What is a 2500k capable of watercooled?

[Zebo]

Hi I currently have a 920 @ 4.2 Ghz and getting bored with it.... Two years old is old in this business. I also have a hydrocopper GTX 580 in the loop. CPU never gets above 48C even gaming. GPU stays around 55C when gaming.. clocked at 875MHZ. Kinda hot but fans on radiator are at 900rpm for silence. Just wondering what can one expect with a 2500k in this setup?

 

[Smartazz]

Honestly, a 920 at 4.2GHz is still plenty fast. The 2500K isn't usually heat limited but voltage limited too if I'm not mistaken.

 

[Zebo]

Yes but P6T does not have USB 3.0 or faster SATA.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

Yes but P6T does not have USB 3.0 or faster SATA.

You can buy PCI-E cards to give you that.

 

[mrjoltcola]

Honestly, a 920 at 4.2GHz is still plenty fast. The 2500K isn't usually heat limited but voltage limited too if I'm not mistaken.

+1

My sweet little 2500K Gene-Z rig runs 5.0Ghz stable at 75C max load temp on a $35 Cooler Master Hyper 212+ EVO. Water cooling isn't needed.

Most people I know get water for aesthetics, noise (lack of), and more case options (an H50/H60 gives you more low-clearance options.

The only performance reason you might want water is if you plan to do extreme overclocking and run your chip at voltages like 1.5 - 1.6. Otherwise, below 1.5v most chips hit stability wall before a heat wall.

Water has more practical performance use cooling video cards than a 2500K.

 

[Duvie]

I will let you know.....

Though I have a nice true 120 with copper core, I thought I would try an H100 for the heck of it. I have a huge case and it will fit and if I dont get much above what I would have with air, at least I can run low and nearly silent....

All accounts on air and the right board 4.3-4.5ghz is possible....4.7ghz if you see th eguy above....

I think I will try 5ghz...

I am coming from a cpu in my sig below but only running 3.2ghz...

 

[paperwastage]

as said from previous posters

5ghz on i5/i7 is easy, but you might need >1.5v vcore

I personally am not comfortable running above 1.45v daily

watercooling doesn't change how good your chip is(or how much voltage you need to reach 5ghz)... only how high your temps go when you stress it

my 2500k does 4.5ghz on a 212+ (single fan), probably hitting a max of 65C @ 1.35V

 

[BonzaiDuck]

as said from previous posters

5ghz on i5/i7 is easy, but you might need >1.5v vcore

I personally am not comfortable running above 1.45v daily

watercooling doesn't change how good your chip is(or how much voltage you need to reach 5ghz)... only how high your temps go when you stress it

my 2500k does 4.5ghz on a 212+ (single fan), probably hitting a max of 65C @ 1.35V

That sounds about right, for your self-imposed voltage limit -- identical to mine.

We get a lot of reports here from our extreme gurus, who invest in water-cooling and who have experience over a longer time for pushing voltages beyond more conservative assessments of a "safe range." If you do the "turbo" overclocking with the VCORE setting on "Auto" and EIST/C1E etc. enabled, the peak voltages will appear momentarily during brief idle states when the processor is unloaded or only slightly loaded. I would think that would mitigate more of the risk for pushing the maximum voltage closer to 1.40V or above what seems to be a consensus for the SB chips.

But with these speeds, it hardly seems worth the trouble -- or even the occasional nagging suspicions after you do it.

 

[BrightCandle]

The 3930K/3960K were made so that all the X58 users could do something with the watercooling kits they bought. You get two extra cores and lots of cache to through that nice water system at when in the rare case your using all of the CPU.

 

[alyarb]

You really have a sick machine by all but the snottiest standards. Judging by your post count and the fact that most of your time is spent in ATOT and P&N I can understand if you have a pretty snotty standard you like to keep, but if the 580 tells me you are also a gaming enthusiast then someone of your stature knows that a 10% frequency boost is only going to mean a ~5% increase on your minimums in the very best case. Undertaking a platform overhaul for such an incremental upgrade is silly to me, so you should decide:

Are you doing it for performance?
Are you doing it for e-peen or some other nebulous sentiment of power?
Are you doing it for faster peripherals (like you mentioned?)

