water cooling questions

KnightRid · Post by **KnightRid** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 6:52 am

Well here we go....I can show how little I really know

1st - am I right in assuming that ANY water cooling kit or product would be good enough for a NON-overclocking situation?

2nd - how quite are they? I mean, I see these big honkin fans ( 120mm I believe ) on those radiators, and those puppies have to make some noise!! I guess the bigger they are the less RPM for the same airflow, but still...they are perty darn big.

3rd - are there any kits that come with the cpu, chipset, video, hard drive blocks all included? Do they even make a HD cooler? I havent found a kit that has one, that is why I am asking.

4th - I still have this fear of, water and electricity do NOT mix. Is there any sort of protection from a leak?

Mike

Never went water cooling just because I dont overclock, but I was thinking it might cut down on some noise, and also open up the opportunity to later MAYBE try to overclock...I miss 486's ;)

stev · Post by **stev** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 8:09 am

kenc51 · Post by **kenc51** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 8:24 am

What he said ;)

Go for that heatsink stev mentioned and get a nice 120mm fan
Papst make some good fans which are very quiet and push alot of air for their rated speed.

If you do want to go with watercooling it will be twice the cost

It doesn't have to be expensive, but you get what youu pay for.....
Stay clear of cheapo kits....they might give ok performance @ the beginning, but either the pump will die or something will leak.

Bwall · Post by **Bwall** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 8:36 am

What are the specs of your system?
I agree with Stev that watercooling should really be looked at only if your overclocking and looking for a quiet solution at the same time.
There are several off the shelf parts nowadays that can give you a near silent solution. Take a look at this review we posted yesterday:
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/298/1/

If you were get one of those, or the EN7800GT you would have a very capable and silent gaming card.
I'm assuming that you're using an AMD Athlon 64, so I'd say to take a look at the Asus A8N32-SLI. It uses heatpipes on the chipset and PWM areas so the motherboard is silent as well.

Now to complete the Asus pimping, check out this heatsink:
http://usa.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=1 ... odelmenu=1

I'm very impressed with this heatsink, it does a great job and I never hear it.

Now, we've pretty much wiped out all of the noise in your PC. The loudest component (by far) will be the CD-ROM drive.

You can find all of these on NewEgg. If you sell your existing equipment you can really cut down the cost of the upgrade, but I'm sure if you're really serious about a quiet computer then this wouldn't be a huge problem for you. ;)

KnightRid · Post by **KnightRid** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 8:41 am

hmm...ok

I have this on my 3000+ cpu now - had it for a while now

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835110007

maybe I should just deal with it

I dont think that monster you put up will fit on this gigabyte board...and I dont have a 64bit cpu either

didnt know water cooling only benefited oc'ers...hmm...maybe I should take this 300+ to 5000+ ..,muahahha..yea right..lol..well maybe in the future..thanx for the quick responses!

Mike

KnightRid · Post by **KnightRid** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 9:05 am

guess system specs would help

ok

Gigabyte GA-7N400 PRO2
AMD Athlon 3000+ Barton core
GeForce FX5900 video
250gb SATA drive
120GB IDE (PATA) drive
Raidmax Z case with 420W P/S - that works just awesome I might add
6 80mm dual ball bearing case fans ( yes I know - noise from hell )
VANTEC AeroFlow VA4-C7040 H/S and Fan
DVD-Rom drive
DVD-RW - NEC ND-2500A
2gb Ram - Geil PC3200 - 2 1gb chips in dual mode...with heatspreaders ( seem to be worthless? )

all the rest is external I believe

that is for my mian system...have the other 4 also...but I am too lazy to get all the specs from them

AMD 2400+ in each, and no less than 512mb ram, and I think all have GF4 Ti4200 video cards except the one Chaintech has built in video with s-video tv/out - was gonna be my HTPC, but the case is WAY too small to fit some of the stuff...an it gets HOT!

Let me know if you need to know anything else, but it seems like the water cooling way is not worthwile to me at this point, unless i can overclock at least 500mhz( would prefer 1ghz )...then i might just do it.

Mike

Bio-Hazard · Post by **Bio-Hazard** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 9:36 am

Water isn't just for OC'ers, a lot of people use it for silent PC's also, but it's not the most cost effective way to go silent. If you have the money to spend, then go for the water, with a well laid out water cooling loop you could cool everything in your case and be totally silent and cool.
On my main rig I can turn off all the case and radiator fans (run passive) and still keep my load temps in the mid 40c range.
But to water cool everything you're looking at with quality components that will run silent/quiet, you're looking at a pretty good chunk of change.

kenc51 · Post by **kenc51** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 9:49 am

Bio-Hazard wrote:But to water cool everything you're looking at with quality components that will run silent/quiet, you're looking at a pretty good chunk of change.

http://forums.legitreviews.com/viewtopic.php?t=4625

All I wanted was a waterblock

It can get VERY expensive LOL