Good time to start water cooling?

[azanimefan]

I wanted to get some more performance in games like Planetside 2 which are CPU bound, so I figured I would OC with liquid cooling. But is it really a good time to do it with the new processors coming out most likely this year? I am guessing they will be way more powerful than anything I could OC my 2600k to right? I ask because I haven't been following harware long enough to see the whole intel cycle, I started with the sandy bridge.

I haven't seen anything that indicates Haswell will be a "significant" improvement in performance.

The i7-2600k overclocks like a madman. no promises the Haswell will overclock well, if it doesn't overclock well then you'll see little performance difference between an overclocked SB and an overclocked Haswell. Furthermore Haswell will be a new socket design... which means a new motherboard as well in the price to upgrade.

with a water rig you should be able to port it over between computer builds. so there is some solid return on the investment. That said...

You probably won't see a huge performance increase from a big air cooler to a water loop. Sure, water will work better... slightly... but rarely is it worth the premium paid, unless you save yourself some money in exchange for time and turn it into a DIY project and go 'dumpster diving' for parts, then machine tool your waterblocks.

get yourself a Noctura nh-c14 and call it a day.

 

[baobeiiii]

I have the ivy i5 3570k,

Haswell chips (will require new mobo 1150) should be released in June this year. I think just get either a sandy or ivy, skip haswell and wait for skylake (the next tock in intels cycle after haswell).