water cooling

[Tinneth]

OK I did the 3DMark03 test to push my CPU and this is what the temperature reads at:

PCAlert4 = 58'C
BIOS = 53/54'C

I'll just leave it at that. There doesnt seem to be anything wrong with that.

 

[ewilson248]

Thats just fine at 136F , not bad at all most gpu/cpu can go MUCH higher than that, to around 180-190 or so.. no worries.

FYI here is mine: at idle cpu- 115F, gpu-100F , case temp - 80F
full load cpu- 145F, gpu-125F , case temp - 90F

BUT i have several fans, and a HUGE chunk of copper cooling my stuff.

 

[FictiousWill]

I may jump into watercooling in the near future but I'm hesitant to run watercooling on brand new (expensive) parts. Those of you in the know - save me a google search on a topic I know nothing about - What sort of measures do watercooling setups have against the evils of condensation? Or even leaks for that matter? Surely there must be some sort of safeguards in place for that, right?

 

[shapeshifter]

if your going to go watercooling the best way to go is to build it yourself and not buy pre made kits (see koolance, thermaltake, swiftech etc) while they all "WORK" your missing the entire point of going to watercooling by getting any one of those, sure they get your temps slightly lower then good air cooling, but not enough to make it worth it.

If you buy all the best parts, mix and match, you can get a great performing water cooling system that will "pump" circles around any "KIT"

See www.dangerden.com (they make great stuff) :naughty: (wish I had some $$$ to drop on a kick arse wc setup from them, they carry alot of great rads to, and good tubing, well everything from them is great) The TDX waterblock = :smoking:

Oh and if you go and decided to cool your cpu, a small rad will do, but if you decided to cool your cpu and video card. You should get a larger one (otherwise you will notice temp increase) some people put more then one rad in (hell some people watercool hd's, the northbridge, the psu... you name it) if you go to the extreme you need extreme radiator so it can cool the water. (and don't go cheap on a pump)

 

[shapeshifter]

I had a similar problem recently. I had a Abit AT7-MAX2 m/b, AMD 2700+ CPU and ATi Radeon 9800 Pro 128, all at stock speeds, in an Aluminium Alloy case with 2 front intake fans, 1 side exhaust, 2 rear exhausts, and 1 top blowhole and a Thermaltake Volcano 7+ (?) HSF (with Arctic Silver III).

My CPU was IDLING at ~50-55C (surface) and ~60-66C (core)!!!!
So, i recently installed a Koolance EXOS water cooling unit on my CPU and GFX card. I'm now idling at 38/44C (surface/core) and thats while overclocked (admittedly only to 2800+ speeds - i've not had chance to play around properly yet) and an overclocked 9800Pro to 450/350 (core/mem). Under load my CPU rarely gets above 49C now. :E :cheers:

The EXOS is a great system, extremely easy to set up, works well. The only downside is that it is quite expensive at around £200 for everything (blocks etc) from Tekheads.co.uk.

See this is an example of a "cruddy kit" my Sp-97 with a 92mm fan kills you in temps. Thats on AIR your using WATER it should be LOADS better. moral of story = don't buy kit, buy seperate parts and build it yourself.

Idle temps xp-m 2500+ @ 2.4ghz = 38C
Load temps xp-m 2500+ @ 2.4ghz = 47C

btw: a xp chip at 2400mhz = an 3611+ in amds rating system. (12x200=2.4ghz)

I can push it to 2.5ghz, temps raise to 39C idle and 49C load, but this is not the best mobile chip, doesn't like 2.5ghz with out major volts, and I don't want to push to many into it.

Total cost of my sp-97 and fan = $98 canadian which equals out to 39.1882 british pounds.

 

[poseyjmac]

aye, its funny that the sp-97 plus a tornado beats out many water cooling systems! although its very loud, and thats not very funny. which is why its in my closet

 

[Griz]

See this is an example of a "cruddy kit" my Sp-97 with a 92mm fan kills you in temps. Thats on AIR your using WATER it should be LOADS better. moral of story = don't buy kit, buy seperate parts and build it yourself.

Idle temps xp-m 2500+ @ 2.4ghz = 38C
Load temps xp-m 2500+ @ 2.4ghz = 47C

btw: a xp chip at 2400mhz = an 3611+ in amds rating system. (12x200=2.4ghz)

I can push it to 2.5ghz, temps raise to 39C idle and 49C load, but this is not the best mobile chip, doesn't like 2.5ghz with out major volts, and I don't want to push to many into it.

Total cost of my sp-97 and fan = $98 canadian which equals out to 39.1882 british pounds.

I really don't think you can just go off temps. I think what you need to look at is the temperature difference from one cooling system to the next. As you can see my air cooling system with six case fans, and a fairly decent (at the time) HSF, was giving me idle temps <60C. My "cruddy kit" wc system has given me a 20+C drop in those temps, something i don't believe any air cooling system could have whilst keeping noise levels acceptable (92mm(!!!) fans - must be noisy?)

btw i would assume that you've reviewed, or at least read more than one review, on the Koolance EXOS before dismissing it as "cruddy"?

