Water vs Air on my next build?

[Nemesiss]

So I am scouting parts for my next rig and I don't know what to do with cooling. I was planning on getting water cooling on my next rig that will have a larger budget but what bugs me is that I will wind up paying 2+ times the money and it will not cool as well as air. I have not been able to find any sites that review water cooling components and compare it with air heatsinks. The temperature numbers that I pulled from reading random product reviews by customers suggest that my air setup is way better.

My current comp runs a 1055t OCed to 3.5GHz (stock voltage) with a ZALMAN CNPS9700 110mm heatsink and my temperatures at idle are 19C and running it at 100% load rendering or stress testing overnight it doesn't go above 30C. I have a nifty wind tunnel going through the top of my case that cost me about $100. I would overclock as high as I can, which is ultimately my goal, however currently it's impossible due to buggy bios on my mobo and a locked multiplier on the CPU. So my concern is would water cooling at least match those temperatures if I were to spend ~$200 or so on a CPU/mobo water cooling loop or should I just get high end air cooling?

 

[henydiah]

Many review & comparison :
http://www.frostytech.com

 

[Conumdrum]

Your temps are fine. Suspect though. If you read around, folks who have the same chip you do run in the 50C easy under load. What do you use for temp monitoring? The stuff that comes with Mobos is junk. Please try Coretemp, and use Prime 95 as your loading program. They are kinda the accepted standard for stress testing.

Watercooling will decrease your temps and decrease your noise.

But your budget is not enough. A GOOD CPU/Mobo loop will be in the $200-$300 range, and no GPU in that loop.

And the H70 isn't what we consider 'real watercooling'.

 

[philologos]

I have a feeling you are looking at the core temps on your 1055t, which are borked for just about all Phenom X6's. You have to look at the CPU Socket temperature instead. For my Gigabyte 890FXA-UD5, this is TEMPIN1. Your motherboard may be different, however. Hardware Monitor, Coretemp, and other programs should read the exact same figures.

I overclocked my 1055t exactly the same as you have. My CPU temp reaches a max of about 44 degrees in Prime95. The actual core temperatures are said to be about five degrees warmer than that. So in my case, the cores heat up to about 49 degrees. My room is a bit chilly, and ambient temperature must always be kept in mind.

 

[rubix_1011]

Watercooling will decrease your temps and decrease your noise.

But your budget is not enough. A GOOD CPU/Mobo loop will be in the $200-$300 range, and no GPU in that loop.

And the H70 isn't what we consider 'real watercooling'.

^Yep.

CPU/mobo water cooling loop

^Not so much...

CPU -yes

Mobo -no; pointless. This includes NB, SB, MOSFETs, RAM. None of these will benefit you by watercooling them. NB...I think is preference...the rest aren't needed. Stick to CPU/GPU; these consistently produce far more heat and will benefit performance-wise and longevity with lower temps.

Please read (a lot):

http://www.overclock.net/water-cooling/226970-water-cooling-essential-threads.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/256607-29-watercooling-read-first

 

[Nemesiss]

Thx for all the replies. The programs I use for my temperature monitoring are EVEREST Ultimate Edition and CPUID Hardware Monitor Pro so I am looking at core temperatures, the other 2 temperatures on HW Monitor pro are TEMPIN0 and TEMPIN1 which I thought were my mobo temperatures. Right now they read 34C and 40C respectively while my core temp sais 21C while under ~6% of total CPU load. I am running on a ASUS M4N72-E mobo. I am going to download the other programs suggested to know for sure and water cooling effectiveness now makes a whole lot more sense.

As for my water cooling I wouldn't dishing out up to $300 for a CPU/northbridge loop if that is what it takes and probably just going to put together part list myself instead of a kit. As for Video card(s) that will all depend on my budget at the time of the build. I have been doing a lot of reading on this matter but will run my shopping list by these forums when times comes to be sure.

 

[rubix_1011]

If you wanted to run a CPU only loop, the XSPC Rasa kit is a pretty good entry level loop to get you into watercooling. It's made up of actual components that can be used if you decide to expand on later...and for a few bucks more than the H70, it performs much better. Starts in the $130-ish range. Pretty good price until you get into the Swiftech Apex kit with the MCP655 in it...

There are 2 versions; one has a 2x120 rad, the other a 3x120 rad.

http://www.frozencpu.com/search.htm...ion_id=4FHqTAYb&searchspec=rasa&go.x=0&go.y=0