Water or air, which is the absolute best for overclocking?

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maximustx

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I hear a lot about how water cooling is great and all… but I need to know how much better than air cooling it really is. I wanna know if we’re talking just a few degrees in difference or a huge improvement? Is water cooling really worth all the trouble or installing a massive air cooled solution like the Big Typhoon from Thermaltake will to the same thing? Money isn’t the issue here… I just wanna make sure I get the best possible cooling solution for a new PC I just built. See brief specs bellow:

Athlon 64 4000+ 939
LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D
2GB Twin XMS pro Corsair RAM
7800 gtx GeForce
250GB Hitachi HDD
Sony DVDR
Asus Vento 3600 (black)

If anyone could help me out on this I really appreciate the help. Thank you.
 

oompa

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If money isnt an issue get a VaporChill set up. should be around $700?? Not really sure. That will keep ur CPU cool. hehe
 

RichPLS

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THis aint exactly for Daddy Warbucks, but the TT BigWaterSE at $100 complete, need nothing else, is one heck of a quality system, and keeps my Opteron 175 at 2x 2420MHz at around 41C under load.
 

maximustx

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Vapochill is definetely nice... but I dont wanna have a big box with a hose coming out of my system case. I wanna try to keep things clean... my PC stays in the living room and huh... my GF is already not too happy with that at all... specially if it had a big box sitting on the side with cables and a big black hose sticking out. But I agreen though, Vapochill seems like the ultimate cooling solution.
 

G-Man

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Im kind of in the same bind. Reserchin chillers. I just ordered AMD 64 3,700+ SanDiago core and a ATI X850XT vic crd with the intention OC'n both as much as poss. Was lookin at the 3,700,3,800 and 4,000+. Liked the bigger cache of the 3,700 and 4,000. But was informed that the 4,000+ has overclocking disabled 8O so went with the 3,700. Was only bout 220.00also. If that OC'n isnt disabled or was a myth, or u found a way around, please post.
G-Man
 

RichPLS

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If ya got to have a fu<king vaporchill just to reach the speeds ya desire, get a fu(king Intel and overclock to 4GHz on air for christ's sake... Talk about generating heat and burning electricity!!! :roll:
 

shawnlizzle =]

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1) a FEW degrees is a HUGE deal because watercoolers pay a premium just for that extra 0.5 degree of temp

2) if you have really good air cooling, water will only go so far as the ambient temp will go. so don't expect miracles

3) some people suggest phase chilling, but since you don't seem that knowledgable in cooling (no offense), i would say stay away from phase. it is very loud, very heavy, needs lots of maintance and will cause physical damage if not taken care of or misused.
 

RichPLS

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Efficient in moving heat, yes, in actual power bill costs and heat released into the room, no. People around always bitchin bout Intel being hot and puttin off steam in the room, cooking eggs, whatnot, an AMD rig with phase cooling is burning alot more watts and puttin off alot more heat takin account the cooling unit. Now if you vented it to the outside, that would negate some of the problem.
 

shawnlizzle =]

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efficiency is not calculated by how much energy is used, but how much energy is used in context of teh cooling power. if you take in teh fact that phase cools way more than water and air, then it can viewed as more efficient even though it uses more electricity
 

pcrig

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If ya got to have a fu<king vaporchill just to reach the speeds ya desire, get a fu(king Intel and overclock to 4GHz on air for christ's sake... Talk about generating heat and burning electricity!!! :roll:

Should I ever buy INTEL I will need to use a NUKE cooling.
You nuke it and watch how it flies!

On other hand INTEL PeNTIUM is great.
The best cooling system for PENTIUM 4 I've seen was 4 chineese eating fried rice with hot chilli pepper and blowing on it to keep it running!
Huston we have problem.

I am generally opposing any overclockin as it is only a fools meal.

Why spend money on cooling rig instead inwesting them in best CPU and be fu>king happy with no sores on your ass?


PS.

