Water Cooling Questions...

The_Governour

New member
The other day I was surfing some threads about water cooling and we see many questions about what loops to make or if they should go custom or just a AIO, many also ask if they should get a startes kit.

The following quote is so true:

I never even looked at starter kits because I knew I wanted very specific things. My GPU's only have one block available and the other major components were all purchased to match those and I can see now a kit would have been very poor value. Your gonna want a D5, your gonna want a 360 60mm radiator and probably nicer piping and fittings. Seriously you need to be prepared to drop £1k on your rig and see minuscule performance gains, the aesthetics and acoustics will be phenomenal if you execute it correctly. So if you don't do it absolutely correctly there isn't much point. You can get a lot of hardware for the price of a full loop!

So i'd say think hard about what you actually want to achieve and how you want it to look, there are plenty of rig galleries and projects to look at. Work out all of the technicalities and what you will need to buy. Run that past a few members to check for noobishness and i'm sure they will be able to tell you more bits you've forgotten and see what price it comes out at and if it's feasible for you.

Also if you like having any money whatsoever then I advise you stop thinking about it right now, walk away from specialtech and go buy a H105 ;)

JR

In my case then I srated with a XSPC bayres 750 kit - as I wanted to WC my cpu. The owner of the WC shop said to me - Save up the money and chose your components, dont get these kits as once your in the WC world you will see that you want better and more.

I did not listen and after a few months then I was like - Damn, I should have listen to him..... NOW I have spent an arm and a leg in fittings at pumps, pump tops, etc etc and for what? It is for the looks, cleanliness and noise and temps.

You will be VERY proud once your finished custom loop is finished but it will NOT be cheap as any AIO and the returns in temps wont be THAT dramatical if your taking into account $$ to performace.

Bottom line I am trying to make:

If you even considering going water then as Tom said, Do it right or dont do it at all. Get the parts that you want and DONT get a kit. DONT skimp out on your fittings, order 1 or 2 more than you need as you dont want it to look cheap with loads of tubing going all over the place.

As JR said, if you want something cool and want to save some money then dont even consider going custom. ;)
 
It's true though. My first loop was the EK watercooling kit with xtx360 rad.. and surprise surprise I have replaced everything with better components now so I should have just done that in the first place.
 
The only thing that I have from my RX240 kit years ago is the fittings :D Pump just laying around cause I got a pump res photo 170 combo. Even the fittings are going to disappear soon.
 
Not even finished my kit and I'm already ordering in different fittings and going acrylic. That said the kits do make sense to people with 9590s/cpus with heat issues and it has helped me grasp what is needed much more than any tutorial on the web.
 
The other day I was surfing some threads about water cooling and we see many questions about what loops to make or if they should go custom or just a AIO, many also ask if they should get a startes kit.

The following quote is so true:



In my case then I srated with a XSPC bayres 750 kit - as I wanted to WC my cpu. The owner of the WC shop said to me - Save up the money and chose your components, dont get these kits as once your in the WC world you will see that you want better and more.

I did not listen and after a few months then I was like - Damn, I should have listen to him..... NOW I have spent an arm and a leg in fittings at pumps, pump tops, etc etc and for what? It is for the looks, cleanliness and noise and temps.

You will be VERY proud once your finished custom loop is finished but it will NOT be cheap as any AIO and the returns in temps wont be THAT dramatical if your taking into account $$ to performace.

Bottom line I am trying to make:

If you even considering going water then as Tom said, Do it right or dont do it at all. Get the parts that you want and DONT get a kit. DONT skimp out on your fittings, order 1 or 2 more than you need as you dont want it to look cheap with loads of tubing going all over the place.

As JR said, if you want something cool and want to save some money then dont even consider going custom. ;)

This original quote is from my thread that I posted. It hits it right on the mark and tbh exactly what I wanted to hear :)
 
many moons ago you used to make your own out of fish tank pumps and heater coils. they worked too...
so you can mix and match your stuff and make it work well.. BUT if you want it to look good and perform well. you should spend quite a bit more than you would hope to spend. Personally i am not a fan of AIO's. kits are ok but as others have said you will just slowly start replacing parts of them (personally i just try to shoe horn all the radiators i have in to the case, so even if i did buy a kit i know the radiator would always be used.
I have never really fallen for that water cooling specific pump scam either. you can get any old pump aslong as it will take the fittings you want to use has the flow rate you want and a good head.. But again thats going back to the days of fish tank pumps. and you really need to not care about the asthetics that much..

so in summary like every one els seems to be saying.
if you want it to look good and cool well. you need to build an expensive custom loop.
If your like me and dont give a hoot what it looks like. then you can get the job done at a fraction of the price, have great cooling near silent running but it wont look nice.
Or you can go the AIO rout. which will look and perform ok.. but in that case you may as well try and buy a heat sink and fan combination for about the same money (if it fits). the cooling is vastly the same. and then you get peace of mind of not having to worry about leaks or pump failure, even if the fan fails on your heat sink its probably going to let you use the pc whilst you get a replacement (if you dont already have a spare 120mm fan you could use)

To me the benifits of water cooling are quiet running. and predictable temperatures under load. asthetics only became a part of watercooling in recent years.
the benifits of heat sink and fans are. Good cooling with less things to worry about. and looks cleaner in a smaller case.

the cons of water cooling: slightly more maintanence. possibility of a pump failure. possibility of a leak. and in my case. lots of radiators take up a lot of room in cases that arent speciffically designed for water cooling.
Cons of heat sink/fan: harder to controll higer temps of overclocks. very loud if you do try and controll high over clock temps. possibly a bit heavy or the board. and some of them cant properly mount on some mother boards.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top