Looking for some opinions on a liquid cooling loop

[Graestone45]

Hi Toms hardware community, this is my firt post on here. I have been messing with custom PC part lists for a few months a decided to see if I could put together a water cooled build. I am going to build a desk around this, that's the reason for a lack of a case. I plan t use 2/3 monitors, therefore the 4gb video card.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($219.00 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte G1.Sniper M5 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($174.49 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LP 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($83.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: PNY GeForce GTX 770 4GB Video Card ($369.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($79.99 @ Micro Center)
Other: Swiftech Compression Fitting(X12)
Other: EKWB Triple 120 Rad
Other: EKWB Res
Other: EKWB Pump
Other: EKWB GPU Waterblock
Other: EKWB CPU Waterblock
Other: Green EKWB Tubing
Other: XSPC G1.Sniper M5 Chipset Waterblock
Other: Water Cooling Parts+S/H ($533.87)
Total: $1551.32
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-03-18 20:41 EDT-0400)

I was also wondering about coolant, can I just use some distilled water?

 

[Graestone45]

Bump.

 

[Graestone45]

Bump -_-

 

[MFBLO96]

Do you realize that upgrading to a gtx 780, a x79 mobo, and a 4930k (six core i7) will be cheaper than all of the water cooling parts, and preform a lot better. You could also go with a 4770k, and a gtx 780 ti, and it would still be cheaper.

Until you have the highest end components, spending almost as much on the cpu and gpu to get an extra 5-15% performance is not a very good idea.

I can guarantee you that the 780 ti and 4770k would be around a 60-70% improvement.

The only difference between water cooling and air cooling is that water cooling uses water to move heat to the radiator, and air cooling uses heat pipes.

At the end if the day, your components are a lot more important than a crazy cooling system

 

[rubix_1011]

First, please do not bump threads in the forums; it is in the rules.

Also, while I am a strong proponent for watercooling and supporting people exploring this as a cooling option, MFBLO96 does pose a very good point about hardware upgrades for similar cost of the watercooling gear in total. This is where the user needs to make a decision about what is more important to them at the time; new hardware will perform better than your existing hardware, while watercooling can be easily used over and over again with minimal updates, depending on sockets and blocks you might need to consider changing for future hardware.

 

[Graestone45]

Do you realize that upgrading to a gtx 780, a x79 mobo, and a 4930k (six core i7) will be cheaper than all of the water cooling parts, and preform a lot better. You could also go with a 4770k, and a gtx 780 ti, and it would still be cheaper.

Until you have the highest end components, spending almost as much on the cpu and gpu to get an extra 5-15% performance is not a very good idea.

I can guarantee you that the 780 ti and 4770k would be around a 60-70% improvement.

The only difference between water cooling and air cooling is that water cooling uses water to move heat to the radiator, and air cooling uses heat pipes.

At the end if the day, your components are a lot more important than a crazy cooling system

I plan to upgrade to a 780 TI/4770K later on, I am aware that it would make more sense to spend the money on better parts, but this is a father son build and we probably won't be doing it again, so I thought it would be something cool to do. Also, sorry about bumping, I wasn't aware of that rule.

 

[MFBLO96]

While I might do things differently I respect your approach, I put my first computer together with my dad in the fall and had fun doing so.

Hope you two have fun and that it goes smoothly

 

[Graestone45]

I hope it goes smoothly too, I really don't like the way that the RMA process sounds. Do you have any idea what I could do for coolant?

 

[Deuce65]

Distilled water.

 

[Graestone45]

Distilled water.

Should I use a killcoil/biocide?

 

[Deuce65]

It isn't really necessary, but most people do. I have a killcoil as one of my plugs, I think that is easiest.

 

[Graestone45]

It isn't really necessary, but most people do. I have a killcoil as one of my plugs, I think that is easiest.

Any idea where I could buy one of those?

 

[Deuce65]

Well, pretty much any place that sells water cooling equipment will have them, like wherever you are buying your gear from. I get most of my stuff from frozencpu and performancepcs.