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Air VS Water

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can you tell me what fails on the thermaltakes, if it's the fan controler i really don't care as they will be on the motherboard.
it's comming so i might as well play with it till it craps out also.
swiftech has an aio unit now what do you think about those.
my cooling system must stay in the case, midtower. my desk will only fit a midtower and my wife will not allow anything that looks so aweful as a cooling system to be seen outside the case. she raised all heck about seeing the h100.
 
for the guys first post, yes water cooling is worth the price, in dollars and time.
BUT, if you don't NEED it, you don't WANT it.
my h60 works on my fx8120 all the way up to 4.4ghz and stays in the case.
stock air cooler would go to 4.0ghz
the h100 took me to 5ghz, but was loud as a 747 and looked like a cancerous tumor and failed all the time.
 
I think its more the lack of performance with the ?ThermalTakes that people don't like. High end air is generally better. Look into a nice Noctua cooler instead. More reliable, quieter and performs about the same as a Corsair H100 and at a lower price too
 
Everything on the TT wc gear is utter crap. They mix metals, they use serial flow rads, the block designs are from before cathar was making blocks, the pump is weak and likes to fail, and the tubing is bottom bin junk.......so really all you get is a functional res out of the whole deal.
 
Dont have much to add apart from say dont bother with anything "watercooled" unless you build it yourself I have never heard good stories about all in one WC sets. You have to expect to spend £140+ for a CPU loop that will outperform a decent air cooler by a large margin. Im going for the XSPC bundle next month ( will make a build log when i get the kit) .

Youll notice the difference with your overheads which will increase by a pretty large margin while under water ( your idle temps wont change much). But it all depends, do you want a silent machine? go water. Do you want to really push the overclock on your cpu? Go water. If your not too bothered about either. Stick with a silver arrow /
Noctua NH-D14.
 
you guys are so right about the thermaltake, i think it heats the cpu!!!!!!!!
so, I have the thing, it does very little other than dumps all its heat into the drive bays, I have had to cut it's housing because it does not fit with an atx board. so i'll mod the crappy thing. first up plumbing in my h60 rad.

so here is what the guy can take from this,
#1 the h60 is good value for the money, quiet, cheap, reliable.
#2 the h100 is almost up to the task, noisy, very costly because you need to buy two so your system is useable while in rma land and you need to supply your own fans, unreliable.
#3 the themal take is just horrid in all ways and fits like a size 6 shoe on a size 10 foot.
#4 the top air coolers are cheaper, quieter, and cost a lot less if you can fit them in your case.

that sound accurate?
 
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hi guys. for me id stick to air cooling. i think its cheaper and way too accessible. like whenever i want to clean dust , plug another device "replacing something" , move the rig's position to another place. and 1 thing i noticed about cooling was it actually depends on your room's ambient temperature. i got a friend from japan his room is under -15c and runs the same spec that i have except for the mobo z68x-udh3 i guess. and stock cooler. he was able to overclock it to 4.5ghz 100% load under prime and intel burn test for 35c full load.

well if you have the budget go for water cooling.
1. it looks more better
2. i think it performs well.
3. IT LOOKS MORE BETTER !
4. IT LOOKS MORE BETTER !
5. AMAZING LOOKS !
 
caddi daddi, you've now got it spot on. High end air is the bomb unless you're willing to go all out on a custom water cooling loop. I've never been brave enough myself.

c00l3st, the smartest thing you said there was regarding ambient temps which is spot on.... The rest I'm pretty sure you were just going for amusement factor, and yeah, kind of funny dude.
 
you guys are so right about the thermaltake, i think it heats the cpu!!!!!!!!
so, I have the thing, it does very little other than dumps all its heat into the drive bays, I have had to cut it's housing because it does not fit with an atx board. so i'll mod the crappy thing. first up plumbing in my h60 rad.

so here is what the guy can take from this,
#1 the h60 is good value for the money, quiet, cheap, reliable.
#2 the h100 is almost up to the task, noisy, very costly because you need to buy two so your system is useable while in rma land and you need to supply your own fans, unreliable.
#3 the themal take is just horrid in all ways and fits like a size 6 shoe on a size 10 foot.
#4 the top air coolers are cheaper, quieter, and cost a lot less if you can fit them in your case.

that sound accurate?
I'll second the H60. It gave my Phenom II X4 955 new life. With the stock cooler it would always run 70-80C while playing games. I had to stop Prime95 after a few minutes after the CPU temp exceeded 80C. After I installed the H60 the CPU with Prime95 ran 45-50C. Now I am folding 24/7 with this computer.

