yeah careful of leaks I use this
water block and it was supplied with a couple of clamps and barb fittings rather than compression fittings and although I used it for about 3 years without noticing anything one day I did discover a drip.
It wasn't dripping all over the place I simply put a finger on it and there was a drip. so I glued it up with pvc glue inside and out and covered the barbs and before clamping, also created a seal on the external side around the pipes, clamps and so on. (taking care not to block the actual flow channels and tubing with a ridge of glue!) with these odd grip clamps supplied, that you pinch with a pair of pliers to open so, rather than recommending something I'd say, stay away from it because, there are no acceptable leaks or drips ever and though it seems all snug at first, after a while probably either the clamps lose strength maybe, or there is a little bit of movement of the pipe around the barb, that lets a drip out, so, no good.
I tested my wc rig with that block on it, in a sink for about a week before attaching it to my pc and there weren't any leaks or any signs of problems but, after 3 years, there has been a bit of corrosion on the barbs where the nickel plating has worn off and I'm talking about a miniscule drip but, it was water and it should'na happened.
Go for compression fittings instead of barb fittings.
Here's a Jay's 2 cents review of a
$19 water block. There was 2-3 c difference under stress testing on a 8700k. on a ~4.8-9ghz overclock.
Which is this one: from
Amazon
But it's more like $30 since it doesn't include couplers, he used some that he bought elsewhere earlier, here's a cheap and nasty compression coupler can't speak to their quality so again, don't strictly recommend, I would again also use pvc glue around the threads to create some extra seal if using
these.
Obviously you could source g1/4 compression couplers from anywhere + product reviews but they will be pricier than a £5. each. You will need 2 they are sold as single items. Take note again on Jay's 2 cents when his
custom $6500 wc build leaked! One of those high end elbow compression couplers dripped. @5.25 minutes.
What design of loop you attach to the cpu block is entirely a matter of your preference(and budget). A reservoir of some description, and a radiator of some description, and a pump of some description well price wise I think you'd find it in the end hard to beat a closed loop aio off the shelf. Like one with a 5 year warranty or something. Once you start buying the right kind of tubing for it and cleaning it every year or so, there won't be much in it for price/performance comparisons. Given that, pumps could fail, quiet ones for a pc loop are more expensive, and noisy cheap ones drive you nuts.
The question is do you like modding stuff, and also if you use say, a 420mm radiator (no cheap one of those) maybe you'd like the flexibility of adding a gpu water block to your loop. That is probably the only practical reason for making a custom open loop.
So be a little cautious whatever you buy. If I was going to do all that again, for the amount of hassle building a non standard loop is, next to say, a scythe fuma or noctua nh-d15, I would get the 6 pipe air cooler since a hunk of metal can't give you as much long term hassle. Ok so, you could get unlucky and get a cooler with a convex/concave/warped base or cracked heat pipe out of the box, but a doa product you can rma straightforward enough, in the worst case scenario, if it's delivered in bad condition.
There are no obvious savings if you get leaks and fry hardware. Water cooling a gpu can be beneficial, again check out some of
Jay's 2 cents, he was able to keep the cards from throttling under any conditions which is somewhat beneficial for gaming, if you really want to go that far. There's loads of benchmarks and other tips among all that stuff that should all be fairly informative.
At the end of it all though, you still have to choose the right gear connect it all up and run it for years so make sure it's all stuff that you like and be aware that troubleshooting it will be far more hassle than simply replacing a fan every few years on an air cooler.
On an open loop, you can replace the radiator, cpu/gpu blocks, pump, reservoir, tubing etc. with whatever you like, the closed loop aio's aren't so modular and may need to replace the entire unit, with a long term warranty, not a problem, so what savings there are, in an open loop, not so much really, probably.
Also you'll want to add a fan to huff directly on vrm heat sinks to replace airflow from air cooler if switch to water cooling. There isn't any convenient mount point for that, I stand 120mm fan on the back of the gpu. You can use a couple of L shaped brackets to mount one using top vent or rear vent screw holes so you can mount it directly above the vrm area, if you are a total neat freak.
Oh yes and remember that you can't mix say, an aluminium (piped) radiator with a copper cpu/gpu block because under water copper and aluminium corrode galvanically against each other, and also precipitate gunk into the distilled water coolant. Some radiators are all aluminium, some are copper pipes with aluminium fins and some are all copper thru and thru.
I should think that a chassis to house a custom loop would also be somewhat more expensive than a standard atx chassis probably more in the £100 range than the £50-75 range. I got my own workarounds to those problems with my open loop, using pvc tubing from a hardware store, mounting the radiator outside the case, and using a nice quiet aquarium water pump, that is however somewhat lacking in flow at only 2 litres a min, below the optimal 5l minute but then it was only £15.
And I made my radiator into a copper tubed one since I got an aluminium motorcycle transmission cooler for a fiver so it wasn't a too much of a 'mare to get some 12mm copper tubing for a £10, but I had to cut it all to size, and also wrap the pipes in aluminium foil to get the fins to fit back snug since the original tubing was 1/2inch, but as aluminium and copper can't mix under water it had to be done and I didn't want an aluminium cpu block.
Performance wise it is on a level with practically any 240mm closed loop aio, and better than any budget air cooler, cost about £45 to build, but none of it fits in the chassis and uses a bucket of water for a reservoir. It can do 4.8ghz@ 55c on a prime 95 (ver 26.6) stress test for 2 hours on my fx 4350 (overclocked tdp of 180watts), with ddr3 2400 memory (which adds a bit to the cpu thermals as well) and generally keeps my cpu at under 40c in normal load conditions and a modest ambient temp of around 20c, idling at around 30c.
The temps are good but it was only a modest gain over an air cooler like the 160w arctic freezer xtreme (which isn't very xtreme if you ask me) since I could get that to 4.7ghz but had about a dozen fans connected at some point, so it was basically quieter just to switch to a water cooler.
The main drawback is it is higher maintenance since the micro fins get a bit gunked up every few months and need cleaning. But it doesn't lose anything performance wise and it is more modular, if there were a real need I could switch out the radiator, pump or reservoir if I spot a bargain.
Also: can't mix ethylene glycol with pvc tubing. It breaks down pvc so, the coolant has to be water. Which means you can't use it as an anti corrosion agent if you happen to want to mix a copper cpu block with an all aluminium radiator. Large copper radiators aren't cheap anywhere far as I can tell.
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