When is it worth to WC?

Quote:
Your running 1.45vcore @ 3.9ghz?

Quote:
ya im having issues with this chip atm. lol i got a new board and chip so i get to try again!

i only have the i7 and gtx 275 wc'd

Apogee GTZ
RX360
Dtek Pump
Dtek Fuzion GPU
Ek 250 Res

my i7 never goes above 70C and my GPU hasnt seen 50c In a long time

EDIT: also you dont need full cover blocks. ram can be cooled by air just fine. the shaders are on the core so just a core block works great!

overclocking graphics cards doesnt do too much, results arent as noticable. if you're getting only 20 frames, youd need a 50% OC to get into the playable area, provided you dont run into bandwidth related bottlenecks. if you're getting 30 already, then youve got enough to not need to OC. it can be a lot of fun to do, but purely for performance that 160$ isnt worth it.

for CPU's its a different matter, depending on the task obviously. CPU's can OC further than just 50% these days and the effects per % are more noticable as well. for example when you're extracting a file archive. pretty much any CPU intensive task will get done a lot faster. sadly for us watercooling enthousiasts, the need for this expensive form of cooling is decreasing, still. CPU's will reach higher clocks on air as aircoolers get much better, and the chip's effective OCing range has shifted more into the aircooling territory the past few years. so sadly, again, from a bang-for-buck standpoint it is not really worth it in most cases. It is a lot of fun to do, and is more forgiving for higher voltages. Highers OCs are noticable in real world results, but enough to warrant the premium? maybe the 200$ of a simple CPU loop, but much over that and you'd have to do it for fun, or the lower temps that while they dont increase overclockability much, can ensure a longer lifetime of the hardware, and stable operation even during the summer.

A lot of the intrigue with water-cooling comes after your first loop that's just "adequate"; it's true that there will be comparable air-cooling parts but when you get to the level of fanaticism that many who post worklogs here and at XS exhibit, it becomes much more of an art than just another form of cooling.

There's little to worry about with air-cooling and air-cooling can be applied to many systems and look good. It takes a lot of work to make a water-cooling loop look satisfactory, function as desired and run as quiet or as efficient as possible. It's this desire that push many to pursue water cooling past their first drop; many drop out but many also stay around and put in the effort to turn their computers into works of art and things of beauty.

For me, water cooling inspires innovation, and provides me a creative outlet that otherwise (I'm terrible at the arts) would never have manifested in myself. So the pursuit of water-cooling may start out with just a desire for lower temperatures but as you get deeper and deeper into the art, examining the work of others, it begins to evolve into a much more stringent pursuit of perfection - one which has been captured time and time again (murder mods and MDPCs) but never completely satisfies everyone.

WC does cost a pretty penny, I'm in the same boat. I couldn't justify spending 300-400 right now so I bought a mega shadow to get me to 4.0ghz. However the WC part in me still wants to come out. I will probably have a WC setup by the end of dec...whenever I feel like it's not worth it to WC, I look at this:



and all is better

Quote:
You're very welcome Just remember, do what YOU want in your system, regardless of cost( reasonable cost I mean/ affordable ). As long as you are happy with it, that is all that should matter imo.

Best of luck with your setup

Quote:
Any watercooling system that requires more manteinance than change coolant once a year it's not well built.

Also, Air cooling will only blow ALL the air inside your case... unless you have some crazy airflow, the hot air will be sucked again...

Watercool is totally worth it's 200€ when you want to cool everything with the heat outside of the case. 210€ costed my loop.

If I wanted to go air, 80€ for Heatsink on CPU, 50 for each GPU HSF + 10 for fans... That's 200. For 10€ more, I can have watercooling.

Okay if you prefer air cooling. But from there to say "Watercooling is totally not worth it", you lose totally your argument.

Quote:
No, i wont tell you to put all others on air. Theres something about WC that makes me not wanna go back to air. Aircooling is a lack of dedication, to computers, to engineering, and to technology in general. Watercooling is something you must build yourself, you get involved. You dont just install it. It gets personal.

I know it sounds stupid, but I think it is important to love your computer, almost like a person. You try to take good care of it, and hope it trusts you enough to do so. Try to cool it as well as you can and hope it trusts you with the risk of a leak. Also on the software side, install a good AV and keep it clean. Just like a person, a computer isnt perfect and you've got to respect that. Dont hate it for every little error, or crash. If you do that, I find them to listen to you a lot better, and care about you too.
Many people hated Vista, and the more they hated, the more it crashed. Vista has always been far more stable for me than XP, even at release. I loved Vista, and I guess Vista loved me back. I never had any of the trouble other people had, I couldnt even cause those problems on purpose. With XP that was the other way around. We hated eachother. Many of my problems I never heard anyone else about. And watercooling is similar to that. Just love it, and care for it, and it will not hurt you, it will not leak, and it'll be the best addition to your PC there is. It'll help you care for your other components, so that they will work for you too.
That said, I love my 8800GTX, but I wont ever watercool it. I wouldnt even dare take the cooler off, and I dont OC it. It doesnt like that. I respect it's wishes and in return it has always worked hard for me, and I hope it will keep doing so in the future.

ah, look at me rambling
anyway, watercooling is all about love, not just raw performance. There are many ways of showing it, but this is one of them.