BTW, I had planned to buy either an FX8120 or FX8150 but was disappointed by all the negative reviews. How has it worked out for you? Would you recommend the FX as an upgrade.
 
Quite enjoying my FX8120. It overclocks easily. There are a few things where its noticeably slower than my old 6 core (Thuban) such as handbrake video encoding, though interestingly enough that seems to come down to what encoding work I'm doing in Handbrake. With certain settings its slower, but with the high quality settings on it's faster than my old Thuban....

A step up for some things, down for others..... It may be just me though my system does feel a tiny bit snappier with the FX8120 vs my old chip. In gaming though, feels pretty much identical. There was no real reason for me to upgrade, except the upgrade bug was being particular vicious, and those bites itch like crazy :p
 
as an upgrade to the 955??? heck yea!!!!!!!!
I love my 955 machine but the fx is so much more, but so much more to put up with. more heat, much more power hungry.
 
at first i bought into the overhype and was not too happy with the fx, as time past and i burned up a couple of cpu's and toasted a board or three i found it was an awesome, fun cpu.
I run a tire sim, my 955 machine would run and complete the sim and output to a spreadsheat in 7 days, now the fx crancked to 4500 completes it in 52 hours.
 
Lol, probably why I wasn't unhappy. I never expected more than they delivered. It's been fairly typical of AMD's execution over the past few years. The chip is good enough for me to buy and enjoy it and thats all that matters to me ;)
 
Hi, my 2 cents, If you had a completely stock cooler and $100+ dollars to waste then you could buy the corsair h100 and have top quality air performance but without the huge gigantic air cooler but it wont be better than top notch air units.

So if your going to go water do it right. There is an extremely affordable kit out there from frozencpu.com its called the RASA 750 then RS or RX 240 or 320
Now I went with the RS240 because the RX was out of stock but it was a mistake I really should have waited since I have a 912HAF and it goes on top so the thickness doesn't matter. Also if you have a 912HAf you don't need to modify the case but do your self a favor and mount the RAD like I did to save a lot of tubing and make it look better.

Now going for a medium high end cooler to this I dropped a ton of almost 16-20c depending on wether we are talking running at 4.1GHz or 3.9 which is what I keep it at normally.

Don't let anyone trash talk anything in this kit either because the reality is that the pump is silent and performs almost as well as the all mighty D5 as long as its not restricted and for the price the block performs just fine as well I would replace the fans with CM PWM Blade Masters they are only $10 go up to 2000RPM have a very high static pressure (higher then the high end CM PWM fan) and they are silent at the lower RPMs that other fans would have been at. Get the biggest RAD your case can go with and try to get the RX series.

All in all though the RS series is only 129.99 there is a 5% off coupon code: pcapex
I could have sworn there was a 10% code but I guess I am wrong!

Also to take any FEAR out of a leak order Fesser One Cooling Fluid you can poor it all over your electronics and it wont cause a short.

Since this is your first set up ignore the any PROS/HARDCORE WC ENTHUSIASTS and stay away of the unsightly expensive gear. Start with this kit it is very upgradable and if you want you can even add a second pump in series either another XSPC X20 750 or a D5 they scale perfectly almost no loss in effecency almost like just adding the power of each one together and gives you redundency. With a failed pump the active pump will also still run at 80-95% of its ability even pushing through the failed pump so again no waste in money with the pump they include because if you ever need a better pump just buy another pump!

GOOD LUCK!

