



Matt

BabyEater

Dnger Den make copper top blocks now aswell seen as a lot of people had problem with cracking tops.
If i was to choose a block to pick on a big budget i would chose the white water by little river water blocks .This is the best block available by a good margin altho it is very expensive.
I would pick the TC-4 as a more commercially available block.
I heard that the Z4 isn't that good .
I would only get the maze 3 if it had the copper top .

elexes

afaik my water cooling kit arrived at home today from elara i shall be installing it tonight and then ill be posting about it up hear ... wonder if i can borrow a cam from work to take pics

Matt Simis

Originally posted by BabyEater
Dnger Den make copper top blocks now aswell seen as a lot of people had problem with cracking tops.
If i was to choose a block to pick on a big budget i would chose the white water by little river water blocks .This is the best block available by a good margin altho it is very expensive.
I would pick the TC-4 as a more commercially available block.
I heard that the Z4 isn't that good .
I would only get the maze 3 if it had the copper top .

Well, the Overclocker.com review found the White Water block to be excellent, so I second that. €77 isnt too bad for such a good block: http://www.employees.org/~slf/lrwb/

The only complaint Ive heard about the Z4 is that its undermarketed. The also released two blocks called Z4, which seems pretty stupid.



Matt

Catalyst

Yeah Elexes, I'd be interested in knowing how you get on...., hoping for some feedback from Vex as well

Vexorg

Hoping to get my new pc built this weekend, its got a choice of my curretn p4 1.8a at 2.4, the gigabyte board only goes to 133mhz and a p4 2.0a.

What would be a good test of the performance of the water cooling kit? Presumably test it with a series of progs with its heatsink and Fan, then the same series with the watercooling kit in place.

Whiles its a bit of a nuisance, I doen mind putting it together, runnign the tests then take the mobo out, take off the HSF mounting bracket and fitting the water colling bracket.

Thoughts anyone.

Would like to test a c stepping p4 2.8:)

Vex.

elexes

put most of the water cooling kit together last night . twas dead easy . dont see mutch of a problom with it . tho i am not going to be doing it fully there way, ive decided not to use the very powerfully magnets for holding the water pump/res

with the water block i had to cut part of the bits that hold it down to the cpu socket so that it would fit with my psu ( this is case problom wouldnt of happened in any of my other cases )

i think there could be a chance the back pannel plate shiped could tear part of the tubing so ill be modding that slightly to make it safer .

the kit seems good ill know soon what it rates like to 2 of the coolermaster fans i used in the system . ( amd xp 2100 bloody hot lil thing )