[Question] Building a PC question.

Dave

Dave

Staff member
Okay, I love the how to's on this board but one thing I've never seen is water-cooled systems. I've looked online and decided that I'm going to use www.pcpartpicker.com and build my own system. The location of my computer is such that it gets really warm, so I wanted to switch to water-cooled system, but I read online that they are really difficult to put together, especially for those of us who have never put a system together before. I've torn a bunch apart and put them back together - my current Frankencomputer can attest to that - but I've never built one from scratch.

So my question is: Should a novice even attempt a water-cooled system? What are the main benefits besides sound dampening? What are the major drawbacks?
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

The major benefit is the ability to move larger quantities of heat. That is, water has an extremely high specific heat, which means you can load up a given volume of water with significantly more heat than you could with the same volume of air. You then carry this heated water away from the cramped area around your CPU to someplace else in your case, where you have installed some sort of heat exchanger with vastly more surface area than you could have installed directly atop your CPU. Ideally, this radiator has sufficient surface area that you can cool it with a much larger diameter fan that generates noticeably lower noise than an equivalently-performing air cooling system. It is an efficiency thing.

That said, liquid-cooled systems leak. They all eventually leak. When that happens, your computer will die (if you are using water). You can get around this by using mineral oil (which does not conduct electricity), but since mineral oil's heat capacity is lower, your efficiency will go down as well (though it will still be higher than air).
Dave said:
Should a novice even attempt a water-cooled system?
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If you never attempt it, you will remain a novice forever. ;)

I want to cite more examples and give more advice, but I have to go back to work now. More later.

--Patrick
 
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Dave

Dave

Staff member
Went away from water-cooled and have settled on this build: http://pcpartpicker.com/user/Edrondol/saved/kfzkcf

Thoughts? What am I missing? I already have displays, keyboard, OS (Windows 7, of course), and I have another 1 TB hard drive that I can add. I went a tad overboard on the power supply, but I did that on purpose because I've had issues in the past. I worry about needing more fans, although I did go with a dual-fan video card (GeForce GTX 780) that circulates each way.

I think I got a pretty decent build for $1400.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Water cooling isn't that difficult. I've helped a friend build a closed water loop for his system. But the time investment and pain isn't really worth the performance. Water cooling is really for the super enthusiast that's trying to get an extra 5% out of their super high end hardware by overclocking to the extreme.

A quality air cooling system and proper heatsinks should be fine, even if the computer is in a warm room.

But all that said, if you want cool glowing tubes and a project to work with, then go for it! If the cool factor (heh...) is enough to persuade you, then do it. Just keep in mind that you'll need to maintain your water loop, giving it a good cleaning and replacing your coolant about every six months. And don't do like a friend of mine did and forget the biocide... you don't want algae growing in your pc.[DOUBLEPOST=1403118177,1403117955][/DOUBLEPOST]
Dave said:
Went away from water-cooled and have settled on this build: http://pcpartpicker.com/user/Edrondol/saved/kfzkcf

Thoughts? What am I missing? I already have displays, keyboard, OS (Windows 7, of course), and I have another 1 TB hard drive that I can add. I went a tad overboard on the power supply, but I did that on purpose because I've had issues in the past. I worry about needing more fans, although I did go with a dual-fan video card (GeForce GTX 780) that circulates each way.

I think I got a pretty decent build for $1400.
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Aside from the video card (still using my old gtx570) and the cpu (I went with an i5 over an i7) that's the same pc I just built. And it rocks pretty hard.

You could consider upgrading the 780 to a 780TI for the top of the line in nvidia products (not counting ridiculously expensive dev cards like the titan series)
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
Yeah, no water for me. Seems like too much work and I couldn't afford to replace in the likely event of a leak. Just not cool enough, I guess.

