Watercooling for noobs

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Agent Ghost
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Watercooling for noobs - Apr 01, 2008 02:36
Water cooling is one option for cooling your computer parts. With PC cooling there are two things you want to balance. One is that you want to cool your chip as effectively as possible. Which means keeping the temperatures down allowing for higher overclocks and/or prolonging the life of your parts. The secondary purpose of aftermarket cooling is to make your system more quiet. The stock air cooler that ships with either Intel or AMD are adequate to do the job but compared to aftermarket coolers they do not give you much overclocking headroom and more importantly they are loud as ***.

If you want to upgrade to an aftermarket air cooler I recommend an ULTIMA-90 with a Noctua NF-P12-1300 120mm fan. Use MX-2 as a thermal compound. This combination will be near silent but has performance next to the very best air coolers. AND it has about half the weight of larger coolers (while still outperforming most of them).
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/member-reviews/3281-thermalright-ultima-90-review.aspx

If you want make a more drastic change and give yourself even more overclocking headroom. Or maybe you just want to pimp out your Computer. Water cooling is a great option.


Advantages of water cooling:
-Best noise to performance ratio
-High potential for cooling
-A fun project (subjective)
-you’re not putting a big ***ing heatsink on your mobo that might snap it in half.

Disadvantages:
-Relatively expensive


What are the components of a water cooling setup?
(CPU/GPU/chipset/HDD) Blocks: This is the heat conductor that contacts the chip. Sort of like a closed heatsink that instead of using air to expel heat they use water (obviously).

Pump: This is what circulates the water in your loop.

Radiator: The most important part relating to performance, also can be the most expensive. This is the device that removes the heat out of your loop.

Fan(s): Connected to the radiator. This along with your pump is what will make the noise. The same Noctua fan I recommended for the air cooler is also the best fan on the market for a radiator due to it’s near silence and high static pressure.

Reservoir: This is a point in your tubing that allows you to fill and re-fill your loop with your coolant. Like a mini tank. A cheap replacement for a res is a T-line which works just as well.

Tubing: Self explanatory. They are measured with two numbers. Example. ½ inch IN and ¾ inch OD. Inner diameter and outer diameter. It’s important that you inner diameter matches all the barbs of your block(s), pump, res, and radiator.

Coolant & additives: You’d think you could just go to your tap and get some water but it’s not that simple. It has to be distilled, and not grocery store distilled, pharmacy distilled. Then you’re going to need a biocide if you don’t want algae growing in your water. Other good properties of additives are non-conductivity, anti-corrosive, UV reactive, dye. A great all in one mix is Feser one fluid.

Other extras:

Mounting hardware: Example, the Radbox is used to mount a radiator vertically.

Hose clamps: Forget about these. You can use zip ties.

Fan grill: protect your radiator and/or fans. You can get creative and get some with special designs.

Shrouds: They are supposed to increase your radiators effectiveness by spacing out your rad from your fans. They work by minimizing the effect of the center dead zone of fans. They make you radiator more difficult to install though. A waste of money in my opinion. I would only get one if I wanted everything. However, if you’re on a budget it would be wise to forget about these, or you could spend a bit more on a better radiator.

Mounting adapter for heatsink: Not always necessary but you can ensure a tighter fit between the cpu block and the cpu while at the same time reducing strain on the motherboard.
< Message edited by agent ghost -- 31 Mar 08 19:56:43 >

Agent Ghost
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RE: Watercooling for noobs - Apr 01, 2008 02:53
The parts that I ordered for my water cooling setup:

Case:
Antec P182 ATX Black Mid Tower Case

Thermal Compound Paste:
-Arctic Cooling MX-2

Radiator mounting hardware:
Swiftech MCB-120 Radbox Revision 2

CPU heatsink mounting adaptor:
-Thermalright LGA775 for SI/XP-120 And XP-90 Heatsinks

CPU Water Block:
-D-TEK Customs Fuzion

Water Cooling Pump:
-Swiftech MCP655 12V

Barb Fittings (for rad):
-D-TEK Customs 1/2IN G1/4 Chrome High Flow

Two fan radiator with integrated reservoir:
-Swiftech MCR220-QP-RES

Fans (X2):
-Scythe S-FLEX SFF21E 120MM (sold out of the Noctuas I wanted)

Fan Grills (X3):
nGear 120MM Chromed

Tubing:
Clearflex 60 Tubing 1/2IN Id 3/4IN Od 10 Feet

Coolant/Additives:
Feser One Fluid UV Green NON-CONDUCTIVE

These parts are " in transit for delivery" . Hopefully I get them later today. Latest tomorrow.

I also bought a new Motherboard, CPU and Ram. I want to overclock my E8400 to 4Ghz. My water cooling setup is overkill for this goal but I' m doing this for shits and giggles more than anything else.

canadagamer
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RE: Watercooling for noobs - Apr 01, 2008 03:01
Great info Agent!!!!!! I am just the " Watercooling Noob" you are speaking of in the title, as I have been wondering exactly what watercooling is and how set it up. On a side note Agent, what temp should by GPU be at normally, and what temp is too high?
Most wanted games:

Mass Effect
Assasins Creed
Crysis
Little Big Planet
Drakes Fortune
UTIII
Kane and Lynch
Heavy Rain
Alan Wake

Agent Ghost
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RE: Watercooling for noobs - Apr 01, 2008 03:09

Great info Agent!!!!!! I am just the " Watercooling Noob" you are speaking of in the title, as I have been wondering exactly what watercooling is and how set it up. On a side note Agent, what temp should by GPU be at normally, and what temp is too high?


