Water Cooling - Is it worth it?

[RhinoUK]

Ive had WC for about 7 years now and its still the original Thermaltake kit i started with and i havent had to replace the pump, rad or any fans. I have replaced tubing and connectors and annually i drop the system and flush it through and replace with new coolant. I upgraded the waterblock last year to an expensive one and it made no difference to temps so that was a complete waste of money and time over the original block. Ive never had a leak but did have a cheap connector which was zinc coated and started to rust and disclour the coolant so since ive used only stainless steel. I use both compression and push fit, the compression on the rad to tubing and push fit on the water block. I have 1/4" tubing and connectors. I started WC when i started overclocking and liked the lower temps it gave on the CPU which i believe prelongs the life and performance of the CPU. Ive never invested in a GFX cooler so i dont invalid the warranty on the card. When i bought the unit it was expensive at about £400 built in to aluminium extruded case it came with but at the time i had the money and its what i wanted to do. If the unit ever failed i would replace/repair where possible. Any advantage of lower noise from WC is lost with my GFX card OC as the fan runs at 85% but noise is not of concern because i mainly game and have a headset on anyway when its at that extreme.

[Pob255]

@josh, I was just going to say it sounds like the tubing could be the issue, this is one of those messy bits of water cooling, so many types of tubing and slight differences in internal/external diameter and material can have all sorts of effects.

On a side note one of the main problems with all-in-one coolers vs a normal custom loop is that the pumps used in AIO are rather weak whichseem to be the main cause of under performance compared to a good custom loop.
The other big issue is they are cpu only with no upgrade-ability.
The big advantages to them are cheaper than a custom loop, low maintenance (just clear dust out the rad) and easy fitting.

[d3m0n1q_733rz]

How well do you maintain your current PC?

If its anything less than, 'extremely well'... watercooling is not for you
You basically have a normal computer with the normal maintenance issues. except you also have to worry about leaks and changing the water on top of the normal worries.

I think the only area you really gain with watercooling nowadays is on GPU cooling as they get very hot which can make fans spin up and become noisy. The downside here is that the only manufacturer that allows you to remove the stock cooler without voiding you're warranty is EVGA (is this still the case?).

AIO watercoolers and big air coolers do a great job at cooling CPUs with minimal maintenance
Chipsets just do not need it anymore unless you are going for extreme overclocks
Ram... dont make me laugh

Watercooling is cool (excuse the pun), it looks good, its a really engaging and interesting build experience, you do get a very quiet system and you get lovely pipes structured all around your computer. i mean look at this:

it's just looks fantastic, and that's not even me trying to find an exceptional example. Our own member piggin has a superb example of custom watercooled system that blows most things out of the water (sorry). It's a proper hobby for proper enthusiasts but the gains are fairly minimal in the greater scheme of things.

Is it worth it? Im afriad only you can answer that, but for me... no.

This is done inefficiently. You should have the inlet for the two graphics cards on the opposite corner from the outlet and then have the two cards connected together using both ports. As-is, you're not only carrying the heat from the first card to the second, but you've managed to dramatically decrease flow through both cards. If you connect them in parallel as I suggest, you will see lower temperatures, be able to overclock your cards more and possibly increase the life of your pump due to the decreased load on it.
Have a look for yourself, I guarantee it's worth it.

[GoNz0]

This is done inefficiently. You should have the inlet for the two graphics cards on the opposite corner from the outlet and then have the two cards connected together using both ports. As-is, you're not only carrying the heat from the first card to the second, but you've managed to dramatically decrease flow through both cards. If you connect them in parallel as I suggest, you will see lower temperatures, be able to overclock your cards more and possibly increase the life of your pump due to the decreased load on it.
Have a look for yourself, I guarantee it's worth it.

if you connected both cards by both ports the water would take the path of least resistance meaning you could have a very restricted flow. those of us that have been water cooling for years know the system balances out after a while no matter what is located where in the loop. mines hooked up the same way as the pic above, the 2nd card runs cooler as it is the slave card in SLI meaning what you have said holds no real ground in the grand scheme.

[danroyle]

Mine are hooked up the same way as the abov picture also. And they run at 40 and 42c under full load two 7950 cards with a good overclock. On there twin frozr coolers they hit 75-80 at my clocks so water halves my temps.

Same with my CPU too a 3570k @4.6 never goes over 50c

[qaz_92]

Depends on if you're planning to OC or not.

[Pob255]

Also that's a neater way to link them up and minimise the pipe work, to link up two cards in parallel you'd want some form of Y or T connector on both the outflow and inflow with equal lengths of pipe on each card connection, but then you'll get a flow rate decrease as you're doubling the tube area.
I would say the worst thing about that picture is that he seems to have every thing on one loop, looks like it's VRM > chipset > ram > cpu > gpu1 > gpu2
AFAIK it's better to separate the cpu and gpu(s) into two loops as these are the things that kick out the most heat.