Some WC questions

[nastymatt]

I am considering a watercooled set up but have a couple of questions...

How loud are these things? I understand that a lot depends on the fans and would love to use the Noctua NF-S12 1200 RPM fans as they are super quiet but will they have the cfm to do the job?

How loud are the pumps? I really do not want to put water into my system for the noise to increase. (My rig is currently very quiet)

What difference (in temps) does the resevoir make? Is bigger better?

Are the pump/resevoir all in ones any good? i.e. http://www.watercoolinguk.co.u...ath=36&products_id=697

 

[Billb2]

WCing can be as loud or as quiet as you want. Any fan/radiator combination will remove a fixed amount of heat from your system. Adding a higher CFM fan will cause it to remove a greater amount of heat, as will a larger radiator with another fan. You can look at fan specs and find out their CFM rating, their loudness, and sometimes their P-Q curves.. And note that the human hearing db curve is logarithmic, so adding a second fan does not double the noise. A change of 3db = double the noise and adding another fan will increase db by about 1.

Eheim and DDC pumps are pretty quiet (near silent when isolation mounted inside a case).

NO, a pump in a rez is a bad idea. all the heat that the pump motor makes is dumped into the cooling loop instead of into the air.

A rez has no effect on cooling. A larger rez just causes the water in a WC loop to take a little longer to reach it's ultimate temperature. Look at using a T-line instead, it's a lot cheaper and easier.

While your goal is admirable, it will be difficult and expensive to attain, even at the cooling/noise levels you are seeing with your current air cooling. Adding additional cooling capacity and/or less noise will effect the price exponentially.

Perhaps adding another Noctua NF-S12 to your Thermalright IFX-14 and more case fans would be a better way to go.

 

[nastymatt]

Cheers for the info Billb2.

One last Q.. what is in the top of the pipe attached to the T?

My system is fine actually.. not even getting close to risky temperatures (that is mainly due to the mobo - but that is a whole new thread) but I just like the idea of having a crack at watercooling.

Maybe it's the geek in me fancying a new challenge!

 

[Billb2]

If you mean what seals it, there a thingies you can buy, but a marble works pretty well.