Is watercooling an i7 that much better?

Hi.

water cooling does not dictate the Vcore that will need to be applied in order to sustain an overclock, that factor is dictated by the inherent proprties of the CPU and its revision.

Water cooling will assist in disipating heat produced by higher Vcores.

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No, the reason you see people on water running lower vCore's has nothing to do with the water cooling itself. It's because people on water are more likely to hunt down a good overclocking chip. At least thats why I think there is a correlation. I have noticed that as well.

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you must live in the arctic circle

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Then why do people use LN2 or dice?

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Liquid cooling will assist in attaining a lower idle temp and a lower Delta. That in turn may yield the user a higher overlock due to lower temperature thresholds.

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Ln2 and/or DICE is used purely for benchmarking. This type of cooling is utilized mainly on a temporary basis just to run tests on it and see who can hit the highest mark. Watercooling and phase change cooling are permanent solutions to keep your chip at a certain clock for 24/7 usage. Sometimes people experiment with high clocks on phase change systems and water as well, but nothing compared to ln2/dice testing.

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Budget?

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i7 waterblock comparison
http://www.overclock.net/water-cooli...blocks-i7.html

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So basically, as long as my temps are in check with my true and 38mm ultra kaze, I really won't see any marginal benifits with water? My temps are right arould 60*c at 4.0ghz 1.29v on prime even after 8hrs of it the highest my temps ever got was 64* and that was only on one core, the rest of them were either 59 or 61, all of this at an ambient of 72*F

ALSO, if I end up going water, I have a $550 budget.

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The Heatkiller will be the one I will end up with I believe. It looks like it clobbers everything else, and if I am going to do it, I might as well shoot for the best the first time without regrets!

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Going water, if you do it right, might get you 3 or 4°C. It allows you to run a higher vcore and keep lower temperatures. You might be able to get 4.5GHz stable on water. It's fun and it's cool, but probably not worth it.

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You'll be able to hit a higher speed on water, but you will need to pump more voltage through your chip. If you are willing to a take a loss reselling some chips you can buy a few and test their OC's and keep the best one. You could also consider selling your current chip and paying a premium for a used chip that OC's well.

Oh yea, $550 is plenty for a good WC setup. You are probably going to need a couple radiators to cool a heavily OC'd i7 and a 4870x2 though. The i7 alone usually needs its own 3x120mm radiator to hit 4.2GHz+ at good temps.

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+1 Except it will probably get you more than 3 or 4C. It still isn't really "worth it" unless you are shooting for the coolness factor you get with WC.