New Build <$2000 First time Water Cooling

Temanaras

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Oct 26, 2011
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18,510
Approximate Purchase Date: When I am happy with a parts list. Sooner is better than later, but Im not opposed to waiting a few weeks if something I have missed is on the horizon.

Budget Range: <= $2000 After Rebates,

System Usage from Most to Least Important: It’s a home PC, I do mostly gaming and programming past that its general use.

Parts Not Required: Hard Drive , Keyboard, Mouse, Monitors

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: I have had great luck and service with newegg, but if people have better suggestions, I am up for it.

Country of Origin: America

Parts Preferences: None really.

Overclocking: Yes

SLI or Crossfire: Maybe

Monitor Resolution: 1920x1080

I have built a few towers in the past and I am on my 3rd for myself. I wanted to get some community feedback on the hardware before I went farther. My computer is mostly for gaming and software development, which isn’t necessarily hardware intensive. One thing I am wanting to do with this PC is water cool it. I know it can be expensive, but I just got a new job, have a bit of extra cash, and I need a new fun project. This is my general idea of a parts list. Any feedback would be appreciate, especially if you have done water cooling with any of these components.

Mobo1: ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z LGA 1155 Intel Z68 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Extended ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131760

CPU1: Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115072

Ram: CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233180

Power Supply: No Idea

Tower: Still a big ? since I am not sure what cases work well with WC, was looking at a few over at Danger Den.
 
You might want to check out the Overclocking section, we have a watercooling bit over there :)
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/forum-11.html
*Edit, you filled it in whilst I was posting hehe
fill this in to give us a more complete idea of things and I'm pretty sure we'll get you sorted out man, all good choices so far though

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/261222-13-build-advice

I've just finished a build using http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811108376 which as a first water build went really well,
I made things hard on myself due to Ocd but the case is a breeze to work on

Psu depends on what your powering off it, so the filling in the form can help us there
and dont restrict yourself to 'watercooling compatible' cases, you can always modify a case you like to suit your needs :)
Moto
 

Temanaras

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Oct 26, 2011
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I saw that and was reading through it. I thought I should get my hardware locked down before I start working on the WC stuff. I saw for PSU that I needed to up the power, but I am not sure by how much. I may be starting in the wrong place, first time posting and water cooling. I guess I should have posted this earlier, but I am trying to get opinions on the H/W before I start getting WC parts lists together.
 

Temanaras

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Oct 26, 2011
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I thought I had the Videocard on it. I am looking at one of 2 video Cards:
VC 1: EVGA 015-P3-1589-AR GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi) FTW Hydro Copper 2 1536MB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130601

VC2:EVGA 03G-P3-1591-AR GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi) Hydro Copper 2 3072MB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130665

I am leaning to the first, since from what I have read, the ram on the video card has such limited effects.

I am looking at the pre-watercooled because it will save me an expansion slot, and the cost of the card(non-watercooled)+ a good water block would cost about the same as these cards. It also saves me the grief of breaking a card trying to put a block on it myself.
 


The added VRAM only makes a difference if you're looking to go with multiple monitors for gaming (Nvidia Surround specifically).
If you're just gaming on one monitor @ 1920x1080, the 1.5GB VRAM model is perfect.

The Hydrocopper blocks are actually quite good. They cool within a degree of the high-end EK blocks, which would cost about $20 in price and shipping, so the Hydrocoppers are actually a great buy. Putting blocks on aren't difficult, but the selling point for me is that they're single-slot cards vs. double slot cards (thanks to the dual slot cooler).

Plus, EVGA cards are fantastic, and their customer support is one of the best (located in Cali)
 

Jklein

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Apr 21, 2013
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1. Do you have an DVD or BL ray drive? If not do you burn disks a lot?

2. What kind of hard disk do you have is it 6.0gbs or less?

3. Are you planning on over clocking your memory?

4. Any Preference on a Case size eg. Mid, Full, Desktop?

5. Do you want to overclock your GPU as well?
 

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