Should I Water-Cool? What's Actually Cooled?

[FoxSay]

I'm building my a computer for the first time and thinking about using water-cooling system. Silence is one of the goals for the PC as well, and I'll be running applications like gaming, Photoshop, and especially Dragon NaturallySpeaking & Tobii Eyex fairly extensively. I just can't stand how PCs seem to slow down and lag so much within such a short time. =/

I was hoping you could help me find out:

1. How much wear will a water-cooled system save me over fan cooling? Will I need a specialized computer case?
2. Will water cooling make it faster as it's not getting as hot? What parts of the system or water-cooled?
3. How should I choose a water cooling system, and are there any better ways to cool the PC?

 

[Dunlop0078]

1) None probably if you have a decent air cooler, in fact some air coolers like the noctua nh-d15 perform better than a lot of the cheaper water coolers out there.

2) No if you have a decent air cooler (not the stock one). The cpu will only slow down if it gets hot enough to throttle, any decent aftermarket air cooler will keep it well below the temp where it starts to throttle.

3) I wouldn't, im assuming this is your first pc build if it is you might not want to mess with water cooling, a 30 dollar cooler master hyper 212 evo will be more than enough for any cpu at stock and even with an overclock. I run my amd fx 6350 at 4.7ghz with an air cooler and it never gets very hot. Maybe go water in the future but to be honest its unnecessary.

 

[Dunlop0078]

Forgot some parts of your question.

1) Not you wont need a "specialized" case but you do need a decent case the majority of aftermaket case manufactures incorporate features that makes adding water coolers easier.

2) That depends on what parts you want cooled, if you were to build a custom loop you can water cool the cpu, gpu, and motherbaord if you wanted to. But that takes a lot of money and some creativity and know how. Most coolers you buy online like the corsair H100i just cool the cpu.