Watercooled GPU

[cmdrdredd]

I have my CPU on water cooling, and I was wondering about cooling the GPU too. I have 2 questions. 1) is it worth it? does the benefit outweigh the work? and 2) does adding an extra device in the loop reduce the cooling of the whole. I mean will my CPU not be cooled as well since there's a device creating heat in the chain so to speak?


Thanks in advance

 

[Doctorweir]

IMO no...I have non-hearable GPU coolers and the GPUs would only add heat to the cycle, reducing my CPU cooling efficiency

 

[lifeguard1999]

It depends on what you want to do. If your GPU has a HSF that is loud, then you can use H2O cooling to elininate its noise. Sometimes H2O cooling also allows you to o/c your graphics card a bit more. It is dubious as to how useful that really is, but it is a possibility. This resulting loss in cooling for the CPU will be a few degrees, but will probably not make much of a difference. So your CPU runs at 50C with a GPU in the loop versus 48C -- big deal.

 

[Nirach]

I never saw my X800 running on stock cooling. But W/Cing it, full card that is, it was idling about 38 and loading around the 60 degree mark, on the same loop as the CPU. Overclocked to 600/600 from stock.. which I forget.. 400/490 sounds about right, but I can't be bothered to check.

There's some perfectly competant air coolers out there, which are probably inaudible and just as good. Just have to find 'em

 

[VERTIGGO]

My X850XT with good airflow and stock blower got 37.5 idle, and 65.75 load. It overclocked to 580/590 smoothly, but frames were only about 3fps different. I am skeptical of the importance of overclocking (and thus watercooling) GPUs in general. Overclocking a CPU is a good way to improve performance by 50-60%, but I believe GPUs don't gain enough to require W/C unless you're just an enthusiast with a "need" for that extra 3 frames. I think I'd run an awesome phase change on the CPU, and just use silencers for the graphics. (Unless you're a silence freak)

 

[cmdrdredd]

well that's exactly the info I was looking for. I figured since I could I should watercool it, but the stock HSF from BFG on their overclocked cards works pretty well and isn't too loud to me. The fan on my radiator is slightly louder than video card's cooling setup mostly because I run it at full.

I think i'll leave it alone since I get a good overclock from the stock HSF anyway.

Thanks for your replies.