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...