But man I can't wait to be able to record Twitches and actually run some of the games I own and can't play right now. Like Skyrim, South Park, the Blimp combat game, Borderlands, etc.[DOUBLEPOST=1403118368,1403118238][/DOUBLEPOST]The lowest price TI takes the price up at least $150, which puts me over the $1500 budget I've set for myself. Anything higher and I have to listen to the wife scream bloody murder.[DOUBLEPOST=1403118479][/DOUBLEPOST]
Ravenpoe said:
Aside from the video card (still using my old gtx570) and the cpu (I went with an i5 over an i7) that's the same pc I just built. And it rocks pretty hard.
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Have you benchmarked it?
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Dave said:
Yeah, no water for me. Seems like too much work and I couldn't afford to replace in the likely event of a leak. Just not cool enough, I guess.

But man I can't wait to be able to record Twitches and actually run some of the games I own and can't play right now. Like Skyrim, South Park, the Blimp combat game, Borderlands, etc.[DOUBLEPOST=1403118368,1403118238][/DOUBLEPOST]The lowest price TI takes the price up at least $150, which puts me over the $1500 budget I've set for myself. Anything higher and I have to listen to the wife scream bloody murder.[DOUBLEPOST=1403118479][/DOUBLEPOST]

Have you benchmarked it?
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I haven't, but aside from watch dogs (which runs like ass on any system, it seems) it's been running all of my games flawlessly on ultra.

You could consider dropping the i7 to an i5 to make up the price difference to a TI, but I'll leave it to the experts here to decide if that would be worth it.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

PatrThom

PatrThom

An i5 generally gets you a smaller on-CPU cache and you lose the Hyperthreading.
You can usually offset the cache by going with a slightly higher clock speed, and Hyperthreading does NOT help games, so this is why I usually recommend the i5 trim over the i7 lineup.

I can't sift through your build until I get home tonight, that's not going to be for another 4hrs at least.

--Patrick
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
I know you already decided not to do it, but I also want to chime in and say that water cooling really offers no real advantage over air cooling unless you literally are putting your computer in such a tight space that it gets no airflow whatsoever. The air-cooled system I got in december is so quiet I can't even tell by listening if it's on or not, and only on one specific piece of hardware have I ever had problems with overheating - my old GTX8800 that finally gave out after 7 years, which was the impetus for said new system. I had to get bigger fans for it and remove its cowling, or it would overheat to the point it rebooted my system in desperation after ~20 minutes of crysis on ultra.

But really, so much emphasis has shifted lately in PC manufacturing to using less power, that heat is becoming much less of a problem than it was 5 or 10 years go, which means the fans can be quieter too.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

GasBandit said:
I know you already decided not to do it, but I also want to chime in and say that water cooling really offers no real advantage over air cooling unless you literally are putting your computer in such a tight space that it gets no airflow whatsoever. The air-cooled system I got in december is so quiet I can't even tell by listening if it's on or not, and only on one specific piece of hardware have I ever had problems with overheating - my old GTX8800 that finally gave out after 7 years, which was the impetus for said new system. I had to get bigger fans for it and remove its cowling, or it would overheat to the point it rebooted my system in desperation after ~20 minutes of crysis on ultra.

But really, so much emphasis has shifted lately in PC manufacturing to using less power, that heat is becoming much less of a problem than it was 5 or 10 years go, which means the fans can be quieter too.
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I will say from experience that mounting the heatsink that @Dave picked out feels like you're going to break something. It's a high tension heatsink, and you've got to press really hard to get those tension screws into place. If you're not familiar with high tension systems, it feels like you're doing something wrong, but you're not.
 
Bowielee

Bowielee

People in general are too ginger with their computers in my experience. You just have to know what is breakable and what is not. Sometimes you got to rank on those tension screws. My current fan has one and I really did feel like i was going to bust that thing getting it on.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Bowielee said:
People in general are too ginger with their computers in my experience. You just have to know what is breakable and what is not. Sometimes you got to rank on those tension screws. My current fan has one and I really did feel like i was going to bust that thing getting it on.
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I know, rationally, that they aren't that fragile. But when you have an expensive cpu, in an expensive motherboard, it's a little harrowing to crank that thing on.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Dunno why you're getting the Z77/3770 combo when the Z87/4770 combo can be had for essentially the same price (based on current Z87 Extreme4 and 4770k prices). The i5-4670k's can be had for $80 or so less.
It's only about a 10% boost in processor speed (over the 3770k), but the step up in forward compatibility and SATA speeds (and transcode speed with QuickSync) is well worth the (literally) $10 or so extra that it might cost.

