Is water cooling worth the effort?

Marky Mark · 17 Sep 2020 at 01:24

I've always Air cooled but did my first watercooled rig recently. Its really quiet over my previous computer for sure. CPU goes from room temp to 10 to 20 degress C higher even under load usually . £683 of the budget spent on it and only cooling my CPU as waiting for a 3080 ti/super to come out before addding it to the loop. Looks amazing tho

and even the gf likes it.

Nbuilder · 17 Sep 2020 at 01:27

Marky Mark said:
I've always Air cooled but did my first watercooled rig recently. Its really quiet over my previous computer for sure. CPU goes from room temp to 10 to 20 degress C higher even under load usually . £683 of the budget spent on it and only cooling my CPU as waiting for a 3080 ti/super to come out before addding it to the loop. Looks amazing tho and even the gf likes it.

Looks amazing!

Did you have any prior watercooling experience? I am always considering this but pretty confident I would kill the parts

im4gine3 · 17 Sep 2020 at 09:58

Back in the day when people wanted both performance and quietness, i know some who watercooled every component with no case fans, and either hung their radiators out the window (so the breeze will cool it, or dug a hole in their garden and buried the radiator.. if you wanted to go for more exotic approach, and a cleaner looking build...

MikeTimbers · 18 Sep 2020 at 21:29

two other fully custom rigs all designed for efficiency and silence

DarkFulgore · 18 Sep 2020 at 21:57

I don't think watercooling is needed anymore, it hasn't really for a long time, but it will always look amazing and offer the best cooling vs noise levels. It's not hard to do and when done right, you have a fantastic system. There can always be a moment of disaster, but for 99-percent, nothing bad will ever happen.

A decent water cooling rig, with a few hours help of prep (picking parts and layout) with someone who has done it before can be built rather quickly, and patience is a very important step. Hard line tubing takes probably 4x times as long as standard tubing.

oldbanana · 19 Sep 2020 at 02:44

worth the effort ? Surely not.
Is it fun to tinker yes it is!

TangoEchoAlpha · 19 Sep 2020 at 12:27

Marky Mark said:
I've always Air cooled but did my first watercooled rig recently.
<snip>

That is a seriously good looking loop for a first watercooled rig. Kudos to you.

3t3P · 20 Sep 2020 at 12:08

effort as defined by what? temperatures? noise? cost? aesthetics? pride? overclocking? a new hobby?

yes it's worth the 'effort'

but sigh if it's an effort to you that means its a chore and not worth it to those who ask

midweek · 20 Sep 2020 at 13:19

I started watercooling because I had to (crossfire 4890's back in the day that ran too hot for air) but I still do it because it's fun putting a loop together, there is a sense of achievement and I think a loop looks so much better than an air cooled setup.

If it's purely performance gains you're after it won't be worth the effort (and cost!) over a good air setup. If you treat is as hobby and are willing to pay the extra and put the time in then it's quite rewarding.

Mark011 · 4 Oct 2020 at 03:00

one of the main reason why I prefer watercooling is because of the silence and performance, you can run your fans very low and have very good OC results, I'm a maniac of silent pc

Rroff · 4 Oct 2020 at 04:08

Mark011 said:
one of the main reason why I prefer watercooling is because of the silence and performance, you can run your fans very low and have very good OC results, I'm a maniac of silent pc

After I removed the AIO from my current PC I just stuck a big passive (Zalman) heatsink on the CPU, no CPU fan and a bunch of low speed be quiet! Silent Wings 3 in there (does help I have the Corsair 540 air case) and it runs only slightly hotter than with the AIO and the only thing that is really audible unless you stick your head in the case is the one mechanical HDD sitting in the bottom I've still not got around to replacing with an SSD.

I don't think I'll bother with WCing in any guise any more unless I was going for an extreme overclock.

Mark011 · 4 Oct 2020 at 13:50

Rroff said:
After I removed the AIO from my current PC I just stuck a big passive (Zalman) heatsink on the CPU, no CPU fan and a bunch of low speed be quiet! Silent Wings 3 in there (does help I have the Corsair 540 air case) and it runs only slightly hotter than with the AIO and the only thing that is really audible unless you stick your head in the case is the one mechanical HDD sitting in the bottom I've still not got around to replacing with an SSD.

I don't think I'll bother with WCing in any guise any more unless I was going for an extreme overclock.

what about the gpu when gaming? an how's the temperature of the cpu in use?

