Water Cooling

[Blackmoore]

I am rebuilding my system with the new i7 2600k and either way I am going to replace the stock HSF with something more efficient. I plan on overclocking, but not right away, and I have always wanted to try a water cooled system, but have never really had the time or money to do so. My main reason is to reduce temps, but also sound and I know aftermarket HSF's can get pretty noisy. So I thought I might give it a simple attempt this time around. I was looking at this little self contained system:

CoolIT SYSTEMS ECO-R120 Advanced Liquid Cooling (ALC):
Newegg.com - CoolIT SYSTEMS ECO-R120 Advanced Liquid Cooling (ALC)

What do you think? Does anyone have experience with a water cooled systems? I know they can get pretty expensive and I don't know if there is any maintenance involved.

 

[Hapx4.0]

I would check out the Corsair line like the H50, or H70.

They also have a "H60" on the way.

 

[Peter.Cort]

a small contained system like that will give you a decent improvement over stock air cooling, but for $102 you're not going to see a major improvement over a good aftermarket heatsink/fan like the True 120 Black, which gave similar temperatures to the h70 and can be had for around $70 with 2 good fans. If you're going to invest in water cooling, do it right and build a full setup. It'll be more expensive, easily $250 for a CPU loop, but it'll give you much better temps and depending on your fans can be almost silent.

As far as maintenance goes you have to just make sure you have enough water in the system as it can evaporate out of the loop over time, and also changing it periodically, like every month or so, is necessary.

 

[aspire]

a small contained system like that will give you a decent improvement over stock air cooling, but for $102 you're not going to see a major improvement over a good aftermarket heatsink/fan like the True 120 Black, which gave similar temperatures to the h70 and can be had for around $70 with 2 good fans. If you're going to invest in water cooling, do it right and build a full setup. It'll be more expensive, easily $250 for a CPU loop, but it'll give you much better temps and depending on your fans can be almost silent.

As far as maintenance goes you have to just make sure you have enough water in the system as it can evaporate out of the loop over time, and also changing it periodically, like every month or so, is necessary.

True on most all the points except the monthly maintenance.

Even when I was running clear tubing and not the black stuff I barely needed to do yearly maintenance aside from my regular upgrading of parts.

 

[Peter.Cort]

even if you don't add any additives to the water?

 

[aspire]

even if you don't add any additives to the water?

Not using any additives with clear tubing is just a science experiment waiting to happen. I can get away with it, and have, for nearly two years with my black tubing, but not in a loop with clear stuff.

 

[Peter.Cort]

right, i assumed that if the person would want to build a loop that they would just use clear consumer grade tubing, not the black industrial grade you use so if you were to use distilled water in a clear loop without some kind of biocide you'd want to change the water semi-regularly then correct?

 

[aspire]

right, i assumed that if the person would want to build a loop that they would just use clear consumer grade tubing, not the black industrial grade you use so if you were to use distilled water in a clear loop without some kind of biocide you'd want to change the water semi-regularly then correct?

With a biocide a flush and rebuild every year or so would be fairly standard.

 

[Peter.Cort]

but without it you'd want to do it more often..

 

[aspire]

but without it you'd want to do it more often..

And what I'm saying is running without any kind of additive is about as intelligent as letting your kid play in traffic.