Is watercooling the only solution to have overclocked components and keep them cool and quiet and relatively inexpensive?

What is a good starter combination, in terms of price performance, quietness and upgradability?

Thanks

No, water cooling is not required.

Take a look at this article to see how current state of the art air cooling (more acurrately assisted convection) can silently cool a seriously overclocked top of the line system.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article672-page1.html

My 8800GTS objects, it idles at 62C even when ducted with an 120m intake. And ducted exhaust as well.

It is currently oc'd to GTX speeds. So either the stock cooler is crap or the 8800GTS is producing too much heat for air to cool quietly.

And it seems the process of him getting all the required air coolers is the same if not more expensive than watercool'd counterparts + UGLY as well (imho) Esp the GPU cooler...

For a graphics card (especially an 8-series card) that is positively frosty, esp. considering it is overclocked.

The one advantage that water does have over air as a cooling medium is its massive heat capacity, so it takes roughly 4 times as much heat energy to raise the temp of water by 1C. I guess this implies you can get the same amount of cooling with 1/4 of the volumetric flow rate?

Water is not the only way, and it's very rarely cheaper. But a high-power GPU is one area where WC still shines.

There's no such thing as too much heat for air to cool. Remember that a WCing system is an aircooling system (excepting Bladerunner and the like); it just uses water as an intermediate step. As I wrote in a recent thread:
A WCing system's big advantage is the surface area that comes with a large radiator. CPU HSFs used to have much less area than a radiator, then we got XP120s and Ninjas. Vidcards are a step behind here, mainly because the slot system doesn't offer much room between cards.

If you go with water, get the biggest radiator you can accomodate. And plan on spending $200+ for quality parts to cool CPU & GPU.

That advantage disappears with heat pipes: they suck even more heat than a water cooler block.

Newer heat pipe coolers (Ninja, Ultra, Condor, etc) are limited by the fin area and by the airflow over the fins. The blocks can suck away hundreds of watts of heat. The challenge becomes getting that heat out of the case quietly.

There remain two situtations where I think WC may be called for: dual 8xxx graphics, and dual-socket 4-core CPUs. Personally I see no need for either of those, but then I don't game much, and I don't have any use for 8 cores of CPU.

I appreciate the effort and organization that went into the overclocked 6600 system, but on the path to making it quiet, so many different coolers and ducts were used that I doubt it would be any cheaper than a watercooled system. The 8800 water block is expensive, but it is above and beyond what is required for a 7900 gt.

All true.

I hope nobody ever thought I was particularly concerned about cost...

If I thought I needed an 8800, I'd probably still go air cooled, but I'd be thinking about a significantly different fan arrangement, since even with a Condor, some kind of direct impingement would be needed.

My scythe ninja cools my cpu fine. 37C idle E6300 3.15Ghz @ 1.29V. But its the graphics card i can't seem to cool it well, no matter what i do.

So im thinking that the stock cooler is no good. There are currently no aftermarket one to come out except watercool'd ones.

Unless there's one out that is quiet and cools it 10-15 more than the stock and have the same footprint as the stock cooler, i have no other choice really. I don't want one that have heatsinks as big as that.

I think we're at the limits of what can be done with air cooling. With air cooling you will have to make far more compromises and limit your choices. Ao if you want the latest generation of energy hungry components to be overclocked yet still run quiet, watercooling is the way forward.

But it's not really "inexpensive" as you will want good quality individual parts (kits not good). The following is a decent setup. Some can argue about the choice of blocks or the size of the tubing, but those are details and overall, should be a solid setup for some new to W/C.

Not sure how much it'll be in the US, but probably looking at around 250 to 300 USD :

- Tubing: Around 6 feet of Tygon (3/8" ID or 1/2" ID - your choice)

- Pump: Laing DDC 12V DDC (aka MCP350). With modded Alphacool top (or Petra top) to make sure the inflow is on top. And some foam or similar for the pump. Plus correct sized barbs (1/2" or 3/8") to connect to your choice of tubing.

- ThermoChill PA120.2 duel radiator (or .1 single or .3 tripple) compatible with any 120mm fans (use the single if space is an issue, but that tripple is one of the best radiators out there). Plus correct sized barbs (1/2" or 3/8") to go with your tubing and pump.


- CPU waterblock: Apogee from Swiftech

- GPU Block: I went for the Swiftech MCW60 with G80 adaptor and a bunch of ramsinks (doesn't matter what type).

- Reservoir: None (just T-Line and Fillport). Unless you really want a reservoir.

- 12 hosepipes for this setup,

- 1 litre of distilled water + zerex or similar non-conductive liquid with anti-corosives.


And that's it. You should now have a better setup than any mass produced ready made W/C kit.

If anything we're moving back from the limits, with the death of Prescott etc. Also, even when Prescott was around, we weren't anywhere near the "limits" of air cooling; it was nearly impossible to cool Prescotts quietly with air cooling, but that's not the same thing as being unable to provide enough cooling. Get a big enough fan with enough CFM (you can get 120mm fans that provide up to 220cfm!) and it will cool just fine; you might need earmuffs to stand the noise though.

Hey, you've got to take my quote in context. We're talking about air cooling the latest hardware taking into account performance and "noise".

Sure you can get a a quiet system using air cooling on a less than cutting edge components, but that's a given. It's really hard, if near impossible, to get a core 2 extreme and 2 8800 GTX's in SLI, running almost silent while overclocked using only air cooling.

But you can do it with watercooling.

(and before we start quoting again, I admit, it is "technically possible" to achieve the above using air cooling with very good earmuffs and earlugs)