Honestly I think the performance of a 2500k will disappoint you and probably won't feel any faster than your nehalem. You will have to measure to make sure it's faster, and in a lot of non-gaming scenarios, the 10% clock advantage of SNB will merely bring you to parity with the 4.2 GHz Bloomfield. Your musings on ATOT will post at the same speed, for instance.

If you are doing it for e-peen, or because the chance to run at a nice round number (5.0 GHz) feels good (and it does), then now is probably as good a time as any because you can still fetch ~$250-300 for your current setup which means migrating to SNB will only cost you a couple hundred. Do this before your nehalem loses its value so that something as silly as vanity costs you as little as possible to maintain.

If you are completely unsentimental about your hardware and simply want the best machine for your money and your usage scenarios, stay where you are. Until you say otherwise I imagine your most disk-intensive activity is loading games or apps. So get a Crucial M4, run it on SATA II and get over it. SATA III won't transform your machine's speed nor will a 5 GHz i5 because it's already fast as shit.

I'm not going to go digging around now, but the first round of SATA III expansion cards were built around the Marvell SE9123 family of controllers and were consistently slower than SATA II on the ICH10R. The ASUS Sabertooth X58, for instance, has an ICH10R for SATA II and a Marvell SE9128 for SATA III, and guess what, the ICH10R is faster. So I don't think you'd be satisfied in that regard unless you were getting SATA III and USB 3.0 from an intel ICH. Just wait for Haswell heh.

 

[nitromullet]

I will let you know.....

Though I have a nice true 120 with copper core, I thought I would try an H100 for the heck of it. I have a huge case and it will fit and if I dont get much above what I would have with air, at least I can run low and nearly silent....

All accounts on air and the right board 4.3-4.5ghz is possible....4.7ghz if you see th eguy above....

I think I will try 5ghz...

I am coming from a cpu in my sig below but only running 3.2ghz...

When most people are talking about water cooling they usually aren't referring to any of the Corsair coolers. There are air coolers that rival the Corsair coolers.

Case in point, a Silver Arrow cools almost as well as the H100 (49.9C vs 48.6C) at the highest fan speed for the H100, but the Silver Arrow does it at a much lower volume (38.8dBA vs 48.1 dBA). Drop the fan down to medium on the H100 and you get the exact same temps as the Silver Arrow, but still a louder fan (38.8dBA vs 43.8 dBA)..

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5054/corsair-hydro-series-h60-h80-and-h100-reviewed/6

I imagine your TRUE Is quieter than an H100. Mine, with two low RPM GentleTyphoon fans on it, certainly is. Then again, my setup does limit my OC a bit. I've run my CPU at 4.2GHz under water (EK Supreme HF, D5, quad 120 Swiftech rad), but settled on 3.7GHz on air for a quiet rig.

 

[Duvie]

When most people are talking about water cooling they usually aren't referring to any of the Corsair coolers. There are air coolers that rival the Corsair coolers.

Case in point, a Silver Arrow cools almost as well as the H100 (49.9C vs 48.6C) at the highest fan speed for the H100, but the Silver Arrow does it at a much lower volume (38.8dBA vs 48.1 dBA). Drop the fan down to medium on the H100 and you get the exact same temps as the Silver Arrow, but still a louder fan (38.8dBA vs 43.8 dBA)..

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5054/corsair-hydro-series-h60-h80-and-h100-reviewed/6

I imagine your TRUE Is quieter than an H100. Mine, with two low RPM GentleTyphoon fans on it, certainly is. Then again, my setup does limit my OC a bit. I've run my CPU at 4.2GHz under water (EK Supreme HF, D5, quad 120 Swiftech rad), but settled on 3.7GHz on air for a quiet rig.

