Help me understand if WC would benefit me

[gcwebbyuk]

Ok shopping list is looking like this so far:

Swiftech Apogee GTZ: £45.95
Swiftech MCP 655 Pump: £ 65.91 - or would an MCP355 (£54.99) or MCP350 (49.99) be suitable?
Swiftech MCR220 QPK Radiator: £29.34 - 1 to start with just for CPU
Swiftech MCRES: £17.99
Tubing - how much will I need?
Coolant - which to go for
Anything else?

Then once I have the lot setup, I will go on to WC the GPU and chipset:
Second MCR220 QPK Radiator: £29.34
Swiftech MCW60: £39.95 or EK FC4870 CF Full Cover: £64.88 - worth it?
If I stick with the MCW60, would my current Zalman ZM-RHS1 RAM sinks be as good as say Swiftech MC14 (£11.95)? My Gigabyte 4870 already has a large stock MOSFET cooler, but would a Swiftech MC21 be worthwhile for £6.23?:


I would then get either just one Swiftech MCW30 for the Northbridge, or get a second for the Southbridge too.

So 2 radiators and 1 pump should be enough for all that?

I would use my 2 Scythe SFF21E to cool the first radiator, then buy two more for the second.

I would keep the Coolermaster 140mm fan as an intake at the front, and a 120mm exhaust fan in the rear.

Is there anything else I have missed?

 

[Conumdrum]

Tubing, 10' is usually plenty, giving you a few left over feet if you make a mistake.

The 355 is a great pump. It's native 3/8" ID tubing tho. You should get an aftermarket top to make it really worthwhile. You can use any sized barbs on the aftermarket top. I have the XSPC restop for my 355's, great pump/res combo. But both together is about $90.

Distilled water and Petras PHN Nuke for liquid. If distilled is hard to get, use deionized high quality battery water.

Microres has crappy plastic barbs. Buy some good metal Bitspower barbs, put the orings from the plastic barbs onto the metal barbs, the Swiftech ones are a bit thicker and you need them due to the recessed mounting hole.

 

[gcwebbyuk]

So with regard to the CPU only side of things, it will set me back around £150-£160.

How much better will this be than an air config that I have been used to, and then with the second half of the kit - how much better over my current setup?

Should it be pretty much silent?

 

[Conumdrum]

Your WC planned sytem won't be silent. It will be quiet. You can move up to a 120x3 and run sub 1000 rpm fans. Then your PSU fan and hard drives will be louder than the cooling. I can't hear my rad fans at all in my rig. The PSU 140mm fan is louder than it should be though.

Watercooling a GPU always is quiter than a stock setup, always. There are some nice air cooled setups for most GPU,s but they seem to come out slowly. Look at Thermalright and Acellero for GPU cooling. Your not going to do much better than your aftermarket air cooling for the GPU you got now. It's probably pretty darn quiet already.

Air cooling is cheaper, you overclock, it's louder than water. Up to you.

 

[gcwebbyuk]

See image above, I have a Zalman GV1000 already mounted to my 4870, it is on it's slowest speed - 1250rpm and is barely audible, and keeps temps to 30c idle, 70c load.

I replaced the stock with the Zalman as the stock always ran at 100% and sounded like it was taking off!

Would the WC loop cool enough if I ran the S-Flex's at less than 1000rpm?

 

[QuietIce]

For a CPU only loop a pair of S-Flex E's running normally (2x ~50 CFM) should be enough. I guess you're more sensitive to noise than me, though - even at 1200 RPM I can't hear my Es running (20 db). Not sure 2x E's turned down would be enough to cool it. To still have 100 CFM at less than 20 db you'd probably have to move to 120x38mm fans on a good controller.


Still not sure why you want to WC the NB. The only AMD NB I would even consider for WC is a GX chipset and only if you're actually stressing the on-board video. Otherwise AMD NB just doesn't get hot enough with moderate airflow across a good heatpipe system - and your board has that ...

 

[gcwebbyuk]

The NB/SB issue was purely because the blocks were not too expensive as a percentage of the whole system cost. If they are not worth doing, then I will scrap them from the plan and save some ££s.

I am quite noise sensitive as my pc sits ON the desk, so within 50cm from my ears:

That is my whole reason to go WC purely to get as silent as possible, not fussed about OC flexibility - if I get some headroom to overclock, then great, if not, no bother - that was my reason for the Reserator as it is supposed to be as silent as possible, although not as efficient as a custom loop.

 

[jr1]

If your after silence your definately better off with a bigger rad that will give you the option for slower fans

 

[gcwebbyuk]

My case can only fit two 120.2 radiators internally. Am not keen on mounting them externally really. I know the resorator was external - but it is a thing of beauty so I wouldnt mind!

 

[QuietIce]

I'm not trying to be argumentative here, just trying to get an idea of where you're heading. Your Zalman GV1000 runs 20 db in quiet mode, 36 db on high - is it also too loud even in quiet mode?


