Beginner Advice

[neilr_1984]

Hi

I’ve been building my own pc's on and off for about 10yrs now and all have been air cooled, and always wanted to do water but now the time has come. I’ve searched through the forums and one of my questions has been aswered. As this will be my first water system I’ve decided on going with a kit (either XSPC Raystorm D5 EX240 or 280 CPU Water Cooling Kit : D5 EX Series Kit), the Rad will be mounted it the bottom of the case. but my question is i cant fit anything bigger in as I am tight on space, in the future I want to bring my SLI GTX680's into the loop, I know a single 240 Rad will not be enough to do it but will adding another 120 Rad to the loop help?

my reason for thinking it might is that currently my cpu (i5 2500k @ 4.8-5ghz 1.45v) is cooled by a Corsair H80 push pull and doesnt go past 65ºc while gaming.

Thanks

 

[seumasbeathan]

Those volts are a bit high, I would very much suggest lowering them to under 1.4v

 

[neilr_1984]

will do but for some reason i couldn't get it to stay stable @ 4.8 without the +offset of 0.55v

 

[seumasbeathan]

Well for 4.8ghz you will need pretty high volts, I would suggest going down to 4.5ghz with 1.34volts and then go from there, in real world performance 4.8 is not really noticeably faster at all

 

[neilr_1984]

I've managed to drop it to 1.41-1.42v still @ 4.8 but will take your advice and drop the multiplier to 45 to get a better voltage.

 

[seumasbeathan]

Ok Sorry I can't really give advice on the watercooling, Im not really knowledgeable in that area

 

[Josh Weston]

Why not try 4.7? It should be enough to drop you to within acceptable limits

 

[neilr_1984]

managed to drop it to 4.6 @ around 1.35v but still needs testing for stability.

 

[Master&Puppet]

As for the water-cooling question. you are definitely going to be looking at something biggish on top of the CPU rad for the 680s. Another 240x60mm or 360*35-60mm. So be on the look out for something which can mount a couple of rads in that size range.

The XSPC kits are great things to add to. Definitely get the D5 pump version and in the future all you need to do is get the second radiator and the water-blocks for the GPUs.

 

[neilr_1984]

ok thanks Master&Puppet will keep my eyes open probably going to be looking at a new case also so i can fit bigger rads in.