Jay85 · 4 Oct 2020 at 13:56

Rroff said:
After I removed the AIO from my current PC I just stuck a big passive (Zalman) heatsink on the CPU, no CPU fan and a bunch of low speed be quiet! Silent Wings 3 in there (does help I have the Corsair 540 air case) and it runs only slightly hotter than with the AIO and the only thing that is really audible unless you stick your head in the case is the one mechanical HDD sitting in the bottom I've still not got around to replacing with an SSD.

I don't think I'll bother with WCing in any guise any more unless I was going for an extreme overclock.

On the cpu maybe as big ass air coolers do pretty well nowadays compared to what they were 7-8 years ago. But GPU wise, no you're never gonna get an aircooled card that will run sub 50c temps in particular with how gpu boost works these days. Getting lower temps will increase performance, for instance on my palit 3090 i was hitting 70-71c and barely managing over 2ghz peak core clock and around 1850mhz average. On a watercooled card im stabilising around 50c and getting well over 2ghz and with a decent clock im getting 2165mhz peak while maintaining 2ghz average.

crazy8s · 4 Oct 2020 at 14:11

Having had a watercooled 5820k in the past I would say no, not worth it at all and a total waste of money. Fun experience to build though.

Xyclops · 4 Oct 2020 at 14:16

I tried an AIO cooler on my CPU and the results were not significantly better than I got on air, so I removed it and went back to air. Air is more reliable, and I just want my computer to be minimum maintenance.

BongoHunter · 4 Oct 2020 at 14:19

I'd consider an AIO but only if there was too little space for a decent aircoolers.

Ive found that high end air cooling is cheap compared to water cooling for very similar perf unless your spending big bucks - and its maintainance free.

I did really enjoy my watercooling builds though - definately cool, and if you have to have best perf then it's only real option for day to day running

Xyclops · 4 Oct 2020 at 14:25

Jay85 said:
On the cpu maybe as big ass air coolers do pretty well nowadays compared to what they were 7-8 years ago. But GPU wise, no you're never gonna get an aircooled card that will run sub 50c temps in particular with how gpu boost works these days. Getting lower temps will increase performance, for instance on my palit 3090 i was hitting 70-71c and barely managing over 2ghz peak core clock and around 1850mhz average. On a watercooled card im stabilising around 50c and getting well over 2ghz and with a decent clock im getting 2165mhz peak while maintaining 2ghz average.

Wow. 3090 GPU is quite warm then. I am going to try removing the fans on my 3080 (when it comes) and blow air across the heatsink rather than down onto it (using PCIe extender to rotate it 90 degrees). I think the reason air cooling on GPUs is relatively poor is because the design they are forced to adopt is to make it fit in 2-3 slots. The heatsinks are big, but the airflow is poor (at least at decent noise levels)

Jay85 · 4 Oct 2020 at 14:30

Xyclops said:
Wow. 3090 GPU is quite warm then. I am going to try removing the fans on my 3080 (when it comes) and blow air across the heatsink rather than down onto it (using PCIe extender to rotate it 90 degrees). I think the reason air cooling on GPUs is relatively poor is because the design they are forced to adopt is to make it fit in 2-3 slots. The heatsinks are big, but the airflow is poor (at least at decent noise levels)

It's a really hot card, i mean it is rated at 350w

. My old 2080 would maintain a steady 43c so a 3090 at 350w is about right for temps. on a warm day it can easily creep upto 53-55c!

For once out of all the cards i've owned watercooled, the backplate thats usually just used for aesthetics actually gets REALLY hot! It's definitely up there in the 70's i think. But i can understand why with all the memory chips on the back of the card as well unlike the 3080 which only has them on the front. I have it vertically mounted so i get decent airflow pushing through the entire card and backplate to keep temps in check.

mods1965 · 4 Oct 2020 at 14:34

After six years of running my systems under water, I am looking at going full ITX as so many great cases are small form factor now (NZXT, H1, FormD T1, Ghost S1, NR200P etc.) I will start running under air, but water is still an option even at this size.
As all previous comments have stated, water requires patience, dedication and a lot of love and TLC. It is absolutely worth it if you are happy to embrace it fully and put in the effort to apricate the the good looks and silence!

MikeTimbers · 5 Oct 2020 at 09:15

Purist here but "water-cooling" and "AIO" are not the same. It has been well established that AIO's are not significantly better than a top air cooler; this is fairly self-evident when one considers the surface area of a 120/240 thin-rad AIO is not hugely more than a NH-D14 and with the same number of fans they're going to be similar in performance.

A 420mmx140mmx60mm radiator on the other hand is a completely different level of cooling.