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Looks quite nice dude though anything with an Apple logo makes me feel a little ill.... You forgot to include a rainbow shining over the apple logo :p

Just stirring, nice rig dude.... I wish I had the guts to give WC a try.... The idea of leaks freaks me out though :-/

The comment about the H100 isn't really accurate though. It does perform better than high end air. The real issue is that they've proven to be unreliable
 
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Don't let anyone trash talk anything in this kit either because the reality is that the pump is silent and performs almost as well as the all mighty D5 as long as its not restricted

Can you please tell me when, in the course of watercooling, the pump is going to be unrestricted? If it's not restricted, you don't have a block...and if you don't have a block, what are you even cooling?

Also to take any FEAR out of a leak order Fesser One Cooling Fluid you can poor it all over your electronics and it wont cause a short.

Or just use distilled water and don't worry about clogging your loop...or staining your tubes...or buying into marketing hype. conductivity of distilled water

Since this is your first set up ignore the any PROS/HARDCORE WC ENTHUSIASTS and stay away of the unsightly expensive gear. Start with this kit it is very upgradable and if you want you can even add a second pump in series either another XSPC X20 750 or a D5 they scale perfectly almost no loss in effecency almost like just adding the power of each one together and gives you redundency. With a failed pump the active pump will also still run at 80-95% of its ability even pushing through the failed pump so again no waste in money with the pump they include because if you ever need a better pump just buy another pump!

I can't IMAGINE why you would recommend that he disregard the advice of people who are pulling on a decade of knowledge, experimentation, and experience with watercooling PCs...it just doesn't make sense. The guys around here who have been around a long time say the things they do for a reason, it's because they've seen it all, and they know what works and what doesn't.

Also, the pump advice is awful advice. You should never run different pumps in series, you overwork the stronger pump and overspin the weaker pump and BOTH of them will lose lifespan.

I'm not gonna advocate against the XSPC kits, they're decent, but I will tell you that if you get them and then decide you want to make changes, you're pretty much gonna have to ditch the pump/res, and usually people get rid of the block too (since it's middle of the line). So really, it boils down to you having two options, do it right up front and minimize costs overall, or do it cheap up front then end up with a bunch of stuff you don't need as you make cheap upgrades. Neither method is wrong. Personally, I think it makes more sense to wait till you can afford the whole thing then pull the trigger, but I can certainly see the other side of that coin, so I'm not going to try to convince you one way or the other.
 
Can you please tell me when, in the course of watercooling, the pump is going to be unrestricted? If it's not restricted, you don't have a block...and if you don't have a block, what are you even cooling?



Or just use distilled water and don't worry about clogging your loop...or staining your tubes...or buying into marketing hype. conductivity of distilled water



I can't IMAGINE why you would recommend that he disregard the advice of people who are pulling on a decade of knowledge, experimentation, and experience with watercooling PCs...it just doesn't make sense. The guys around here who have been around a long time say the things they do for a reason, it's because they've seen it all, and they know what works and what doesn't.

Also, the pump advice is awful advice. You should never run different pumps in series, you overwork the stronger pump and overspin the weaker pump and BOTH of them will lose lifespan.

I'm not gonna advocate against the XSPC kits, they're decent, but I will tell you that if you get them and then decide you want to make changes, you're pretty much gonna have to ditch the pump/res, and usually people get rid of the block too (since it's middle of the line). So really, it boils down to you having two options, do it right up front and minimize costs overall, or do it cheap up front then end up with a bunch of stuff you don't need as you make cheap upgrades. Neither method is wrong. Personally, I think it makes more sense to wait till you can afford the whole thing then pull the trigger, but I can certainly see the other side of that coin, so I'm not going to try to convince you one way or the other.

Im with you on the majority of your points, but i feel a lot of these bits will hold their value pretty well ( guessing btw XD). Im going for the XSPC kit ( with the 360 rad) because i cant warrant over £200 on just a CPU loop, so 140 is pretty nice for a starter kit. I was told that the rez and pump should be able to handle a CPU and GPU block easily.

I suppose its just how much u want to prepare/how far you want to WC your rig. Ultimately i would assume i could flog the rez/pump for a decent amount and although the cpu block is mid range it will give you easily enough overhead to get a 2600/700k to 5ghz, at least from the reviews ive seen of the kit.

But to back your points up, DO LISTEN TO WC ENTHUSIASTS they know what they are talking about and more often than not with a budget in mind they will give you very good idea based on how much you have to spend!
 
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