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