Is water cooling worth the effort?

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It's the planning, tinkering, building, silence and lower temperatures that I enjoy. Also not having a kilo of copper hanging from the CPU mount.

Really depends what you are after.

Air cooling requires upkeep too. No system is maintenance free.
 
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It's the planning, tinkering, building, silence and lower temperatures that I enjoy. Also not having a kilo of copper hanging from the CPU mount.

Really depends what you are after.

Air cooling requires upkeep too. No system is maintenance free.

Well said, my gpu has bad coil whine, so a down side of the silence and yesterday was going to go back to air. Put air back on gpu and omg 747 take off and 70 deg/c spewing out of case.
My ryzen 3600 has 960mm of rad at the mo :D
 
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I scratched that itch for the first time a few years back

is it worth it? I guess that depends on what your trying to achieve

My system has been pretty much maintenance free for a while now but Ive also not upgraded anything for years and thats were the issue start.

The bad
Got a couple hundred quid for a new gfx card? add another hundred for a water block on top, then add fresh tubing and water, then add the 2 days stripping it down cleaning and refilling, drop another half day of leak testing, assuming that good then add the next few weeks of daily checking just to make sure before really trusting it.

The Good
looks awesome, cools better than any air cooler, my rad fans are hardly on in winter,
oc headroom? sure I dont bother too much these days system needs to be 100% stable as im using it for remoting in to work till they sort laptops out for us cpu is still around 4.4 but not clocked to 670's now for ages and tbh it hardly seems worth it for the few games I play these days.


Given I've got the stuff, as and when I can warrant the upgrade (new baby and mortgages are a pain) I will probably W/C again. Would I do it if I didnt have the gear already? probably not, cost aside im just not sure its worth the hassle unless you have the time and opportunity to spend on maintenance and are happy with the inconvenient and more costly upgrades. That being said, with money as it is, I'm much more likely to by a ps5 for its convenience and relative low lifetime cost, for me spending £1500 every 3-5 years on upgrades just isnt a thing these days and bang for buck is where its at
 
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Unless you're using dyes and other fancy coolants, a functioning water loop only needs the occasional top up with water which is very simple. I often run my loops for 2-4 years without draining and if I wasn't fussed about keeping the water topped up, the reservoir has enough to go for 2+ years easily without needing a refill. I drain when I upgrade the PC these days which is usually every 2-3 years. Prior to that it was annual but then family and other priorities took over and I didn't have the time or need.

Other than that it's a quarterly (or so) vacuum of the filters, fans and inside, something that I would have to do for a fully air cooled system anyway. More timely and costly to set up water but ongoing is pretty much the same as air.
 
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I bought a few litres of Halfords deionised car battery water and built my loop about 5 years ago. Dripped in some ph balance stuff once or twice and never touched it much since.

Using coloured fluids and crap just requires maintenance. Simple water loops are fine.
 
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A decent air cooler is just as good, a lot more reliable, cheaper, and quieter too. I really do think there is a feeling among constructors that water-cooling is a lot more PRO but truth is that it's not.
Having said that, I think for PC manufacturers/constructors there is a really good reason why they prefer water coolers ~ because large air coolers can cause damage when transported roughly by a courier, and we all know that couriers play football with the boxes. So my feeling is that if you are building the PC yourself then buy a decent air cooler. Save yourself a load of money and buy something that makes it go faster or some more RGB fans if that's your thing!
 
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A decent air cooler is just as good, a lot more reliable, cheaper, and quieter too. I really do think there is a feeling among constructors that water-cooling is a lot more PRO but truth is that it's not.
Having said that, I think for PC manufacturers/constructors there is a really good reason why they prefer water coolers ~ because large air coolers can cause damage when transported roughly by a courier, and we all know that couriers play football with the boxes. So my feeling is that if you are building the PC yourself then buy a decent air cooler.

Er no.
Lower temps with water, lower noise with water.
Reliability? Fans can fail on either.
Air is cheaper though.
 
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Er no.
Lower temps with water, lower noise with water.
Reliability? Fans can fail on either.
Air is cheaper though.

Disagree with you on everything there.. !!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23vjWtUpItk

Fans can fail, yes, but the pump in a water cooler is the weakest link. If the pump fails the result is catastrophic. The CPU temperature rises very fast indeed. There is no such component in air cooling, even if the fan fails there is still a lot of cooling. Not only that but water-coolers lose water over time, so eventually they will definitely fail. Again, there is no such comparable in air coolers. They just keep on working.
 
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Obvious troll.

My system has lost no water over the last year. If it's losing water there is a leak somewhere. Once completed it's a closed loop.

Don't confuse AIO with water cooling. AIO is a different thing.
 
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With all the new cpus and gpus with more cores and power usage, I am wondering how long just air will be viable when people are running overclocked cpus and gpus in an enclosed box.
 
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Reading through this thread has definitely thrown a spanner in the works. I literally had most of the bits I needed in my basket that I wanted to build my first custom loops system, and now I’m torn.

For me it’s an itch I want to scratch, plus silence (or near as) under load is probably my top reason why I wanted to go down the water cooling road and give it a go.

However what this post has now done for me is thrown the whole lot into perspective, which is a good thing I guess as it’s made me ask myself some questions I didn’t really think about.

I’ve just mentioned my main reason for wanted to custom loop, and yes aesthetically will look good which is an added bonus (although not so much the rgb for me) plus I do enjoy tinkering putting together a build...

But do I want constant / or more frequent maintenance? Not really. Will I enjoy putting it together? Yep. Price to performance good? Not really, the price of my basket is more than the 3080 I’ve preordered...and that didn’t include everything I wanted/needed.