However, stepping up from a 780 to a 780Ti will get you an increase of 8-12% graphics performance…for a 40% increase in price.

I gotta say I'm more a fan of the Zalman-style ("flower") heatsinks than the skyscraper type, but the main thing is to get something that's still light enough that you don't break your processor socket from whiplash when you move your case out from under the table for its periodic dusting.

--Patrick
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
PatrThom said:
Dunno why you're getting the Z77/3770 combo when the Z87/4770 combo can be had for essentially the same price (based on current Z87 Extreme4 and 4770k prices). The i5-4670k's can be had for $80 or so less.
It's only about a 10% boost in processor speed (over the 3770k), but the step up in forward compatibility and SATA speeds (and transcode speed with QuickSync) is well worth the (literally) $10 or so extra that it might cost.

However, stepping up from a 780 to a 780Ti will get you an increase of 8-12% graphics performance…for a 40% increase in price.

I gotta say I'm more a fan of the Zalman-style ("flower") heatsinks than the skyscraper type, but the main thing is to get something that's still light enough that you don't break your processor socket from whiplash when you move your case out from under the table for its periodic dusting.

--Patrick
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http://pcpartpicker.com/user/Edrondol/saved/kfzkcf

I changed out the Z77/3770 for the Z78/4770 and you're right as it cost essentially the same. As to the 780 & 780 TI, the benchmarking and performance reports I saw had the bump from 4-10%, which is nothing at that level. 110 fps v 114 in one of the benchmarked games? Big deal.

So if that was your only bitches...I think we're good. Now all I have to do is get enough in my profit sharing and be able to pay for it!
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

The only other thing I wanted to take a look at was the PSU, but I know I won't be able to really dig in to compare your selected model until Sat evening at the earliest. However, I don't think you HAVE to wait if you don't want to.

--Patrick
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
And I just found out my profit sharing take home should be anywhere from $2819 - 4229.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
Hey, I not only knew the meme, but I knew the real story behind it. I'm hip and cool, yo!



Now get off my lawn.
 
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Dave

Dave

Staff member
Strangely enough a new car is something that I (*knock on wood*) don't need right now.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
So question. Do you think I need that case fan? Or should I get another? I'm both excited and nervous to do this myself. Will I need thermal paste or will it come with the hardware? Also, the case fan I'm ordering is the 140mm variety. I know pcpartpicker has a compatibility filter, but I worry.

Granted, this is one of the few times I'll be able to buy additional parts if I need to, but I'd rather do it right the first time.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Dave said:
So question. Do you think I need that case fan?
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Get the case fan. Case fans don't need thermal paste, they exist only to move air into/out of the case. The advantage of larger case fans is comparable air movement for lower noise. The biggest question is going to be whether you want it to push or pull, and that is going to depend on how everything else is arranged inside the case.

If you can stand the loss of modular cables, the Seasonic S12G-750 power supply is a gold-rated power supply (more efficient, runs cooler) for about $20 more, or you could get an XFX 750 which is essentially a Seasonic wearing XFX clothing. Yes, I'm still partial to Seasonic. The Corsair you have chosen is actually made by CWT (the same people who make Coolermaster's PSUs). FWIW, you could probably get by just fine with a 650W PSU (in case you find a sweet deal on a really good 650), but this is assuming you are not going to add a second 780 in the future. I (generously) estimate your system load would be about 450-500W total, so 650-750W is probably about the sweet spot to shop to avoid the inefficiencies you run into when running your PSU too high (or too low!), but adding a second 780 later would mean having to leave room for another 250W in the budget (which would mean going >800 now). If you're not going to SLI 780's, then never mind.

--Patrick
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
I actually know the fans don't need the thermal paste. I was wondering if the CPU comes with some or if I have to buy it separately.

But thanks for the other info!
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Dave said:
I actually know the fans don't need the thermal paste. I was wondering if the CPU comes with some or if I have to buy it separately.

But thanks for the other info!
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CoolerMaster brand coolers come with their own thermal compound. You're always welcome to use your own, though unless you're going to be overclocking it probably isn't an issue.
 
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