what difference does watercooling make?

[razermaster]

is there any difference in temperature and is it more silent?
im kinda a noob to this stuff 😀

 

[skywere]

shortly said: it indeed helps for the temperature and it can be more silent because you can put your fan's on a lower speed, but the pump makes a bit of a noise that you can hear but it is not that annoying.
custom watercooling loops need maintenance over time and you can't be carefull enough putting it in.

 

[razermaster]

shortly said: it indeed helps for the temperature and it can be more silent because you can put your fan's on a lower speed, but the pump makes a bit of a noise that you can hear but it is not that annoying.
custom watercooling loops need maintenance over time and you can't be carefull enough putting it in.

thanks! i know have a bit of info about watercooling and what effect it has, i think i might only cool my cpu though.

 

[aevm]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6830/cpu-air-cooler-roundup-six-coolers-from-noctua-silverstone-and-cooler-master/4

Look at the Corsair H80i and the Noctua DH-14 for example. The H80i is a water cooler, the DH-14 is an air cooler. Both are great products IMO. Prices are both around $80 in my area. The temperature is similar (the Corsair wins by 8 degrees). The noise is similar (the Noctua wins by 5 dB, but the Corsair at 37 dB is silent too).

I had to choose between these two recently. I went with the H80i because I couldn't fit the DH-14 in my build. The RAM (Corsair Vengeance) was too tall for it. The H80i fit without any problems.

 

[manofchalk]

^ 8°C is a big number when it comes to higher end cooling.

There are two types of water-cooling, Custom and CLC.

CLC's you can basically consider to have the same performance as equivalent air coolers (That Anandtech article I am skeptical of) except they cost a bit (typically $20-30) more. But have the benefit as aevm has said of not being constrained by the area around the CPU socket, so RAM isnt going to be an issue. Also if your rig is going to be moving a lot, its safer as the radiator is mounted to the case, not hanging off your mobo. Large heatsinks have been known to crack motherboards during shipping, which is why any prebuilt machine you can buy uses a CLC or the stock cooler.

Custom Water is expensive, difficult to figure out and implement, but smashes everything else when it comes to performance and flexibility. Pretty much any part of your rig you can water-cool, which includes graphics cards (benefit far more than a CPU does from custom water). Maintanence is pretty much dictated by your choices, if you decide to run dyes in the water, dont use some form of biocide and fill it with tap water, expect to be cleaning it every few months. Set it up right, and maintenance can pretty much be reduced to dusting the rad/s. If your thinking of custom water, be ready to lay down at least $300 for an upgradable CPU loop, $350 if you decide to go with the graphics card first. You decide on each part and assemble it, so how it performs and whether or not it will leak is entirely dependent on you.