voltage/watercooling question

[jeffw2767602]

Does watercooling allow you to achieve a higher overclock with lower voltage? For instance 3.6Ghz q6600 air with 1.45v vs. 3.6 on water with lets say 1.37v? I have no idea why the cooling would have any impact on the voltage you must give the proc, but Ive noticed a trend (could be pure coincidence though) that watercooling setups tend to have slightly lower voltages than their air conterparts. I cant logically deduce why that would be the case, so thats why im asking you all! Thanks.

 

[zach0624]

Water cooling does not allow you to acheive a higher clock on a lower voltage AFAIK. What it does instead is provide better cooling to draw heat away from the cpu and transfer outside your case(normally) and into ther air. This allows you to acheive higher clocks by increasing the voltage for stability. I'm pretty sure the trend is coincidence but that is an interesting thing since higher volts increase the heat which is bad especially on air. Just as a wild guess it might be that in general certain levels of OCers migrate towards one or the other(I'm to lazy for water myself) and it might just be that the results your looking at are influenced by the stepping or just on how well the cpu OCs.

 

[jeffw2767602]

Whew, thats what I was thinking. I think maybe a few of the voltages I saw being used were boot voltages, not stable. That may explain it.
Thanks!

 

[aigomorla]

woah completely the wrong section to be posting this.

Can a mod please move this to case and cooling.


And to answer your question, zach is correct. Voltage watercooling is ment more because you dont have a fan blowing a heat sink to also blow on the motherboard. This then causes the mosfets to overheat because so little air is being in contact with the metal sinks.

Your really just need to mod a fan ontop or near the mosfets and that usually fixes all problems. The mosfet waterblocks will only cause more restriction on your loop, and will raise your cpu temps.

Also, you need to be very nit and picky with mosfets. If one of them doesnt have good contact, it can mess up your overclocking.