I know kits supposedly stink but...

After reading your water cooling basics I see that kits are not the way to go and I can understand that after reading the sticky....but in my case I would like to add water cooling to a computer that I built around Christmas...I have no trouble building computers but because of a spinal cord injury my hands don't work very well at all. The kits seem to offer fewer hose connections and even then I may have to find someone to hook them up for me. For now I just want to water cool (some overclocking) my CPU which is a Core 2 Extreme 6850 on an Asus P5E, everything else I have in my PC you can see in my signature.

I looked at kits from Corsair, Zallman, and Swiftech but I wanted to see what you all could come up with. I pride myself in being able to do as much as I can without help but this time around I'm looking for some...thanks in advance

the best kits are made buy swiftech. period.

Sam__ said:

the best kits are made buy swiftech. period.

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Yup, thats the talk around the water cooler

To be honest, I think your needs would be better served with a high end air cooler. The performance from high end air should be better than any water kit out there.

The only 2 reasons I can see you might want to go with a water kit are:
1. Its far less noisy than air
2. Water cooling is just cooler

But if you are after a performance boost, I would upgrade your air cooling.

What are you currently using to cool the CPU?

BTW, thats one banging system you got there

swiftech all the way the whole sticky about kits a naff is old kits .
modern kits by dd swiftech and ek etc are basicly just bundled bits that work.
the extrenal jobs are getting better by generelly suffer from small tubing due to being amid at getting in via pci slots.
swiftech new bolt on jobby is meant to be v close to the full shibang !

yokomo_ said:

swiftech all the way the whole sticky about kits a naff is old kits .
modern kits by dd swiftech and ek etc are basicly just bundled bits that work.
the extrenal jobs are getting better by generelly suffer from small tubing due to being amid at getting in via pci slots.
swiftech new bolt on jobby is meant to be v close to the full shibang !

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Yes and no. CPU block is good, VGA block is meh, and the radiator is WAY WAY too small for a loop that contains CPU and GPU and is OCd.

Here is 1 such kit. It is by no means garbage, and honest I take back what I said. That WOULD be better than high end air, but I would personally choose another VGA block and ditch that small radiator for either a triple or a quad.

The other problem with the kits is that you cant build a loop with different brands in it. The Apogee GT is nice (not as nice as the GTX but nice) but the swiftech rads, vga blocks, and other things are not as high performance as many of their competitors (EK, Thermochill, Hardware Labs Black Ice, etc...)

But after looking at the swiftech kit.....yea.....its good stuff.....better than air, but I still think IF you are going to go water then go custom. Get a friend who can help you out with the connections, buy a pizza and a few beers or sodas or whatever and make an afternoon out of it. Heck if you are going to need help anyway whats the difference if the helper puts together 2 connections or 6?

EDIT: Bah, link wont go directly to the kit but you can navigate it yourself and see

Dawgdoc said:

To be honest, I think your needs would be better served with a high end air cooler. The performance from high end air should be better than any water kit out there.

The only 2 reasons I can see you might want to go with a water kit are:
1. Its far less noisy than air
2. Water cooling is just cooler

But if you are after a performance boost, I would upgrade your air cooling.

What are you currently using to cool the CPU?

BTW, thats one banging system you got there

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I really hope by "water kit" you are referring to cheap WC kits like thermaltake, koolance, etc. A well-built WC kit (custom or a kit with good parts, such as swiftech or petra's kits) definitely outperforms air.

But hell yeah, water is much quieter than air. I finally like having a compter where the fans don't overpower the hard drive

For such an amazing rig, you should invest in some phase change cooling or something...thats what I would do at least.

SolidxSnake said:

I really hope by "water kit" you are referring to cheap WC kits like thermaltake, koolance, etc. A well-built WC kit (custom or a kit with good parts, such as swiftech or petra's kits) definitely outperforms air.

But hell yeah, water is much quieter than air. I finally like having a compter where the fans don't overpower the hard drive

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Yea SS i was only referring to the premade kits, NOT custom water.

Of course a custom water setup will outperform the best air out there

And I corrected my statement in the following post I made. That swiftech ultra kit aint garbage, but for the money you can still get a better custom loop.

Dawgdoc said:

Yea SS i was only referring to the premade kits, NOT custom water.

Of course a custom water setup will outperform the best air out there

And I corrected my statement in the following post I made. That swiftech ultra kit aint garbage, but for the money you can still get a better custom loop.

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Most definitely, I completely agree. I gotta say though, the Apogee GT and GTX aren't too much different, from what I remember the difference is around 2°C at most. The GTX is much more expensive and LGA775 compatible only (stock at least). I'd definitely recommend the Apogee GT first, it's cheap and very effective.

Thermochill rads are the best, but very expensive. A swiftech MCR220 can be had for under $40, MCR320 for under $60 I believe. I'd definitely recommend a swiftech unless you find a killer deal on something better.

Honestly, I don't see how you could go wrong with a PTS kit: Petra's Tech Shop

They're good choices, and made to work well. It's a bit more expensive than used parts but definitely a good investment.

If you have problem with fitting there are bitspower fitting similar to the ones used in kits but they are like 10$ a pop.

Dawgdoc said:

To be honest, I think your needs would be better served with a high end air cooler. The performance from high end air should be better than any water kit out there.

The only 2 reasons I can see you might want to go with a water kit are:
1. Its far less noisy than air
2. Water cooling is just cooler

But if you are after a performance boost, I would upgrade your air cooling.

What are you currently using to cool the CPU?

BTW, thats one banging system you got there

Click to expand...