I’ve just bought the bequiet 500dx case which I love due to it being a lot quieter and with much better air flow (my aorus 1080ti xtreme 10c less under load which is still on its stock cooler/noisy fans), having gone from the poor airflow, much noisier Corsair 570x case. Also in addition to the case swap, I left my H100i behind as that wasn’t cooling all that well top mounted anymore, and bought the bequiet dark slim heat sink which includes a 120 silent wing 3 fan. I have a 9900kf @ 5ghz 1.23v under load and with h100i top mounted I was heat soaking due to pump on its way out, and seeing temps as high as 90c playing BFV. Front mounted I was seeing mid 60’s but front mounting in my new 500dx isn’t what I want. With the dark slim air cooler, mid 70’s... winner.

Point is, thanks to the comments I’ve read, I’m saying to myself cpu will probably be 50/60 c with custom loop, 3080 (whenever I get it) would probably be 45/55 maybe 60 depending how slow I want the fans to run to retain near silence...would the extra boost clocks from the water cooled gpu be noticeable over a 65/75 degree stock cooler be noticeable in game? No. Plus this new 500dx case is damn near silent anyway and I’ve seen reviews of the tuf oc 3080 being pretty quiet too.

Conclusion; I’ll think about it some more lol until then I’ll run with my 500dx air setup for the time being as it pretty much ticks all the boxes...
 
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Honestly, the maintenance is not often at all if you prepare your blocks etc before installation, people leave them running for years on end with no issue, plus if you like the installation/tweaking then draining it wont be much of a chore to you either.

I'm swapping my build into a new case this week and looking forward to the process of it.

If cost is an issue you can buy so much stuff second hand for dirt cheap, I have a DDC 3.2 pump/res, a vega 56 block, cpu waterblock and a 360, 280 and 240 rad cost me around £120, cheaper than a lot of 360mm cpu aios...
 
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in terms of overclocking etc watercooling is not as appealing like it was a couple years ago.
I'm watercooling pretty much from the beginning .. when we used aquarium pumps and car heaters as radiators.
I would still use a custom loop for the cpu because once you have your rad/pump/block you don't really need to change it unless the mounting changes a lot.
With gpu's as someone mention its a different story. Fullcover blocks are quite expensive.
It is worth it for looks and cool factor... but only if you already have a high end rig.
Maintenance is not a problem. I was running same loop for 4 years without changing anything.. but i would not recommend pastel fluids etc.

that said.. I recently moved from o11 dynamic to nzxt h1 and I am using an AIO for the first time.. I am quite pleasantly surprised how good it is
 
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Honestly, the maintenance is not often at all if you prepare your blocks etc before installation, people leave them running for years on end with no issue, plus if you like the installation/tweaking then draining it wont be much of a chore to you either.

I'm swapping my build into a new case this week and looking forward to the process of it.

If cost is an issue you can buy so much stuff second hand for dirt cheap, I have a DDC 3.2 pump/res, a vega 56 block, cpu waterblock and a 360, 280 and 240 rad cost me around £120, cheaper than a lot of 360mm cpu aios...

Fair point, I'm still very much considering it.
 
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in terms of overclocking etc watercooling is not as appealing like it was a couple years ago.
I'm watercooling pretty much from the beginning .. when we used aquarium pumps and car heaters as radiators.
I would still use a custom loop for the cpu because once you have your rad/pump/block you don't really need to change it unless the mounting changes a lot.
With gpu's as someone mention its a different story. Fullcover blocks are quite expensive.
It is worth it for looks and cool factor... but only if you already have a high end rig.
Maintenance is not a problem. I was running same loop for 4 years without changing anything.. but i would not recommend pastel fluids etc.

that said.. I recently moved from o11 dynamic to nzxt h1 and I am using an AIO for the first time.. I am quite pleasantly surprised how good it is

Very true regarding the CPU, it's not something I'll be changing anytime soon. To be fair neither will I be swapping the 3080 when it arrives for a good while also.

I was going to build the system in a O11 XL which obviously adds to the cost, even though I recently purchased a 500dx for my air setup.

Interesting you say that about the AIO, how does it compare to your custom loop you had? Which AIO did you go for?
 
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Very true regarding the CPU, it's not something I'll be changing anytime soon. To be fair neither will I be swapping the 3080 when it arrives for a good while also.

I was going to build the system in a O11 XL which obviously adds to the cost, even though I recently purchased a 500dx for my air setup.

Interesting you say that about the AIO, how does it compare to your custom loop you had? Which AIO did you go for?
Why not go for an AIO and see how you fell about using water. I started with the original Corsair H60 and found it was fine, so moved onto full water-cooling the CPU, then added the GPU later. You may find the AIO works fine for you as is the case for lots of people.
 
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Why not go for an AIO and see how you fell about using water. I started with the original Corsair H60 and found it was fine, so moved onto full water-cooling the CPU, then added the GPU later. You may find the AIO works fine for you as is the case for lots of people.

I was using the H100i. Pump has weakened, which forced me to leave my corsair case and pump and go with bequiet 500dx case and their Dark slim air cooler for my 9900kf. The aircooler appears to be performing the same in some cases. Worse case it's 10c warmer than the h100i I was using playing BFV
 
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I was using the H100i. Pump has weakened, which forced me to leave my corsair case and pump and go with bequiet 500dx case and their Dark slim air cooler for my 9900kf. The aircooler appears to be performing the same in some cases. Worse case it's 10c warmer than the h100i I was using playing BFV
Then this comes down to if you have the cash to spare and fancy trying it out. If you go for the O11XL, you are going to end up spending a lot of money to kit it out. I have the standard O11 with the EK-Classic DP Side distro plate and two EK 240 PE. That was expensive enough to build.
 
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