You are right on the silver arrow but it is like 75 or so and the weight is scary to have hanging off this asrock board

I have seen the price from 75-85 for that cooler w/0 shipping....I can get the H100 for 100 with a price match at frys right now....$15...I think I can afford it and have something to afford to play with...if anything its idle temps are far better then my TRUE120 would get...even on low speed....

http://www.guru3d.com/article/corsair-h100-review/7

<<One final area to discuss is how these liquid-coolers compare to a high-end air-cooler. We included the Thermalright Silver Arrow in our results, and it&#8217;s one of the best performing air-coolers on the market&#8212;with a price and size to match. In terms of performance and noise levels, the Silver Arrow is probably the best option out of the tested coolers. You can pick one up for around $75 online, which is only slightly more than the Corsair H60 and about $18 less than the Corsair H80; the Corsair H100 is the most expensive, but even then you&#8217;re only looking at around $100. What you get for the additional $15-$30 isn&#8217;t always better performance, but installation of the Corsair water block is substantially easier than that of the Silver Arrow&#8212;and that&#8217;s assuming you have a motherboard and case with sufficient clearance to begin with. There&#8217;s also the lingering question of whether it&#8217;s a good idea to have 1.2kg of weight hanging from your motherboard. Considering all of this, while coolers like the Silver Arrow can certainly be competitive, there&#8217;s still plenty of reason to consider Corsair&#8217;s Hydro series coolers.>>

From anandtech's review

 

[masteryoda34]

I'm in the same situation (4.2GHz 920 on water), and I honestly cannot justify new MB/CPU upgrade at this point. At best you end up with a 5GHz CPU instead of 4.2. Money better spent on SSD, Video card, or RAM in my opinion.

 

[fastamdman]

Every chip is different and it depends on what kinda voltage the chip wants. Some take 1.45 to do 5ghz stable some take under 1.4, it just depends. Some can't get 5ghz stable, some can. Almost all chips can do 4.5ghz stable just fine which is a great overclock. You won't know though until you get the chip .

Also for suicide runs these chips have a multiplier wall. Once you hit it, you can't go beyond it no matter what .

 

[BD231]

2500k would be a monumental waste in your case, 3930k would be a nice grab though @ 12mb's of cache. None of the cache issue's you face with Thuban and all the IPC of your current setup.

 

[Kenmitch]

My 2500k is water cooled. I have seen idle temps in the low 20's load temps in the low 70's depending on ambient temps. My rig lives in a desk with door shut.

Was playing around with MB overclock profiles th other day. Basing water temp off idle gpu temps I got the following during heavy stress testing. With GPU idle 32*C

Stock speed highest core 51*
4.0ghz highest 61*
4.2ghz highest 61*
4.4ghz highest 64*

I already had watercooling when I got my 2500k combo. In my desk I doubt air cooling would work to good.

As others have stated overclocking 2500k's is more voltage limited.

 

[nitromullet]

You are right on the silver arrow but it is like 75 or so and the weight is scary to have hanging off this asrock board

I have seen the price from 75-85 for that cooler w/0 shipping....I can get the H100 for 100 with a price match at frys right now....$15...I think I can afford it and have something to afford to play with...if anything its idle temps are far better then my TRUE120 would get...even on low speed....

http://www.guru3d.com/article/corsair-h100-review/7

<<One final area to discuss is how these liquid-coolers compare to a high-end air-cooler. We included the Thermalright Silver Arrow in our results, and it’s one of the best performing air-coolers on the market—with a price and size to match. In terms of performance and noise levels, the Silver Arrow is probably the best option out of the tested coolers. You can pick one up for around $75 online, which is only slightly more than the Corsair H60 and about $18 less than the Corsair H80; the Corsair H100 is the most expensive, but even then you’re only looking at around $100. What you get for the additional $15-$30 isn’t always better performance, but installation of the Corsair water block is substantially easier than that of the Silver Arrow—and that’s assuming you have a motherboard and case with sufficient clearance to begin with. There’s also the lingering question of whether it’s a good idea to have 1.2kg of weight hanging from your motherboard. Considering all of this, while coolers like the Silver Arrow can certainly be competitive, there’s still plenty of reason to consider Corsair’s Hydro series coolers.>>

From anandtech's review

Yeah, there are certainly valid reasons to consider the H100. My point, however, was that most people don't really consider the Corsair coolers true water coolers due to their performance being more on par with air than water.