That depends entirely on the GPU. Every chip has a normal operating temperature and a point where it will shut off to protect itself from frying. This would cause you PC to crash.

The transistor count, clock speed, and development proccess are all factors involved.

For example, I have a 8800GTX. Which is a very hot card. It can reach temperatures of 70C on load. Water cooled you can keep it bellow 50C on load. Which would reduce noise (depending on your setup) and greatly increase it' s overclocking potential. I' m not about to water cool my GPU though as I may replace it later this year.

Was there one you had in mind?


I' ll have pics on the way, as soon as I get my parts. This was just an intro. The guide is coming. It will be much easier to understand with pictures. It' s really not that complicated to assemble either. The time consuming part is doing the research to know exactly which parts are optimal for what you want.
< Message edited by agent ghost -- 31 Mar 08 19:13:59 >

choupolo
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RE: Watercooling for noobs - Apr 01, 2008 03:27
Great tips Agent. I' m considering water cooling everything from now on! So much more efficient than blowing air around.

Liquid nitrogen works too!

Agent Ghost
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RE: Watercooling for noobs - Apr 01, 2008 04:47

CPU block, mounting bracket with MX-2 compound


underside


Radiator, radbox (on the right),chome barbs (bottom), fan.


pump


tubing


Feser One fluid, fan grills

***ers were fast. I ordered last Thursday night and I got it today. From Vancouver to Ottawa in less than two business days.

I have to a lot of work to do before my new rig is ready. I' m looking at three hours easy.


I ran into some setbacks, I' ll have to finish this tomorrow.
< Message edited by agent ghost -- 1 Apr 08 1:49:13 >

Agent Ghost
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RE: Watercooling for noobs - Apr 02, 2008 12:41




I' m disconnecting every seconds, other than that my upgrade is working well. It' s a driver issue. I may reinstall Vista.


I wanted to have pics of the installation proccess but it would have been too much trouble. I ran into difficulty with certain parts.

All I have to say is that I' ll never upgrade my case again. That' s it, the p182 is the case I' ll die with.

< Message edited by agent ghost -- 2 Apr 08 4:47:39 >

canadagamer
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RE: Watercooling for noobs - Apr 03, 2008 02:28
For now I just have a very basic GPU that I bought last year. I have an nVidia 8400 GS, and when I am playing games on my PC it normally gets to around 57-60 Celsius. I was just wondering if this was bad or not?

Sorry for the nub questions.
Most wanted games:

Mass Effect
Assasins Creed
Crysis
Little Big Planet
Drakes Fortune
UTIII
Kane and Lynch
Heavy Rain
Alan Wake

Agent Ghost
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RE: Watercooling for noobs - Apr 03, 2008 05:47
No, that' s probably normal. The 8*** series is meant to be hot. My 8800GTX idles at 65C and can reach 80C on load. As long as you aren' t have graphical glitches or game crashes (not game related) you' re fine.

Some people like to improve the air flow in their case by adding fans which helps. As long as you have as much air being pushed into the case as out of the case. I' ve seen people put eight fans in their case (overkill) and they get fustrated when their 8800GTX is overheating. It' s because they were all pushing air out and this created a negative pressure in the case making it difficult for their videocard to spin it' s intake fan.

I would recommend to update your videocard drivers. It' s always good to stay up to date. You' ll get better performance and less problems. Especially with Nvidia and Vista.

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------







4Ghz Baby! This was easy to do. I don' t even want to know how high I can push it. I' ll just stay at this. I may even downclock it in order to get the best combination with memory speed/timings. At the very least i want to get my voltages down, I believe they are on " auto" at the moment.
< Message edited by agent ghost -- 2 Apr 08 21:53:59 >

canadagamer
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RE: Watercooling for noobs - Apr 03, 2008 05:58
Awesome, thanks for the link for the drivers. I was also going to mention in my last post that I have had some crashes. I will be playing a game, and then all of a sudden it will lock, and bring me back to my desktop. When I get to my desktop, my video settings are defaulted back to 800x600 and it won' t let me change them right away, I have to wait a few minutes before it will correct itself and allow me to adjust the video settings back up.

BTW, this is great info because this is really the first time I have gotten into PC gaming in years, as I have confined myself to console gaming. I have missed out on so much from what I can tell, and I am pretty much now a noob as I mentioned before. Don' t be surprised if I come back with more questions, and I hope you don' t mind.
Most wanted games:

Mass Effect
Assasins Creed
Crysis
Little Big Planet
Drakes Fortune
UTIII
Kane and Lynch
Heavy Rain
Alan Wake

Agent Ghost
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RE: Watercooling for noobs - Apr 03, 2008 06:30
I don' t mind, that' s what I like about the internet. Whenever I have a qestion there' s always someone ready to give me a straight answer.

Oh and don' t forget to patch your games.
< Message edited by agent ghost -- 2 Apr 08 22:34:57 >