Recommend me a good watercooling system - medium budget.

The alternative to direct air cooling

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Cravenavp
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Aug 18, 2007 3:09 pm

Recommend me a good watercooling system - medium budget.

Post by Cravenavp » Tue Sep 18, 2007 11:55 am

So, long story short - the Zalman Reservator 2 drove me nuts. I mean, NUTS. In the end, the ticking was worse than any other fan noise you could imagine. Sure, apart from my PSU the rig was pretty much silent, but the ticking of the flow meter drove me slowly insane.

2 units later and I have a credit worth 214 UKP with a retailer, specialtech.co.uk who have been thoroughly understanding about the whole thing. Now here's the deal - I like them, they stock a good number of parts and given I've now got credit with them, I'd like to get a WC system.

I'm using a Thermaltake Armor chassis, have an 8800GTX with a water cooling block from Zalman (no complaints about that btw) and a rather old AMD AM2 4600+ with a respectable 2 GB of RAM. The prime objective of this system is top end gaming - Bioshock runs at a steady 60FPS in DX9, probably around 40 in DX10 (or so I'm told). It does double as a HTPC, tho not very silent now the Reservator has been RMA'd.

What pumps and reservoirs would you lot recommend? I'm leaning towards Thermaltake for the pump which I believe can be screwed to the bottom of my case. Prime considerations are:

1. I already have a GPU waterblock and I'm happy with it.
2. I already have a CPU waterblock and I'm happy with it.
3. I need a pump.
4. I need a radiator.
5. I need a reservoir.
6. I don't need a NB/MOSFET set as I have an ANTEC spotcool that can cool the heatpipes on that chipset virtually silently, no complaints at all (Crosshair Mobo)

Main objective is overclocking the crap out of my GPU/CPU, secondary objective is to keep it relatively quiet. Certainly no louder than my current fans. I'm not prepared to suspend my pump in elastic bands as I have the hand/eye co-ordination of a blind slug - I am prepared to throw in some vibration absorbtion pads and buy a relatively quiet pump :D

Any advice appreciated!

BTW, If you're in the UK and want to get PC parts, specialtech are really good. Top class service, understanding and they talk to you like you're a real person. The staff on their tech support/RMA lines are obviously old hands at this and I can't praise them enough.

Cravenavp
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Aug 18, 2007 3:09 pm

Post by Cravenavp » Tue Sep 18, 2007 2:08 pm

/slightly shameful bump :D

bonestonne
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Location: Northern New Jersey
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Post by bonestonne » Tue Sep 18, 2007 2:23 pm

don't bump like that..3 hours isn't much for anyone on a watercooling system.

i had to dig around to find this, and it appears as though all the links to the pictures are broken, but you can still read what he did to it.

viewtopic.php?t=36554

i still think its an incredible build...

laguz1
Posts: 166
Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2007 12:52 pm
Location: United States

Post by laguz1 » Tue Sep 18, 2007 5:20 pm

pump --> eheim 1048 or 1250. The 1048 is a bit weaker (600 lph), but is dead silent - it should be able to run a 2 block system w/o serious issues, considering your loop isn't restrictive. The 1250 is a bit louder and puts more watts and heat into your system, but it has 1200 lph. These are AC (120v) pumps, so if you want a DC one to your powersupply, get the Swiftech mpc655.

radiator --> if you want a good rad, the thermochill PA120.2 is very popular and great at cooling. A less expensive alternative would be the swiftech/danger den black ice ones. I would get at least a 120x2 or 120x3 though, depending on your space available.

reservoir --> depends on space, bling factor, but the swiftech microres is good enough for most (and cheap). But honestly, there are lots of choices here...bay reservoirs, external cylinder ones, or internal cylinder ones like the EK multioption 150 series.

and side note..are your cpu/gpu coolers copper? i think the zalman's are copper, but i know their radiator was aluminum. Anyhow..make sure you don't mix Cu with Al, otherwise you'll get a redox reaction and have junk screw up your pump. There are anti corrosion liquids, but i don't fully trust them...

Cravenavp
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Aug 18, 2007 3:09 pm

Post by Cravenavp » Tue Sep 18, 2007 11:14 pm

Thanks for the info there Bone and Lag.

I found this rather insightful guide into the installation of a Swift wcs into an Armor chassis:

http://www.crystalfontz.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4452

I believe the GPU block I have is Al and Cu, but has been anodized so that shouldn't pose a risk.

Very tempted by the following:

http://www.specialtech.co.uk/spshop/cus ... 607&page=1

I was thinking that the 2 120 mm fan radiator would be more than adequate to drive a 2 block rig. Thoughts?

laguz1
Posts: 166
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Location: United States

Post by laguz1 » Wed Sep 19, 2007 12:47 pm

ah yes...the standard swiftech pack....

its alright for mid level performance, and can handle 2 blocks.

how oc'd is your 4600? 8800GTX? either way, that kit will cool your setup goo d enough

WR304
Posts: 412
Joined: Tue Sep 20, 2005 1:21 pm
Location: UK

Re: Recommend me a good watercooling system - medium budget.

Post by WR304 » Tue Sep 25, 2007 2:21 pm

Cravenavp wrote:I'm using a Thermaltake Armor chassis, have an 8800GTX with a water cooling block from Zalman (no complaints about that btw) and a rather old AMD AM2 4600+ with a respectable 2 GB of RAM.

The prime objective of this system is top end gaming

Main objective is overclocking the crap out of my GPU/CPU,
Rather than overclocking your current CPU I'd consider using the money to upgrade to a faster Intel Core 2 Duo processor and overclock that instead. :)

Have a look at this article showing how graphics card performance scales with CPU:

http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=672&p=10

At stock speeds in some CPU limited games your Athlon 64 X2 4600+/ 8800GTX is losing 40FPS compared to if you had a 2.67Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 CPU instead. :shock:

.

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