A pair of E's slowed down should be enough to cool a 965BE at stock vCore or lower. And you should plan on an MCP655 vario (so you can turn it down as needed) or an MCP350. Anything else in the Swiftech/Laing line of pumps will be too loud ...

 

[Conumdrum]

Does your PC have to be less than 1 meter from your head? I can see why noise in an issue.

 

[gcwebbyuk]

Yeah I was hoping to get lower than 20db with WC. I am at about 19/20 db on air at the mo most of the time.

That was my original question - would it be quieter than my current setup - i.e. not increase in fan speed as the cpu/gpu load up.

PC needs to be in that location due to space in the room.

 

[Conumdrum]

Unless you go bigger rads than you plan. And takinging into account your low heatload on the AMD Processor, methinks all the case fans no matter if air or watercooled less than 1 meter from your head you won't be happy spending the extra money to go watercoolong.

You can look into the reserator, but you'll need two if cooling the CPU/GPU. And then, it's up to you with those unreliable pumps and the aluminum nightmare. And you see the size of the reserators??? You need FLOOR space for them, they are 2' tall.

Then you still need fans over the Mobo heatsinks, hard drives, mosfets etc.

Now I see your situation in a pretty picture, it's all about getting the PC away from your head.

Watercooling ain't going to make it silent with it sitting up there. Save your money.
52 posts and we get a resolution.

Best of luck!

 

[gcwebbyuk]

Thanks for all your help guys - sorry it's taken 52 posts to get here!

I thought I had explained it fairly well in my first post about the current setup being silent unless a load is put on the cpu, and then the fans get noisy. I was originally asking if watercooling would get over this, and stay the same sound level all of the time. I guess it has kinda steam rollered from there

Thanks

 

[QuietIce]

We get lots of threads like this and "quiet" is what most people are looking for when they say quiet. We can help with those systems because, generally, WC is quieter than normal air in the same performance range. What you're seeking is "silence" and that's in a different league entirely.

I think what lead most of us astray (well, me anyway) was the OC numbers in your sig. Most people looking for silent systems don't OC, they go for under-volting at stock speeds instead. And on that note, your 965 should under-volt fairly well at stock. Since it runs faster I don't know if it'll match the 1.15 vCore of my 940BE (@ 3.0 GHz stock) but it's something you might look into ...

 

[gcwebbyuk]

I have had it underclocked to 1.375v at 3.4GHz - havent tried it reducing the speed to get the volts down any lower though.

Can you just confirm my thoughts on WC vs Air though - is it true that when the CPU is loaded up in a WC system, the fans dont need to increase in speed like a standard air setup - or is that a myth?

 

[QuietIce]

The short answer - it depends on what you're running.

If you're talking about running SETI/Folding/Rosetta 24/7 then the WC loop will eventually balance out and the fans will have to run a given speed to keep up with the constant heat load. But remember, if there are two fans then they'll only have to work half as hard as the single fan on an air cooler with the same load.

If you're talking about short bursts of CPU activity then, no, WC fans don't need to increase in speed because by the time the water heats up enough to warrant a speed-up of the fans the CPU load burst will be over. As an example, it took my 2x double-rad system about 20 minutes at P95 load for the temps to stabilize, the 1x dual-rad system maybe 8-9 minutes, and my TRUE about 15 seconds - at best. Obviously the 2x dual rad loop would just absorb a 2-3 minute full load (probably longer) without blinking ...

 

[gcwebbyuk]

My main uses for the pc will be:
1. Programming - database / web development
2. Office - Access/Word/Excel/OneNote
3. Browsing and Email
4. Gaming - Dragon Age Origins / Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising
5. Listening to music at night while in bed - this is when I really need the system to be silent.

At the moment, the system is pretty quiet - except at night if there is a very quiet bit of music playing you can hear a very slight hum of the fans - not too bad though.

But when working on the system, if I do anything that loads up the CPU - copying files (can't think of anything else at the mo) the fan noise increases, and when I am sat right next to it, its a pain in the ears!

Maybe I am being too sensitive to it. I mean this new system is much quieter than when it was in my old case, and that case was small enough to fit under the desk without getting kicked, but I have kinda got addicted to making it silent! I was hoping watercooling might be the holy grail for me, but maybe it isn't.

 

[QuietIce]

If that's what you use the system for then WC should handle the loads you're talking about and not need faster fans. For non-DC users the only thing I can think of off-hand that would require faster fans would be long video encoding. Something that takes a minute or two of load shouldn't effect it. I mean, the CPU will still heat up but if it's not under load for any length of time the loop won't heat up much.


Edit:
I'm not sure how you'd automatically control the fans for a water loop though ...

 

[gcwebbyuk]

So if I set all of the proposed four S-Flex E fans to say 600rpm - would that be enough to cool all of the components?

I just need to make sure it's going to do the trick before spending £300 on the full kit. Will it be much quieter than my current config when the system is running at just over idle? I know I keep bringing up the resorator - but now you know my uses of the pc, would that be sufficient (it's basically half the price of the full swiftech kit).