Looking to purchase a water cooler.. need help

[kacation_man]

I have never used a water(liquid) cooler for a pc before so I really dont even know where to start.

so I'd like to keep my budget to a max of $150.

I have a Intel Core2Quad Q6600 running on air right now and sadly while overlocking my temp shoots over 80C. thats way to hot.. I have about 150 to spend right now on a water cooling system. Need some input on a good one for less then 150 that will do the job well, it doesnt have to be the best, but would be nice if it work accordingly with little or no problems.

Now, the cpu isnt the only thing i plan on liquid cooling, while I've hear cooling the north bridge on your mobo is a good idea, I wouldn't even know where that is to start [ sadly ]


However, my graphics card is suspect in my heat issue, if you know anything about the ATI HD 2900 series you know they double as a space heater. Luckily for me, there is water cooler heat sink made just for this card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103044

This is something ( and i might not get it until later ) that i plan on adding to the water cooling system i want to get.

So, with that all said, any one have any suggestions on what would be a good get?

 

[Terminator]

I have never used a watercooling system for a gaming PC but about 6 or 7 years ago i made a watercooling system for a pc (500mhz lol) as a design project long before you could buy any 'kits' (i should have started a damn company!!)
So i did a fair bit of research into what works.

In my opinion any small volume systems are a complete waste of decent watercooling components as the water heats up very quickly an unless you have a very efficient radiator chip temperatures arn't actually that impressive you may as well use a fan system within a case as it would be far cheaper, whilst a small volume radbox watercooling system is indeed better than the best heatsink/fan i would go for a D.I.Y option for optimum cooling, buy decent quality waterblocks with 1/2" barbs, plenty of pipe, a powerful pump such as a swiftech D5 and run the pipes into a large external system which could easily be homemade as watercooling devices are at a premium price!

I'm setting up a watercooling system for my upcoming build as i have no intention of moving the computer i am using a large (10+ gallon) passive radiator, so no fans in the system except PSU, which will hopefully be a very quiet one like my tagan i had before!

It's very important to get good quality waterblocks, this is the key area of heat transfer.....providing your system can push enough cool water through it.
Good quality waterblocks will be made from copper and have several fins directly above the chip in the flow channel, unlike fan cooled heatsinks you actually want a low mass block with a thin plate in contact with the chip, not so thin that it will deform and thus cause air gaps but thin so heat can transfer into the water quickly and thus the heat can be taken away by the water efficiently, if the design covers more area, for example a VGA block that covers the ram modules you'll actually want a thicker plate for strength and you want the heat to be spread more with this design.
Copper conducts heat much better than water but as water has a good heat capacity and the fact it is flowing through the system you want this to have maximum surface area within the waterblock, the copper transfers the heat well but you don't want it to 'block' the water from taking the heat.
From what i have seen, EK block look very good.

If you must have a self contained watercooling system, if you are moving it regularly etc i would suggest a triple fan radiator combined with a large reservoir, especially if you intend to cool every component in your computer, i often see watercooling builds with very low volumes (sometimes just what's in the pipes practically!) and inefficient radiators, don't make this mistake.

 

[Asus]

Are you running the stock heatsink? Might try just upgrading to a substantially better heatsink ($20-30 for arctic cooling freezer 7 pro)
The other thing to look at is if your motherboard has a long heatpipe on it. A lot of boards use a long heatpipe to cover several components and if you remove it to watercool the northbridge chip then the other components will not be cooled well.

buy decent quality waterblocks with 1/2" barbs, plenty of pipe, a powerful pump such as a swiftech D5 and run the pipes into a large external system

agreed
1/2" is needed

Also, cheaper@SVC. Although not as fast for shipping.

 

[Terminator]

I like the look of the MSI hydrogen watercooled mobo, the all copper cooler runs from the southbridge, northbridge to mosfet all in one copper pipe which would be a hell of a lot easier to rig up that 3 seperate blocks with 6 barbs and 3x the probability of a leak occuring compared to the two barbs on this system.

The only problem is i am not too fond of MSI motherboards as i have had problems in the past, i have stuck to asus since and had no problems.

 

[Terminator]

I don't know if a cheaper fan designed a couple of years ago is going to be any better than the stock cooling for a current-day quad-core CPU.

Except for those hideously big copper heat piped bigger than my fist blocks, they will provide better cooling than the reference heatsink but i don't like them at all, it kinda makes me think they should just mount a slab of concrete to the chip to absorb the heat.

That's the real thing that turned me towards watercooling, the reasonable limit for aircooling has been reached as far as i'm concerned, you don't want a huge chunk of copper that's gonna break your motherboard.

(Note: I still think aircooling is fine for lower end PC's, those for people who just browse the net/casual gaming and don't need anything powerful)

 

[Asus]

I don't know if a cheaper fan designed a couple of years ago is going to be any better than the stock cooling for a current-day quad-core CPU.

The X6800 used to test the coolers uses just 20 watts less (load) than the q6600 so it shouldn't be a big impact.
You can see here when OCing the X6800 to 3.8GHz the AC freezer 7 pro is at ~58 C under load. Not much different compared to the Thermalright ultra 120 extreme. The intel heatsink for the X6800 hit 60C+ at just 3.3GHz.

 

[Asus]

Well, you sure showed me!

You questioned the idea (which is good to do). But your answer is right in the same link. :\