 

[Duvie]

Yeah, there are certainly valid reasons to consider the H100. My point, however, was that most people don't really consider the Corsair coolers true water coolers due to their performance being more on par with air than water.

That is true as well....

If you look at that one review I linked you can see the Corsair coolers did quite well against other water coolers that are considerably more expensive. This according to your logic I guess in a price per performance way means not many if any water cooler out there is justified.

I personally dont like having these heaving coolers torquing on the board the way they do. I also know a lot of people have issues getting them to fit in many standard mid towers.

I dont also necessarily think some of the reviews with mild overclocking with mild voltage boost may show the extended benefits of water cooling....as well as how fast a water cooler disipates that heat once full load is cut to idle.

I modified (120mm fan mount) a Coolit Freezone (non Elite model) and it was about equal to the cooling capactiy of my current True120 and Antec TriCool fan on High. So I am btting this Corsair will perform better then my True 120(high) maybe even at low fan speed...so silence I can accept.

 

[Zebo]

+1

My sweet little 2500K Gene-Z rig runs 5.0Ghz stable at 75C max load temp on a $35 Cooler Master Hyper 212+ EVO. Water cooling isn't needed.

Most people I know get water for aesthetics, noise (lack of), and more case options (an H50/H60 gives you more low-clearance options.

The only performance reason you might want water is if you plan to do extreme overclocking and run your chip at voltages like 1.5 - 1.6. Otherwise, below 1.5v most chips hit stability wall before a heat wall.

Water has more practical performance use cooling video cards than a 2500K.

Nice overclock.

Indeed it's all about noise. The last 4 years or so with the massive heat piped 120mm coolers one could get pretty quiet with CPU but that does not solve the higher performing video cards noise because there is simply not enough space to dissipate that much heat without high rpm, thus higher noise levels. Putting a water block on it and into a 120 x 360 mm radiator with low rpm fans allows you to run silent with the highest powered video cards. That's why I watercool. It's a hassle every time you want to switch HW but the end result is worth it.

Interesting to know temps don't matter so much. I found in the past about 100 Mhz gain from every 10C you could lower CPU load temp. Not that I run the coolest system just because I'm going quiet but I could always clock better than air.

 

[aigomorla]

I'm in the same situation (4.2GHz 920 on water), and I honestly cannot justify new MB/CPU upgrade at this point. At best you end up with a 5GHz CPU instead of 4.2. Money better spent on SSD, Video card, or RAM in my opinion.

^ this is the smart route...

Honestly guys if your on a 4ghz i7, nothing unless ur other sectors are upgraded would justify you getting a new platform + cpu.

The X58 is a SOLID platform...

Get an SSD + Video card upgrade.. you will see a bigger benifit from those over a platform upgrade... and at the very least u can take it with you on the upgrade.

But a lot of people asked me why im not on Sandy-E... a lot of people assumed i would already be on sandy-E...

My answer is, its not tastey.... C2D -> i7 was tastey.... Quad -> Hex was tastey....

Hex -> Quad or Another Hex -> seems like im chasing my tail...

 

[peonyu]

5ghz is possible on air, im running a 2500k at that speed now. Like others said just try it and see if you can do it, it really comes down to the chip though. If you get a cpu that craves excessive voltage for higher mhz then you may hit a heatwall on air, but that doesnt seem to common.

 

[aigomorla]

5ghz will require massive amount of voltage which would kill the life on your cpu.

I have been telling people on this forum for many years now, after killing SERVERAL CPU's on the dangers of high voltage.

But seems like people just dont care.. they want that bling bling 5ghz number when it doesnt serve any real purpose in the activities you would normally do, minus extending the length of your great E-Penis. Infact it can hurt you more with instability vs having a flat out conservative overclock like 4ghz will.

I have told people many many times how dangerous it is to push a 32nm into 1.4vcore + territory... those that listen to me are chugging fine and happy, those that dont, come back on the forum with "my cpu wont hold overclock anymore and is BSODing on stock."

I am not an editor for a major forum, but i bet you, ive passed though more cpu's then even ANAND has 2-5 yrs ago when i was reviewing ES's for this forum.

when it comes to stress and handle.... even IDC listens to what i tell him in regards to stress on a cpu.