watercooling worth it for pure gaming? not benchmarking

This new watercooling system I was planning on getting is expensive. I do not want to have to spend all of this cash for a 3 mhz increase. Would I be better off just getting an SLK heatsink with tornado fan to save cash or even a zalman to save even more cash?

I am not experienced in modding in any way. I just want to be able to overclock a Geforce 6800 GT to Ultra speeds or even higher and OC my Athlon 64 3200+ a decent amount. I want to raise it so it makes a significant difference in my gaming and so I won't have to upgrade for a long time.

Any opinions would be appreciated, thanks.

Of course it's your box and you can OC and WC for the hell of it, but why do either when your HW can run circles around any game on the market and a few that are still vaporware, as is? My opinion is that you should wait and see what D3 and HL2 bring before you consider heroic performance enhancements.

Well, I would just aircool it. I know I'm limited by my board and not cooling, and we have the same chipset.

I would just gow ith the zalman CPS7000 or whatever for the gpu, and a big copper heatsink on the gpu and some big ramsinks. I think that would let you OC a decent amount, and not cost too much.

It's all about how much you want to OC versus how much you want to spend. My current rig (I had a 9800Pro 256mb oc'd to XT speeds) was more than enough to play any game on the market with full details. I'm not a benchmark nazi, I don't even have 3DM01 or 03 or even AquaMark on my machine. I use my computing power for games.

BUT, I have finally made the leap out of air cooling and into the watercooling world, for exactly the reason you describe: better gaming. I suddenly realize that the newest games are still able to drag my machine into the dirt when playing at max AA/AF and at max resolution. While I may be asking a little too much I still want to run it that way if possible!

So I plan on watercooling my CPU and my new X800XTPE so that I can do three things:
1. Attempt to hit the 4ghz mark on the CPU
2. Saying #1 works, using my Adata hyperram at 533mhz 1:1
3. Attempt to hit 600mhz on the GPU (voltmod might be necessary)

At that level, I'm set for a VERY long time. Bring on the uber games, because my machine will chew them up and spit them out better than 99.998% of the rest of the planet

Here's what I'm leaving:
Swiftech MCX4000 P4 sink (great part!)
Y.S. Tech 80mm fan (don't remember the specs, pretty decent tho)
VGA Silencer on the 9800Pro/XT
120mm exhaust fan, 80mm intake fan, some creative ducting that worked well

Here's what I'm installing:
Via Aqua 1300 pump (~$20 USD)
WA2 radiator, shrowd, barbs, mounting screws, dual 120mm Delta fans, fan grills (~$54 USD)
DTek White Water P4 block ($40 USD used)
DD Maze4 GPU block ($30 USD used)
WA2 reservoir ($12 USD new, good lookin!)
Misc stuff from Home Depot ($20 USD new)

So for less than $200 USD, I've got a ton of great parts that should work quite well. It's a LOT more expensive than air cooling, but it's also a LOT quieter (my second biggest issue) and it's just pretty cool to play with

If you want top performace with LOW NOISE, then choose watercooling. If u say u dont mind noise, just wait a few weeks and see how things turn out. All my friends and co workers have said the SAME thing "Noise doesnt matter" then reality sets in. They see my pimp *** watercoolign and how u can barely hear it and i get better temps and results then them and guess what? They are all getting watercooling in their rigs lol

Moral of the story if u want an actuall usable system that wont kill your ears, and want braggin rights. WATER COOL

Albuquerque said:

So I plan on watercooling my CPU and my new X800XTPE so that I can do three things:
1. Attempt to hit the 4ghz mark on the CPU
2. Saying #1 works, using my Adata hyperram at 533mhz 1:1

Click to expand...

Sounds like a great future setup. But I didnt know a lot of people were hitting 4GHz on water.

There is a growing handful of people hitting 4ghz on air and "sane" voltages like 1.6-1.65v... I was doing 3704mhz on 1.6v and air cooling, but was bordering on thermal issues. A laser thermometer was pulling actual temps of about 57c at full load, which is definately too warm (and much higher than the Mobo reported 51c).

Never take mobo reported temps at face value; they're all off and none of them are off by the same amount. Nevertheless, ff I can keep this thing in the low 40's (or high 30's), it's quite possible I could see 3.9+ on the same voltage. I don't want to exceed 1.65v as a personal preference.

I'v never benchmarked my system once. I don't care about bench marks. I don't even know how to do it. I water cool for the performance increase, the quietness, and because its a cool hobby. Price does not matter to me. i will save up to get what I want because I consider it a hobby.

jenkx said:

Price does not matter to me. i will save up to get what I want because I consider it a hobby.

Click to expand...

Props to you!! People spend money on their hobbies. If it's justifiable to spend thousands on cars for example, one should be able to spend hundreds for their computer without getting weird looks

Raider84 said:

Props to you!! People spend money on their hobbies. If it's justifiable to spend thousands on cars for example, one should be able to spend hundreds for their computer without getting weird looks

Click to expand...

word!!

You probably wont see a huge overclock over what you have or what you can do, but you will most likely you could see a quieter system. you can see a quiet air cooled system too but not as much performance. It is difficult to decide if its needed, but I generally say its not needed. Its kind of a more I want to do this thing type of thing.


Jon

I just switched from air to WC. It cost about $200 and is very quiet and good temp drop. If you can handle the noise(tornado bugged everyone in the house), I wouldn't switch to WC. The next OCed computer I build from scratch will be WCed. It is not that much more expensive when you consider the extra case fans, heatsinks, fan controllers,etc.