Cooling setup for this pc?

[adamwebb28]

Hi

I'm fairly new to water cooling. (I had one of the older zalman kits in an old pc a few years back!). I'm basically looking for the best kit to cool a Q9450 and an Asus 4870 x2.

I have no idea where to start looking! I would like the system to be as quiet as possible, my cpu is overclocked slightly but I'm not looking to overclock the gpu so I don't think I need anything too extreme?

My budget is around £200 as well!

Thanks for any help!

 

[PeterStoba]

If you're not looking to overclock much then why do you want to watercool?

That budget is too low to cool both components unless you stretched and went 2nd hand route.

I'd leave the GPU on air, and get a simple 120.2 loop for the CPU

 

[tinytomlogan]

What case?

You'll need a ddc pro and a 360 rad minimum, water block for that card alone is £80 so your near on up to the £200 budget already, youll need to spend at least £250 to go new dude.

 

[adamwebb28]

Well Im thinking watercooling from a sound point of view, I've just bought an Asus 4870 x2 with the tri fan cooler, its extremely loud and I'm sure water cooling would be a lot quieter!

I guess I was a little too optimistic with my budget, How much would you say the minimum would be? What sort of parts should I be looking for?

Thanks!

 

[adamwebb28]

Just been having a look round. What are the Resrators kits like? The passive coolers? Would one of them with the GPU cooler be any good?

Thanks!

 

[Mul.]

I'm guessing that the words of an air cooler user aren't appreciated round here D), but unless you're looking at passive kits, I'm not so sure that watercooling will result in a much quieter machine. Radiators will still need active cooling and as always there's pump noise.

I'm not saying that opting for a watercooling loop is a bad idea but depending on the system components that you own, it's very possible to keep your system quiet with larger heatpipe coolers and slow running fans.

So what's your full system specs inclusive of case and power supply unit?

 

[Jeddy]

The reserator kits will dissapoint you, they have shoddy pumps, poor cooling and may corrode (afaik they use aluminium blocks), not worth spending money on. Try snurging around and picking stuff up second hand.

 

[adamwebb28]

Hi my sys specs are:

Q9450 @ 3.1 Ghz (I may want to up this a bit more but won't do it on air)

Rampage Forumla Motherboard

4 GB (2 x2GB) OZZ Reaper X memory

Asus 4870 x2

Creative X-Fi Titanium sound card

Zalman ZM850 Silent PSU (850w)

Coolermaster Cosmos case

1 Tb + 500gb Samsung F1's

60GB OCZ Apex SSD

Windows Vista Home Premium/Win 7

The big problem is the 4870 x2 has the tri cooler fan and is extremely loud, loud enough that is very audible over my speakers during a game. I don't see why Asus put this fan on their if they didn't overclock the card out of the box.

I think I should rephrase my original post as well to say I am intending on overclocking my PC, just not until I am happy the cooling is in place for it! But it needs to be a trade off between heat and volume!

I don't really have a budget, just my initial impression was I don't want to spend more than £200 on cooling, but will quite happily push to more to get the best stuff!

Anymore help?

Thanks again!

 

[adamwebb28]

Hi

Just brining this back to the top, I have decided I do want to go down the water cooling route with this setup and want to by the parts over the next couple of months, so costs won't be a problem.

Can anyone help me get the best bits for this setup? Im most interested in cooling the CPU and GPU, plus I will want to overclock both once the coolings in place!

Thanks!