Need a non bias opinion about water

[cmdrdredd]

With the rig in my sig, would going to water for the CPU be worth it? Now I am not talking about an H100, I mean taking the time to get a good block good radiator, tubing, and res.

I guess it's a time thing more than anything else. I mean it takes a while to setup and test, but are the results compared to what I have going to be worth it? I know the temps will be lower, that's a proven fact on many threads. What I'm wondering is if in the end anyone would look back on their setup and say "I should have just done high end air because it was easy and worked fine".

Might have someone interested in a new system and I was going to mimic my setup, but I wouldn't mind swapping to water for for the new system if it was really going to be truly worth the time and effort and money.

I guess I just want someone to tell me "yes do it" or "no just keep what you have it's good enough". I know the old saying about "if you ask then you want it".

 

[dma0991]

The temps will be better but I would still like to know your ambient, idle, load and delta temps with a 4.5GHz or higher overclock. Mine would be about 30C, 35C, 65C and 30C which is to say that I am not temp limited but more to the fact that I don't want my chip to go beyond 1.3V.

You could go higher than 1.3V and get some improved overclocking results if you want to and not limited by what air coolers are able to achieve.

 

[Kenmitch]

I've been using water for the last couple of years. I don't have any regrets about it. I did it the economical way with standard barbs, no fancy connectors, lights, etc.

I guess in the end you'd have to maybe price it out and see if it's worth it to you. Depeding on voltage required to make the next couple of jumps in clocks then it may or may not be worth the xtra money.

 

[Zardnok]

I have an H100 on my 3570K running slightly higher than you. I haven't tried pushing it another step yet, but my temps with the H100 are already nosing over 80C during LinX testing and I would prefer not adding more voltage.

I debated long and hard between the $200 XSPC Rasa RX240 kit vs the $100 Corsair H100 and had my decision basically made for me when the RX240 kits were sold out every where. I considered doing a full out custom kit, but my shopping cart always nosed over $300 and I couldn't see spending more on cooling than I did on the CPU! In retrospect, I will always wonder if I could get higher clocks with a $300 custom system, but I am not sure I could tell any real world performance differences between 4.6 and 4.8. I used the extra $200 to get a GTX 670 instead of a 7850 and I am pretty sure I can tell a performance difference there.

I guess after this long rambling, you need to look at the clock speeds folks running quality water systems are hitting (4.7-5.0?) and then compare that to your current NH-D14 and see if you think $3-400 is worth an extra multi or 3. You might also take into consideration the additional voltage needed to be stable at the higher levels and whether that would lower your chip life any.

For me anyways, I am glad I did not buy the higher end water system and spent the money in a more efficient manner.

 

[BrightCandle]

Given two basic limitations of 80C on CPU temperature and 1.4 V on the CPU (some go higher but I prefer my CPU to last a year or more!) then the question is which it is you have hit on your current system. Presumably its the CPU temperature and that you have some voltage to spare.

Water will be worth maybe 300Mhz, more likely 100-200Mhz if you are thermally limited. But after spending two days removing old GPUs, putting in new ones, specialist screw drivers and covering my self in liquid its a lot of effort. An air cooled machine I can build in a few hours, a water cooled one (MB + GPUs + CPU) takes a weekend or more.

Personally I appreciate two things about water cooling.
1) I can get to high levels of performance with relative safety and long life
2) Its quiet

Point 2 is the big one for me, that silence especially when the game is really going is just brilliant. The cost of that silence however is probably about $600 and 16+ hours of rig build. All in its not cheap, but then the machine often stays built for a year or so at least.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Good points all. Gonna put all this info together and see what the guy wants to do. I'll have to confirm his goals for this PC before I start talking about this stuff with him. Just wanted the info because with my setup, I'm limited by temps. I've had it to 4.9Ghz but it was way hot and would throttle all day. At 4.6Ghz it's a little hot in Linx, but runs into the 80s with Prime95 which I consider ok since generally you shouldn't see that type of temp in games or other work.