Greetings! This is my first post, so bear with me. I've been going to Anandtech for the last 3 years (at least) and i've always lurked on the forums, but now I have a dilemna that i'm sure you guys would have some great advice on.
Anyways, about a year ago, a buddy of mine decided to give me his PC for free, which was great cause I was using an old surplused SFF dell that was a POS since my original PC bit the dust and I couldn't afford to buy a new board for it (i'm pretty poor). The great thing about this case was that it was watercooled. The bad thing about it though was that it's a old PC-1 Koolance case that blows with it comes to cooling. Even worse is that he put a first gen socket 754 board in it that dosn't even allow voltage change to the CPU so you basically can't even overclock with its current setup (he said he bought into watercooling cause it was "quiet").
Now, a year later, the pumps inside the built in resevoir have crapped out. So i'm basically stuck with deciding between replacing parts for a pretty mediocore watercooling case, or buying replacement parts that might help me later down on the road if I ever decide to build my own watercooling setup (something i'd love to do but just don't have the funds).
The replacement pump/reservoir that Koolance offers is a newer style one for their PC-2 cases. It looks pretty much the same, and I can get it at a resonable price direct from the site (40 bucks). But i've also found some great sites since i've had to research new pumps and stuff that offer good prices on probably better pumps than the Koolance one.
Basically, I have about 100 bucks to work with (maybe even a little more). What I need is a pump for sure, and possibly a resevoir, though I could probably just use the old resevoir with the dead koolance pumps if I really needed to. What are some good pumps or pump/resevoir combos that I can get for around 100 bucks? Would I see a pretty big difference if I bought a different pump from a different company? I can't imagine anyting could be worse the the old Koolance pumps I was running, which was barely able to keep the CPU at 35c. BTW, The block i'm using is a new koolance one luckily (300w dissipation).
Anyways, about a year ago, a buddy of mine decided to give me his PC for free, which was great cause I was using an old surplused SFF dell that was a POS since my original PC bit the dust and I couldn't afford to buy a new board for it (i'm pretty poor). The great thing about this case was that it was watercooled. The bad thing about it though was that it's a old PC-1 Koolance case that blows with it comes to cooling. Even worse is that he put a first gen socket 754 board in it that dosn't even allow voltage change to the CPU so you basically can't even overclock with its current setup (he said he bought into watercooling cause it was "quiet").
Now, a year later, the pumps inside the built in resevoir have crapped out. So i'm basically stuck with deciding between replacing parts for a pretty mediocore watercooling case, or buying replacement parts that might help me later down on the road if I ever decide to build my own watercooling setup (something i'd love to do but just don't have the funds).
The replacement pump/reservoir that Koolance offers is a newer style one for their PC-2 cases. It looks pretty much the same, and I can get it at a resonable price direct from the site (40 bucks). But i've also found some great sites since i've had to research new pumps and stuff that offer good prices on probably better pumps than the Koolance one.
Basically, I have about 100 bucks to work with (maybe even a little more). What I need is a pump for sure, and possibly a resevoir, though I could probably just use the old resevoir with the dead koolance pumps if I really needed to. What are some good pumps or pump/resevoir combos that I can get for around 100 bucks? Would I see a pretty big difference if I bought a different pump from a different company? I can't imagine anyting could be worse the the old Koolance pumps I was running, which was barely able to keep the CPU at 35c. BTW, The block i'm using is a new koolance one luckily (300w dissipation).
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