Fed up with H2O?

Does anyone else here get totally fed up with watercooling at times? I just found another leak that I could've sworn I fixed. I leak tested for probably 5+ days with no problems, and all of a sudden a leak appears this morning. Yeah, it wasn't the greatest connection, I should have known better, and water never made contact with any other equipment...but it was awfully close. Sometimes all of this just seems so high maintainence that the performance gain isn't worth it. Filling and draining and bleeding...mounting, unmounting, remounting...

I don't really think I'm going to switch now...I've put too much time in over the last 2+ years of watercooling, and when it works right it's nice. I'd like to hear some opinions though. Why do you use watercooling? Is it worth the maintainence/hassle? Has anyone switched from water to air, and did you like it or not?

I'm currently back on air until I can get around to redoing my system, who knows how long that'll be.... Anyway, I can it sucks. Air is loud and annoying to get a halfway decent OC. I'm about ready to go crazy with a 92mm Enermax adjustable on my backup SLK-900A, load temps are in the low 50s (though the base needs some serious lapping, ridges everywhere). Now I've got that fan plus 3 80mm H1A's and a 120mm M1A. I swear my room is hotter on air than it is on WC, though that makes no sense.

As soon as my Storm I'm gonna do an easy, temp setup of Iwaki->Storm->Chevette Core to keep myself from going crazy.

try looking for 1/2 ID compression fittings... I don't think you'll ever have a leak.

what kind of equipment are you using for WCing?

nissmo300 said:

try looking for 1/2 ID compression fittings... I don't think you'll ever have a leak.

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Or buy the push-on hose barbs off of mcmaster, I swear by them. I that's all I use, and I use liquid thread sealer on my threads. I had all sorts of leaks on my first build, and they kept appearing. Replaced all my barbs with push-on ones sealed with liquid thread sealer, never had a problem since.

I had a ghetto WC setup a year or two ago and it rocked. Im on air now seeing as I have a dually but once I have the cash i'm going to go water.

I might as well chip in here

I have been W/C for the better part of 2 years now. I first went to W/C when I got my First Athlon T-bird 1.2 and temps with an Alpha PAP66? was ~80C. (Probably had it misaligned thinking back on it now) Water solved that heat problem and I have never gone back to air.

Right now, I O/C quite a bit and the water system keeps my CPU and GPU temps in check. My current CPU is a Mobile Barton 2500+ @ [email protected].
I could probably go higher but I like keeping my CPU temps in the 40C-45C range with low noise.

I have had my own pitfalls and misshapps with W/C over the years but luckly I have taken some precautions to prevent leaks.

I use the brass barbed connections and put zipties on all the connections to make sure that they dont leak. I use ONLY distilled water and that keeps my system fairly clean (WW was leaving red all over the place and smelled terible). I flush my system with fresh water about every 3-6 months and top off my res. about once a week.

Once I got it working well, the maintenance was simple enough to keep up with.

If you still want to stick with water, try looking into a per-packaged solution. The Zalman cooling tower looks really nice acutally

Foxy

I'm currently back on air right now too with a sucky OC. Whenever I get enough time to finish building my new case I'll be back on Watercooling. I'm only planning on cooling the CPU to start with so I don't get myself going too crazy with it again. Like you, I got fed up with changing waterblocks and pumps and replacing dirty tubing with clean tubing. Hopefully with my new setup I won't have any problems. I think the benefits of watercooling still outweigh the downsides.

-Andy

johan851 said:

Does anyone else here get totally fed up with watercooling at times? I just found another leak that I could've sworn I fixed. I leak tested for probably 5+ days with no problems, and all of a sudden a leak appears this morning.

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Maybe you're using crappy equipment?

I leak tested my latest 1/2" system for about 5 minutes before I installed it...and this is a dual processor system. I only leak test for 5 minutes because it seems like I just never have leak problems. I mean, really...if your parts have 1/2" barbs, and you have 1/2" tubing, and you slap on 1/2" clamps...what could be easier???

