[SOLVED] When to Water Cool

[jjunkdoc]

Hey guys,

I was wondering when it would be time to upgrade to water cooling. At what CPU/GPU should a person switch from air cooling to water cooling? Would the new RTX cards require water cooling?

Also, if I were to overclock my current Ryzen 7 1700x and RX 570, would I need water cooling?

 

[tennis2]

Air coolers do pretty well. It's all about surface area. A 120/140mm water cooler will perform about the same as a typical 120/140mm tower air cooler. When you start getting up into 240mm and 280mm water coolers, their air cooling equivalents get pretty bulky and heavy which can put unwanted stress on the mobo, that's around the time when water cooling is the better choice.

 

[Supahos]

Nothing main stream absolutely needs a watercooler even to oc... Maybe except the 9900k/9700k. You can easily reach the max oc on a 1700x with a good air cooler. No video card requires watercooling at all. The ones that tend to run hot can usually be undervolted to fix the problem

 

[jjunkdoc]

Nothing main stream absolutely needs a watercooler even to oc... Maybe except the 9900k/9700k. You can easily reach the max oc on a 1700x with a good air cooler. No video card requires watercooling at all. The ones that tend to run hot can usually be undervolted to fix the problem

Alright, so do you think I'm good to overclock my parts? I have a Thermaltake Contac Silent 12 for my CPU and the case fans that came with my Fractal Design R6

 

[Supahos]

That's not the best cpu cooler so keep an eye on temps as you oc, but it should definitely allow some overclocking

 

[Gam3r01]

The only real acceptable time to water cool is when you are running current gen flagship hardware, when the 100 bucks+ would have nowhere else to be invested.
For most systems, spend the 100 bucks for more RAM, an SSD, or put it towards an upgrade. Then it would actually make a difference.

 

[1LiquidPC]

Depends on your wants or needs for your system in general. While most modern hardware doesn't require watercooling for OC reasons, there can be other benefits such as temps, noise, or better boost clocks in some situations depending on setup. That said, most folks tend to stick with AIO coolers when they decide to try out watercooling. I can only recommend custom for the enthusiasts and only on higher end components does it make sense. If your using more modest hardware, the cost involved in watercooling could be spent elsewhere.

With your hardware, there really isn't a need and you should have no trouble getting the most out of your 1700X and RX 570 with standard coolers. Stock cooler on GPU should be fine, and a decent aircooler would get you the most out of CPU.

 

[ekjake]

9900K and the 2080 Ti are about the only two components that I would say benefit performance wise from a custom loop. The 9900K is a volcano and the 2080 Ti puts out enough heat that lowering temps helps it maintain a higher boost clock thanks to the way Turing GPU's "overclock" with the weird Boost 3.0 tech.