Try DRY ICE cooling, if your Freedom Fries are to hot for you!
My RIG:
________________________________________________
Lian Li PC 602 black
Enermax 600 W Eg 701 Noisetaker 24 pin
ASUS A8N SLI Premium (dual RAID - 8 SATA ports) 939 (with external extended 2 SATA ports))
Athlon 64 4800+ 2X (stock AMD fan GOOD enough!) 929
(2 x 512) PC3200 DDR400 OCZ 1024ELDCGE-K (2-2-2-5-1T @ 2.8 Volts) 184 pin
ASUS ATi X700-X PCI Express
Plextor PX-716 DVD +/_ RW
Plextor Premium CD RW
SB Audigy 4 PRO
Klipsch Pro Media 5.1
19" View Sonic LCD
LiteOn DVD 16 x
PROXIM AP 4000,
PROXIM PCI 802.11 a/b/g
8 x 250 GB Hitachi SATA 10 (300)
2 x 60 G PATA Western Digital (old stock)
(no floppy)
Zippy EL-715
Logitech Di noVo Desktop Bluetooth (laser)
HP LaserJet 4350TN
HP DeskJet 9680
(OS on each dedicated drive - booted by selected drive through the chage of boot drive in the BIOS )
LINUX Red Hat 9
Knoppix 4.02 on CD
Windows 200 PRO
WINDOWS XP PRO
(waiting for 64 bit VISTA)
IBM (LENOVO) notebook on 802.11 a/b/g
Nero 7.02B (NO to ROXIO!)

Other:
remote controled microwave oven powered by INTEL P4 chips
 

RichPLS

Champion
Smoked!
Mine!
Lian Li PC-60plus Black Aluminum Case (w/TR-3B Black Thermometer/Fan Controller 3.5” bay)
Opteron 175 (2x 2.2 GHz, 2MB cache, Socket 939, .09 micron, E6 stepping, OSA175DAA6CD)
ThermalTake BigWaterSE 12cm liquid cooling system complete kit
Asus A8R-MVP Motherboard (ATI Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire, socket 939, SATA2)
HiS X1800XT Graphics Card (625 MHz/700 MHz OC core/1500 Mhz/1600 MHz OC mem, Dual DL-DVI VIVO 512 MB PCIe)
ATI TV Theater 550 PRO Tuner (PCI TV and FM Tuner)
2x 512MB Corsair Micro Xpert DDR RAM (2-2-2-6-2T (spd 2-2-2-5-1T) TwinXP 1024-3200XL)
2x 74gig Western Digital Raptor Hard Drives RAID-0 (WD740GD RAID0 150gig Boot Drive)
2x 250gig Western Digital Caviar SE16 Hard Drives (WD2500KS storage and data)
Plextor 716AL Black 16x DVD/CD Burner (IDE slot loading type)
Antec TP-II 550 Power Supply (550 Watt ATX12V v2.0 PSU)
Dell 2405FPW 24-inch LCD Monitor (UltraSharp Wide Aspect Flat Panel Display)
Logitech G-15 Gaming Keyboard
Logitech Cordless Optical TrackMan
Case Fans (SilenX 120mm intake, Adda 120mm exhaust blower, SilenX 92mm exhaust and SilenX 80mm Fan)

I get 4,578 marks in 3DMark06 and 9,652 marks in 3DMark05.
 

gomerpile

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you are right about that dude My picks will prove that water cooling will only do so much that is why I went with a home built system, the picks will show you such. Good forced air is very importand for cooling the water in the rad. This I do know and most of the dudes in here know what I have.
 

cedric

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Every one is falsly boasting about their RIG .i would suggest u to try some true tunning just get a pair of neon and an eye catching casing and a liquid coolant that glows in the dark .then som o'cloking & get to the lan party with some games
 

dvdpiddy

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i once diid one of those oil pc hacks i saw on internet used a fish tank man i got my sempron 2200 from 32c idle and 45 load(remember it's 130nm no soi it got that hot) to 10c idle and 15c load man with no fan just the boxed heat sink but with out the heatsink it short circuited on me (poor sempry ill miss you)
 

gomerpile

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pics of my system No bs on the pic, I have not seen yet an xp3200 match mine yet orb will be as soon as I remember my password You should know by now I dont bs on this fourm
power5vs.png

photo10015gn.jpg

top0014pl.jpg

moni5kv.png

Current setting are 265MHZ CPU at 2 volts,
Video 485 GPU at 1.75
video 1300 Memory
system memory cl2, cas3, 3, 6
what you see in the display are the gpu temp and water pump rpm,
I have two pumps one for the gpu the other for the cpu runnining off the heater core rad from a 1990 ford pickup.
Forgot I do go to lans this system in on wheels like a dolly cart I got the wheels for shopping carts and it is pushed up the truck and away i go. I have built 4 of these now for my friends and they too say it is the best computer they ever had.
 

RichPLS

Champion
I love it (for someone else that is), that is the kind of eccentricities that make this interesting!!!
Personally, I prefer my water cooling to be self contained and if noticed through side or top window, to compliment the build.

Personally, my next case, which will be a few years, I want to make out of wood, stained and varnished to match the homeade wood PC desk.
 
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