Water Cooling Guides

[Ben]

Hi all,

I'm looking into water cooling for my rig and I'm wondering what the general consensus is and if you guys know of any good guides about all the parts and configuration.

The main reason I'm considering it is when I encode videos, my CPU fan spins up and is loud and makes a whining noise. It would be nice to keep it cool without having to hear that loud fan. I understand I'll need a radiator to cool the water which will have a fan, but hopefully it won't be as bad as a CPU fan.

I also wouldn't mind the challenge, I haven't done much with the hardware in my box in awhile.

Cheers!

 

[Greg King]

I am of two minds on this. If you are simply wanting to quiet up your rig while enjoying the benefits of better cooling, you might consider one of the Corsair all in ones. They are mindlessly easy to install and perform very well. One the other hand, you are looking for an adventure, building your own loop is a tremendous amount of fun.

You have to -want- to build out a water loop. It takes some planning and rigging but it can be a really fun project with bad ass results.

I don't know of any guides off the top of my head but am more than willing to help with advice if you need it. I've only done 4 machines on water but they are certainly a lot of fun and can offer some recommendations.

 

[Kougar]

I am all with Greg's advice on this. You can likely achieve the results you want with a 2x120mm all-in-one water cooler rather than a full-out watercooling setup. I'd venture to say even a top quality air cooler such as the Noctua NH-D14 is better given just how darn quiet the thing runs, yet performs better than most of the cheaper self-contained watercooler kits.

A full-blown watercooling loop is considerably more costly, more work intensive, and does require maintenance as well as a ton of planning. I'd only suggest it if you want absolute silence, or are running high CPU+GPU overclocks and still don't want to hear your system. The advantage for a full-blown setup will give you extended flexibility on future upgrades (just need a new block), and the ability to silence both the CPU and one or more GPUs (with overclocks) without needing multiple self-contained watercooler kits.

I've been using one CPU+GPU cooling loop or another for the past five years at least, and honestly I value it more for cooling the GPU than for overclocking the CPU now. My GTX 480 is a factory overclocked FTW model, and I overclocked it beyond that. I'm sure you're aware just how hot 480's are, but under sustained 24/7 loads mine averages 50-60c depending on the temperature of my room. And that's with the CPU fully loaded as well in the same loop.

But unless you have those needs, for most people I'd recommend the NH-D14. In fact, the NH-D14 still comes out ahead of the Corsair H100 based on a quick glance around. http://www.anandtech.com/show/5054/corsair-hydro-series-h60-h80-and-h100-reviewed/5

The Silver Arrow is Thermalright's copy of the D14, but in most reviews I looked at it equals or fares slightly worse than the D14. SPCR's opinion is that the Noctua fans don't produce any tonals while the Thermalright fan does, and they both run about the same price anyway. So as far as air coolers go I'd still recommend the NH-D14, the mounting kit for it is pretty darn simple and I can't hear the fans through the case even without undervolting them.

 

[Ben]

Thanks for the tips guys. I'm going to do some more testing to determine where the noise is coming from when encoding just to be sure its the CPU fan. Overall the rig is pretty quiet when idle, not as quiet as I would like however, but I'll work on that.

My main issue is that when under load, like encoding video, I hear the high pitch whine which I assume is coming from one of the fans. It would be nice to be able to use the computer while encoding. I have all these CPU cores, might as well put them to use. Right now it's pretty audible, so unless I am listening to music, I usually only encode overnight when I'm not in the room. I was hoping that by watercooling I could reduce the amount of overall noise, is that generally something watercooling can accomplish?

Thanks!

 

[Kougar]

Yes it can, but so can a high quality air cooler. The NH-D14 won't be heard as the fan speed is capped fairly low to begin with.

I'd strongly suggest ya try to determine what the high pitched whine is... ya could unplug the CPU fan for a few moments while encoding to verify it is the CPU fan, as it almost sounds like you're describing a cap problem. Some boards and GPUs will produce a high-pitched whine under loads due to capacitor or coil vibration. Unplugging all the fans briefly one-by-one should let ya quickly rule them out or pinpoint the culprit.