From H100i to Much better ?

[Filby83]

So i have a H100i on my gaming setup.

I am moving towards A very Industrial looking Rig, no lights and bright colours.

As it stands i Run everything in a Bitfenix Prodigy:

P8Z77-I
i5-3570k Maybe an Upgrade to 3770k
8Gb Samsung Green, Replaced soon by 16Gb Hyper X
AX760I
H100i
MSI 7950 1145/1350
Noctua NF-F12's
256 Gb Samsung 840 Pro

So in an effort to show all my years "30" within the next 6 months this will surface:

First of Water:
XSPC:
RX360 Rad
D5 Dual Bay Pump/Res
EK-Supremacy Clean All copper
x6 fittings
Mat Black Tube, Special tech always seam out of stock

Case:
Case Labs Mercury S5 Black with Left Large window right half height.

Could anybody advise on the Water side of things ? dont a little looking about, and this setup seams like a good balance of price Rad size and cooling, I would like to add a GPU block on there but not wasting money on the 7950, im gona wait untill 2015 and see what gear AMD/Nvidia come up with on the Die shrink cards.

Regards

Mark

 

[Surfie]

Personally I would go for some 45 and 90 degree rotary fittings as well. Adds a little cost but makes it 1000% easier to get your tubing runs straighter which helps the looks no end. Adding a single gpu on this would be ok, but any more than one and you will want another rad in addition to the one you are looking at.

To be honest, depending on if your case can fit it or not, I would consider getting a second rad anyway. It would allow you to run your fans slower which will allow for a quieter build.

 

[Filby83]

Maybe but even on 1300Rpm the NF-F12s make next to no noise.

With the GPU blocks only fitting one card im waiting untill i can get a really high end card before i buy one

Rotary fitting Im gona have a look now

 

[Surfie]

Maybe but even on 1300Rpm the NF-F12s make next to no noise.

With the GPU blocks only fitting one card im waiting untill i can get a really high end card before i buy one

Rotary fitting Im gona have a look now

With the gpu choice, just make sure that you choose a card which uses the reference layout. If you don't, you will find it more difficult to find a water block to fit properly.

 

[Filby83]

Thats a bastard really because i really like the triple Fan Cards Inno3d and Devil cards by powercolour trouble is the water setup is over kill for just CPU so to justify it i need to cool the GPU

 

[Bartacus]

You could look around for a second-hand block for the 7950. If it's a reference card, and you can stand to throw away some cash rather than wait, Alphacool does have some decently priced GPU blocks at around the $100 mark. That will help justify your setup, and you'll be grinning your face off at the low GPU temps.

 

[Filby83]

Think XSPC do a universal GPU block then i just need to cool rest of the card

 

[Surfie]

Thats a bastard really because i really like the triple Fan Cards Inno3d and Devil cards by powercolour trouble is the water setup is over kill for just CPU so to justify it i need to cool the GPU

Well, those coolers are great, they are not really relevant to you though, as you will be removing them and replacing with a waterblock. Check the pcb layout and compare to the reference design. If they match, that's the card you want.

The other alternative (although I wouldn't do it personally) is to get a gpu with a hybrid liquid/air cooler on it (eg asus cu ii).

 

[Filby83]

Just gona have to live with some shitty Ref card until i get block then, are the ref cards able to run as quick as a fancy custom card ?

 

[Surfie]

Before or after overclock? Before, generally no. But the non reference designs are usually done to improve cooling performance (thus allowing for a decent overclock). Once you get a gpu under water, you will see massive drops in temps vs air cooling. At that point you could easily over clock the card yourself, tweaking to find your perfect match of performance and temps.

 

[Filby83]

Sounds good, maybe hunt down a 7990

 

[NeverBackDown]

Think XSPC do a universal GPU block then i just need to cool rest of the card

Full cover blocks only. Core blocks are ugly and a waste of money.

Either get a full block now for your 7950 or upgrade later down the road as you said(2015). Just keep in mind when you decide to upgrade newer cards may already be out so you will hold up for those and then the other vendor may come out with ones, etc. Its a nonstop cycle.

Personally i would get a 290 underwater now and not worry for a long long time.

 

[Surfie]

Full cover blocks only. Core blocks are ugly and a waste of money.

Either get a full block now for your 7950 or upgrade later down the road as you said(2015). Just keep in mind when you decide to upgrade newer cards may already be out so you will hold up for those and then the other vendor may come out with ones, etc. Its a nonstop cycle.