I'm looking for something quieter then what I have on it now which is an Asus Silent Square that hasn't performed as well as I thought it would and add to that the fan is making a lot of noise
Cool is cool too

I have "in essence" the Swiftech H2O-220 kit. I say "in essence" because I bought the same waterblock/pump combo, and radiator/reservoir combo, but with Tygon tubing, Yate Loon low speed fans, and some worm drive clamps from Lowe's. For under $200 it performs a helluva lot better than my Scythe Ninja RevB did, and is quieter too. With my E8400 at 4 GHz w/ 1.4vCore, my Ninja was hitting 75C or so running Orthos, and would idle at about 39C. And that was when my room was around 20-22C this winter. Now that it's warming up again, my room is 26C right now, with this water setup, i'm idling at 35C, and it loads at about 54C running Orthos. I opened my window and got my room down to 18C one night when it was below freezing outside and it was 26C idle, and 39C load .

I know this isn't spectacular for water, and I'd get better performance out of an Apogee GT and what not, but I wanted something relatively simple. Maybe next year I'll plan out a full upgraded loop, but this definitely meets my needs for now.

So yeah, the Swiftech kits aren't amazing, but definitely not bad at all!

The hard part about even good kits like those from Petras and Swiftech are that you may or may not end up with what you are really after. There is a balance between performance, noise, and cost.

If you want top performance and don't care about fan noise, get a BIX Extreme III with high speed fans and a D5 pump. If silence is your thing and cost isn't an issue, then get a DDC pump with XSPC top and a Thermochill 120.3. If you are balancing noise/cost, then get a Swiftech MCR320 rad with the DDC + XSPC top. If you are on the cheap, then get a '77 Bonneyville heatercore with a Via Aqua 1800 or an Apogeedrive which inegrates an Apogee block with DDC pump in one. With GPU blocks there are the full cover blocks that look very good but cost a lot and are card specific vs. the stand alone blocks with heatsinks that don't look as good but usually can be used on more than one card and are less expensive. Does this all make sense? There are a variety of options to go with depending on your preferences and budget that kits may or may not afford you.

Then there is tubing. Some people love the Silver Tygon as you don't need any additives with it since silver kills everything. Others like me hate silver, so then there is black Tygon 3400, clear Tygon 3603, Masterkleer, Primoflex in various colors, copper tubing, etc. All have their pros and cons and also are decided based on preferences too. And for tubing size, since you said you have difficulty with your hands, you would want to stick with either 3/8" tubing on all 3/8" barbs, or 1/2" tubing on 1/2" barbs.

So what you do is research parts and stuff based on what you are wanting, and then if you can find a kit that has it all, go for it. Otherwise, buy the parts to get what you want.

As far as putting the thing together goes, you are probably going to need some extra oomph as sometimes putting tubing and clamps on and such can be a real laborious process.

Are clamps usually sold separately?

admael said:

Are clamps usually sold separately?

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Yes, they are.

gibletzor said:

I have "in essence" the Swiftech H2O-220 kit. I say "in essence" because I bought the same waterblock/pump combo, and radiator/reservoir combo, but with Tygon tubing, Yate Loon low speed fans, and some worm drive clamps from Lowe's. For under $200 it performs a helluva lot better than my Scythe Ninja RevB did, and is quieter too. With my E8400 at 4 GHz w/ 1.4vCore, my Ninja was hitting 75C or so running Orthos, and would idle at about 39C. And that was when my room was around 20-22C this winter. Now that it's warming up again, my room is 26C right now, with this water setup, i'm idling at 35C, and it loads at about 54C running Orthos. I opened my window and got my room down to 18C one night when it was below freezing outside and it was 26C idle, and 39C load .

I know this isn't spectacular for water, and I'd get better performance out of an Apogee GT and what not, but I wanted something relatively simple. Maybe next year I'll plan out a full upgraded loop, but this definitely meets my needs for now.

So yeah, the Swiftech kits aren't amazing, but definitely not bad at all!

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Funny that's one of the kits I was looking at and leaning towards...plus it fits into my budget range.

Something really strange happened yesterday and probably be best posted in another area of these forums but both of my 400GB WD HD's keeled over at about the same time...man did my system go wacky on me...could it have been a heat issue? The drives are nearly 4 years old if that makes any difference. I have the S.M.A.R.T. feature turned on in my BIOS but it didn't catch the problem until after the fact...ugh...

Wheelzup said:

Funny that's one of the kits I was looking at and leaning towards...plus it fits into my budget range.

Something really strange happened yesterday and probably be best posted in another area of these forums but both of my 400GB WD HD's keeled over at about the same time...man did my system go wacky on me...could it have been a heat issue? The drives are nearly 4 years old if that makes any difference. I have the S.M.A.R.T. feature turned on in my BIOS but it didn't catch the problem until after the fact...ugh...

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SATA 3.0 from 4 years ago?

I dont even know if SATA drives were commonly used 4 years ago, much less SATA 3.0

My fault...I stand corrected, I checked the manufacture date on them and they were built on 12/16/2006 I'd guess they were some of the first 3.0 SATA drives to ever come out. I emailed WD to see if they'd replace them....one never knows if they don't try...

Ok gang I'm down to these kits in no particular order...the two Swiftech kits are different. I would prefer something that mounts outside my case...any other sites and or kits I should at least consider looking at would be great. I'm trying to stay under $200 for now.

Corsair Nautilus 500

Swiftech H20-120 Compact CPU Liquid Cooling Kit


Swiftech H20-220 Compact CPU Liquid Cooling Kit