With air cooling you've just got the sound of the fans. Nexus and some others aren't bad. They're quiet and they don't sound annoying.

I've never used or built a WC system but it seems like it would have an annoying sound signature just of the water flowing in the tubes - something like a fish pump (which I have owned before). So, pump noise and fan noise aside, is this an issue?

Pump sounds exactly like a fan (its essentially the same type of motor), you do not hear water flowing (at least, once its bled properly and the air bubbles are out!). Hearing water.... usually means something bad is happening! haha.

So... exactly the same noise signature IMHO.

Yeah, there's no aquarium pump sound. I've heard one of those as well, my MCP655 sounds nothing like it.

see:
Water Cooling Heresy
http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/vi ... hp?t=58028

The pump makes noise. The radiators tend to be high impedance affairs so they make noise and apparently it can be greater than with air coolers - but not everyone agrees with that.

A lot depends on the components you select.

Ii appears that as the thermal load gets greater the air coolers get louder. At some point the water cooler becomes the superior solution.

No shit.. Back when I used watercooling I once heard tap, tap, tap.. My small tank was leaking and water was slowly dripping from my PSU down to the bottom of the case, just missing my graphics card.
I did not wait for the OS to shut down the computer, I pulled the plug. No damages aside from the leaking tank though.

On topic, a quality pump is very quiet. A soft low humming, less intruding than fan noise imho. It's also quite easy to dampen the sound, e.g. by wrapping the pump in foam or something.

I should have said the pump sounds like a fan, minus the rushing air!

ces: When you say the radiators are high impedance... I assume you mean the air not the water right? Cause radiators tend to inhibit water flow very little. With modern radiators that have low FPI, they are not terribly restrictive on air flow either... I wouldn't have thought they would be noisier than an air cooler -- especially as you can have slower moving fans over a greater surface area (or no fans, in the case of the reservator).

EDIT: I have no good way to test this. My Tuniq Tower was extremely noisy in comparison!

Yes, I was talking about air.

Noise is so hard to compare. Even if you are talking about the same model of air or water cooler. There are wide variations in noise among both air and water coolers. And even a cooler that one person says is loud, another person may report as quiet.

Definitely. Especially across forums.... on some of the overclocking forums... 2000 rpm fans are 'quiet'!

Thanks (and sorry I wasn't able to respond sooner!). Basically I can't find a good GPU cooler and so I'm looking into modding the top of my P182 and making a loop just for that. Good to know WC won't be a problem.

Water cooling is really not cheap is the main problem (unless you go ghetto, which is possible). If you are spending to WC your GPU, you may as well do the CPU too.

But... maybe an aftermarket air cooler is a better solution for you?

Most coolers are slightly more than dual-slot including the Twin Turbo. I think the only one that isn't is the Setsugen and I doubt it'll be able to cool a 5870 which I intend on upgrading to.

Watercooling in my opinion has noise that can be unique depending on your normal air cooling setup. For example, I use a 3x120 radiator and always have it as the intake source. All my fans are undervolted around 6.2 volts but I still hear a wind tunnel sound that is very faint. If I were on air cooling only, I would have a single fan doing the same job which I believe would be quieter.

I have seen quieter setups throughout the forum like the separate wood box etc. I like putting the airflow to good use as the intake as there is almost no air temperature diference from ambient and exhaust side of radiator.