Aftermarket cooling for 670

Hi there,

I bought a reference 670 back on release (May/June IIRC) and though it's served me well, boy does it get hot and noisy! I've made the fan profile as quiet as possible (I'll let it go up to 79oC, as it throttles at 80) but yet I find it quite intrusive. So I think I'd quite like some aftermarket cooling for it to buy for Xmas. Now, looking around I think I have a few options, but I really don't have a clue:

(Few key points first; my case is an Fractal Arc Mini (I love it, but I kinda regret it as I shoulda bought a Define cause I'm a fan of silent computing now :P) and I have an i5-3570k @ 4.4GHz cooled by an H100 on minimum)

• Aftermarket air cooling - AC Accelero Twin Turbo; Just a simple two fan cooler. My problem with it is that it totally dwarfs the card (pic) and I'm not too comfortable with that weight on such a small PCB. So I think I've ruled that one out
• Hybrid water/air - AC Accelero Hybrid - I like the look of this, it'd match my H100 in the sense of being closed water loops. However, reviews have said it sacrifices performance for noise (which I think I'm okay on) and it does look a bit pricey. My biggest concern is whether this would fit on as a rear exhaust with my H100 fitted.
• Full blown water cooling! - I've been considering this for a while but I don't know where to start. While my H100 is sufficient. I find it a tad noisy and I don't like the low/med/high settings - I'd rather it'd be near silent at idle and spin up for gaming. My biggest concern here is that I don't have a clue what I'm doing. Does water cooling need regular changing of liquid, and if so how often? Do I need to mod my case to fit it all in (which I'd like to avoid)? What kit should I get?

As you can see, I think it comes down to the Hybrid or Water cooling. But other than that, I don't really have a clue. I know a few of you guys are big on watercooling and I'd really appreciate the help.

Thanks very much

Hi EvanJackPenn,

Having used a fully watercooled system for the past 3 years or so alongside a system with a H100 and two air-cooled 7970's I can confirm that my watercooled setup is near silent compared to the other one. A good fan controller will allow you to set all your fans to near silent mode until you really stress the system and then ramp them up pretty slowly to keep everything running cool.

However I think you will struggle to get a full watercooling setup in there in order to cool both the CPU & gfx card. The case just looks quite small to fit in a separate radiator, reservoir, pump and all the tubing. I'm guessing that a lot of this could be put outside the case. From the pictures of your case on the scan website it looks as though the back of the case may have grommets that the tubing could be fed out of and back in again though I can't be sure. The Fractal Define does so I guess yours might be similar. This will look slightly "odd" IMO but it could work. I'm assuming you have this case: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/fract...-black-w-o-psu You'll certainly have an easier time if you bought a bigger case. It would allow you to mount a larger radiator in it which, if you're trying to cool both your CPU & GPU in the same loop, would be beneficial.

As far as changing the fluid in it, I've been advised it's worth topping up once a year if required and flushing the loop & changing the fluid every 18 months or so. Certain people seem to like to do it more or less frequently than this but as long as you buy a good type of fluid, or use distilled water with the correct anti-fungal / bacterial / corrosive additive you should be ok.

He's a quick (slightly old) guide from Tomshardware on the basics: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...r-pc,1573.html

I'm certainly not an expert at this and had my watercooling setup built by Scan computers for me. What I will say is that a well built and maintained loop will allow you to push your hardware to it's maximum potential and keep it cooler whilst doing so. I've got 2 GTX680's & an overclocked Intel 3960X in my loop and very rarely see temps of more than 55C on my two cards even after an hour or two of Crysis 2 or Guild Wars 2 - both quite demanding. Diablo 3 never goes much above 44C. They tend to idle slightly higher than some as they will idle at the temp of the water in the loop - normally 33C for me but Inever get anywhere near them throttling as they never get to 60C let alone 80C and that's with a decent overclock on them plus my 6 core 3960X at 4.6ghz.

The only real downside is that it is rather a job to take the loop to pieces if something goes wrong and it does require the normal maintenance of keeping the radiators blown out with compressed air. On the upside there's no danger of getting the CPU fan / GPU fan assemblies clogged up with dust as none can get into the waterblock (for obvious reasons).

TLDR, Waterccoling is great if you have the time, money & inclination to do it. Would I attempt a loop in your current case - no. It probably will be possible but a larger case with more room for a 360mm triple fan radiator or a couple of 240mm radiators will bring your temps down a lot.

Hopefully somebody with knowledge of building them might post (and probably correct any mistakes in my understanding of how it works). There do seem to be quite a few threads in the chassis / mods section of these forums to do with watercooling which might be helful too. http://forums.hexus.net/chassis-mods/

Hope this helps a bit :)