All of the few leaks I've had, I've found in a few minutes of testing and were all caused by the pump fittings. In my latest system I got a D4 (built in 1/2" fitting) so I don't even have to worry about pump fittings anymore. Also, I use home-made waterblocks which are soldered shut so there's no possibility of leaks there.

You want a leak-proof setup? Just get a D4, Swiftech MCW6002, and a rad with 1/2' fittings or 5/8" brass tubing. Slide the ClearFlex on, clamp it, and you're done.

feyd83 said:

Or buy the push-on hose barbs off of mcmaster, I swear by them. I that's all I use, and I use liquid thread sealer on my threads. I had all sorts of leaks on my first build, and they kept appearing. Replaced all my barbs with push-on ones sealed with liquid thread sealer, never had a problem since.

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I use a ring of silicone sealent on mine, it bonds to copper, brass and plastic. It seals everything up nice but it sure is a pain to get off.

well, I have the same thoughts, water cooling is extremely high maintenance, but for a high preforms media machine that has to format 6 hours of illegally recorded radio streaming music to wav. and then add a bass boost enhancement and noise reduction, I need to it run cool, quietly(i sleep), and in style.

But, I do agree I spent $200 on mine and had a hell of a lot of problems, its definitely problematic, only for gaming, this could never be used for a work or school computer. Its like s supercharger, its not reliable but probably the coolest thing you can do to a computer.

overall = I would rather go back, not chip my GPU core with my DD Maze4 and spend the $200 on a decent set of Monitors (studio speakers).

What part # is the right hose clamps off of mcmaster?

johan851 said:

I just found another leak that I could've sworn I fixed. I leak tested for probably 5+ days with no problems, and all of a sudden a leak appears this morning. Yeah, it wasn't the greatest connection, I should have known better, and water never made contact with any other equipment...but it was awfully close.

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Just curious, where exactly was the leak?....pump, block, etc.

Catalan said:

What part # is the right hose clamps off of mcmaster?

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I would like to know also?

I just use the silicone II sealent on every freeking groove or connection after clamping everything with metal screw clamps from home depot. The only leak I had was ironically in my RBX water block and it was easily fixed by some silicone II and 24hrs of drying (this was in January). Since then I have not spent any time tweaking my WC system except for shrouds. I think the more thought and forsight you put into you system the first time around it saves you a lot of headaches in the future.

I'm the kind of person that when I take on a project, I don't skimp on any step. I barely touch my WC system until it comes time for a rebuild, or flush. When I build it I make sure everything is assembled properly, and I leak test for 24 hours. Then it runs flawlessly from day to day, until I decide I want something changed around or the water gets old. I like to take on projects, and water cooling gives me a challenge.

its like if u got a ferrari dude, u'd have to take of that thing like a mofo cuz of the $$ u invested into it and what not... WC goes along with that same idea...

I agree. You get what you paid for. I just cool my cpu currently and extremely happy with it's performance. Temp wise is much lower than air cool and I'm able to push my cpu further by 200-300mhz more without it being unstable. Oh, and I paid more like total of about $160-170.

No, it's not my equipment. All my equipment is good, I use the correct clamps, tubing, barbs, etc. The leak was on my pump inlet (Danner Mag 3) where I attached a hose around the outlet instead of actually putting in threaded barbs. It worked fine for about 6 months, but apparently that system doesn't cut it anymore. That was the only questionable part of my system, really. I figured that it had worked like that for so long it wouldn't be a problem, but it was. I ran out to Home Depot this morning and got the right parts, so I'm sure it'll be fine. It's just high maintainence and bad timing, that's all. It's also the fact that I moved across the state today, and a two foot tower full of watercooling gear isn't the most mobile type of setup around.

Tons of people have had problems with the Mag 3. I myself had a problem with it. I used a brass barb to screw into the inlet. That was a mistake, it eventually cracked the housing and caused a leak. If you're going to screw something into the inlet, make sure it's plastic and make sure not to overtighten it.

-Andy