Personally i would get a 290 underwater now and not worry for a long long time.

^ This.

Pick one: wait till 2015 so you can see mantle take up and then pick the card you want, or run the risk and buy a 290 reference and water block that, and don't upgrade again until 2016... personally I'm waiting until 2015, but that's just me.

 

[Filby83]

Im gona wait the 7905 doing ok for now.

There is also the option of a full cover block for the P8Z77-I but again do i wait ?

 

[Surfie]

Well, that's a personal choice really. If you were wanting to add motherboard AND a GPU to the loop, I would strongly recommend a larger amount of radiator space...

However, the motherboard only benefits a small amount from being put under water: by and large it is not needed in the slightest. Though I will be the first to admit that it looks bloody amazing.

 

[Filby83]

What about these 80+mm thick Rads ? such as the alphacool nexxxos monsta 360 ? With these bad boys taking more water and having much more surface Area

Sack the Motherboard full block, get EK Supremacy CPU block tripple fan Rad & the Dual bay pump/Res love the look of that XSPC one

Then i wil get the Full cover GPU block when i get the better card, and i will wait until 2015 to see whats about.

Since there's not much difference between the 2500/3570/4670, am i safe to say i can stick with this CPU (3570) for a good few years without it becoming a bottle Neck ?

And the 16Gb of ram wont be used up by gaming anytime soon ?

 

[Surfie]

What about these 80+mm thick Rads ? such as the alphacool nexxxos monsta 360 ? With these bad boys taking more water and having much more surface Area

Don't get me wrong, I love the look of these rads, but the simple fact is this: the price to performance (and the hassle of installing in your case) is just not there for these rads. You pretty much MUST use push/pull to make it work effectively, and the clearance is just not there for most cases to do this. You would be much better off with the UT60 from the same manufacturer in 99% of the cases. The temperature difference between the Monsta and the UT60 is VERY little - generally, less than 2 degrees.

Sack the Motherboard full block, get EK Supremacy CPU block tripple fan Rad & the Dual bay pump/Res love the look of that XSPC one

Then i wil get the Full cover GPU block when i get the better card, and i will wait until 2015 to see whats about.

Since there's not much difference between the 2500/3570/4670, am i safe to say i can stick with this CPU (3570) for a good few years without it becoming a bottle Neck ?

And the 16Gb of ram wont be used up by gaming anytime soon ?

It is my view that the differences in chips, in general, can be safely disregarded these days (particularly by gamers), unless one of the following is you:

• A bench marker trying to push your machine to just shy of breaking point
• A folder trying to increase your points per day
• Machine use is for a server running one or more Virtual Machines
• Using software that will push all your cores almost equally

In almost all other cases, the chip itself is practically irrelevant, as it will not really be stressed that much. Gamers in particular can be ignorant of the chip so long as it was released in the last 2 years or so. They don't even need more than 2 cores technically, since most games are single process threads: meaning, they will typically only push one core of the CPU. The GPU is a much much more important part of their rig (again, this is ONLY my view).

16GB of RAM will be fine for a long time to come - especially for gaming.

 

[Filby83]

Cool,

its 100% Gaming Rig, not even internet browsing it was bought as a Steam machine

However i love all things Pc, so a cool and quiet reliable Gaming rig is all it will ever be.

 

[Surfie]

Cool,

its 100% Gaming Rig, not even internet browsing it was bought as a Steam machine

However i love all things Pc, so a cool and quiet reliable Gaming rig is all it will ever be.

Just curious, Steam OS? Or Windows?

I'll be honest, i've thought about adding Steam OS as a virtual machine to see how it runs, but I doubt it would actually be any better than my Windows environment, since most games on Linux look far less appealing than they do on Windows.

 

[Bartacus]

I would slightly disagree with Surfie's statement about push/pull on the Monstas (in a friendly way though). It's not that you need push/pull for a Monsta to show it's performance, but you need SERIOUS fans (ie not Corsair crap with low static pressure), AND you need to run them at full blast. Once you start lowering voltage/speed with fans on a Monsta, it's performance advantage over it's little brothers (ie the UT60) disappears. In your case, since you seek a quiet gaming rig, I'd echo Surfie's sentiment and avoid the Monstas and drop down to a UT60. If you were looking for ultimate heat dissipation and didn't care about noise, Monstas would be a good choice.

I have a pair of them with 3 Gentle Typhoon 2150RPM fans on each one, and when you crank up the fans the performance is impressive, but not quiet.