As i said earlier, all of the reviews i've read (5-6 different reviews) ALL were VERY impressed with the EXOS. In fact, since they had the chance to push it (i haven't yet) they've managed to get CPU overclocks of 600 - 800MHz whilst maintaining stable temps - i wouldn't call that cruddy.

Again, as i said before, i have absolutely no doubt that i could've gotten better performance from component-built wc but there was now way i could fit a pump, radiator, revservoir etc into my case, so i HAD to go for an external unit. My opinion - if you can use component-built water cooling do so, if not, then don't just dismiss kits out of hand. Contrary to popular opinion, there are some good kits out there - just make sure you do the research beforehand so you know what your getting.

 

[Maxi]

I may jump into watercooling in the near future but I'm hesitant to run watercooling on brand new (expensive) parts. Those of you in the know - save me a google search on a topic I know nothing about - What sort of measures do watercooling setups have against the evils of condensation? Or even leaks for that matter? Surely there must be some sort of safeguards in place for that, right?

Condensation is when warmer air meets something cold, in this case the cold hose, and then it forms water droplets on the hose. This can only happend in watercooling if you cool your water below the rooms temperature by, let's say a compressor or something simmilar. Normally you cool the radiator with fans which uses the rooms own air, so the temp of the water, or the hose, can never be colder then the ambient temperature in the room, which means that you'll never have to worry about condensation, unless you cool the water below the temperature of the room.

For leaks people use hoseclamps, (letkunkiristin) at each point where the hose connects to something. I've never had a problem with leaks in my system, but I did have one leak when I tested my watercooling setup outside my case, but that was because I diddn't tighten one of the hoseclamps enough.

If anyone want's more info, feel free to ask, i'll try to answer everything.


EDIT:

I really don't think you can just go off temps. I think what you need to look at is the temperature difference from one cooling system to the next. As you can see my air cooling system with six case fans, and a fairly decent (at the time) HSF, was giving me idle temps <60C. My "cruddy kit" wc system has given me a 20+C drop in those temps, something i don't believe any air cooling system could have whilst keeping noise levels acceptable (92mm(!!!) fans - must be noisy?)

btw i would assume that you've reviewed, or at least read more than one review, on the Koolance EXOS before dismissing it as "cruddy"?

As i said earlier, all of the reviews i've read (5-6 different reviews) ALL were VERY impressed with the EXOS. In fact, since they had the chance to push it (i haven't yet) they've managed to get CPU overclocks of 600 - 800MHz whilst maintaining stable temps - i wouldn't call that cruddy.

Again, as i said before, i have absolutely no doubt that i could've gotten better performance from component-built wc but there was now way i could fit a pump, radiator, revservoir etc into my case, so i HAD to go for an external unit. My opinion - if you can use component-built water cooling do so, if not, then don't just dismiss kits out of hand. Contrary to popular opinion, there are some good kits out there - just make sure you do the research beforehand so you know what your getting.

As I said, you do NOT NOT NOT need a reservoir when you watercool, that's just a myth. I first belived that you needed one too, but I noticed that I couldn't fit one inside my case, so I scrapped it and seerched around for another method, and then I found that some people have been using whats called a T line, basically it's just a T connector in the line, I have it at the lowest point in the system, but people say that having it at the top is best. But i've found that if I put it there I won't be able to empty my system at all, but when I have it at the bottom, it's a little bit harder to fill, but it's VERY easy to empty.

Also I thought I had to make an external unit, but I found a nifty way of fitting the radiator inside my case. I drilled out two 120mm fan holes in the side of my case, and but the radiator inside beside the HD cage and up one of the 5.25 bays. I'll provide pics if anyone's interested on how I did it.


Dear god, this is my longest post ever.


EDIT 2:

Also what many people don't seem to realize is that Watercooling isn't just lower temps and a quieter system, with watercooling you can dissipate more heat than with your heatsink, for example, even if you have temps of about 35-40 with your watercooling, you can push the vcore of the cpu up higher without raising temps as much as you could with a normal heatsink.

Most people who are considering to move into WC don't realize this important feature. This is why WC provides more room to overclock. Heat dissipation is more important than temps.

 

[Griz]

MaxiKana,

I’ll have to bow to your superior knowledge on the need (or not) for a reservoir – I’ve only been into water cooling for a few months now, clearly you’ve been at it a lot longer!!

However, I do see theoretical benefits to having one. From what I remember of my thermo-dynamics classes, the more fluid (in this case water) you have in a closed loop system passing through localised heat sources, the longer the re-circulation time and greater the heat dissipation (due to the increased volume of liquid), therefore the lower the average temperature of the liquid (or closer to ambient temperature). This, I believe, is also one of the reasons why larger bore hoses are preferred, to provide more liquid for the heat to dissipate through.

Then again, in a PC water cooling system this effect is probably negligible.

 

[Maxi]

Well, what happends when the water warms up? it will take longer to cool a larger ammount of water too, so theoretically you'd need a bigger radiator. But I haven't really thought about it that way .

One good thing with a res however is that it's VERY easy to fill and bleed the wc system, compared with a closed loop system, mine takes about an hour or to to bleed, and it does take awhile to empty and fill it too