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Forums - PC Discussion - Air vs Liquid cooling: For PC enthusiasts specifically

zarx on 12 February 2013

I always wanted one of those Thermoelectric Peltier plate coolers myself. You know for the novelty of it more than anything.



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JEMC on 12 February 2013

You could also use a closed loop liquid cooler for the card, Anandtech reviewed the Artic Cooling one for the GTX680 and were impressed by its performance, but they also mention that it's a pain in the a** to install and a bit expensive (not a problem for you) given that it will only work for the GTX680 cards.

Personally, I've thought of WC my graphics card (my CPU is perfectly fine with my Noctua heatsink), but my case isn't well suited for WC, and I don't want to buy a new one just for that.

Which case do you have?



Please excuse my bad English.

Currently gaming on a PC with an i5-4670k@stock (for now), 16Gb RAM 1600 MHz and a GTX 1070

Steam / Live / NNID : jonxiquet    Add me if you want, but I'm a single player gamer.

Mazty on 12 February 2013
CGI-Quality said:

Alright PC gurus, it's about that time again for me to make a $2,000+ buy on PC parts. However, I'd like some honest feedback, as frankly, cooling is my only head-scratcher. Some say I should stick to intense air, while others believe liquid cooling is the way to go. My question(s) to you guys are:

What are the positives to liquid? What are the negatives? Is there truly a benefit over air cooling? Money isn't an issue, so I am only curious before I take this plunge on Thurs!

Note: If you're curious as to why I am building anew rig, I'd be happy to tell you in a future post.


No real point in water cooling. It's great when you want to do horrific overclocks, but that's all it really enables and frankly that money is better spent elsewhere. 

Firstly, closed loop systems can be noisy as hell, whereas the better full loop system costs a lot of money and in most cases is over-kill.

Second of all, you can get phenomenal performanc using something like the SilverArrow, a good case and the right fans, whilst saving cash.

Instead of wasting cash so you can overclock, with your budget you may as well get the top of the line cards instead of overclocking their smaller siblings. 



Mazty on 12 February 2013
CGI-Quality said:
Mazty said:
CGI-Quality said:

Alright PC gurus, it's about that time again for me to make a $2,000+ buy on PC parts. However, I'd like some honest feedback, as frankly, cooling is my only head-scratcher. Some say I should stick to intense air, while others believe liquid cooling is the way to go. My question(s) to you guys are:

What are the positives to liquid? What are the negatives? Is there truly a benefit over air cooling? Money isn't an issue, so I am only curious before I take this plunge on Thurs!

Note: If you're curious as to why I am building anew rig, I'd be happy to tell you in a future post.


No real point in water cooling. It's great when you want to do horrific overclocks, but that's all it really enables and frankly that money is better spent elsewhere. 

Firstly, closed loop systems can be noisy as hell, whereas the better full loop system costs a lot of money and in most cases is over-kill.

Second of all, you can get phenomenal performanc using something like the SilverArrow, a good case and the right fans, whilst saving cash.

Instead of wasting cash so you can overclock, with your budget you may as well get the top of the line cards instead of overclocking their smaller siblings. 

No plans to overclock anytime soon and a GTX 690 + i7 3970X combo is as top of the line as it gets right now. So I'm already covered there as well. 


Why that i7? Get a cheaper one and double up on the GPU? Using top of the line 2.4Mhz DDR3?



Mazty on 12 February 2013
CGI-Quality said:
Mazty said:
CGI-Quality said:
Mazty said:


No real point in water cooling. It's great when you want to do horrific overclocks, but that's all it really enables and frankly that money is better spent elsewhere. 

Firstly, closed loop systems can be noisy as hell, whereas the better full loop system costs a lot of money and in most cases is over-kill.

Second of all, you can get phenomenal performanc using something like the SilverArrow, a good case and the right fans, whilst saving cash.

Instead of wasting cash so you can overclock, with your budget you may as well get the top of the line cards instead of overclocking their smaller siblings. 

No plans to overclock anytime soon and a GTX 690 + i7 3970X combo is as top of the line as it gets right now. So I'm already covered there as well. 


Why that i7? Get a cheaper one and double up on the GPU? Using top of the line 2.4Mhz DDR3?

Because this isn't just for gaming anymore and there's zero need to double up on a 690 unless you are running more than 3 screens and / or extreme OC'ing.


Metro 2033 on ultra with x4/x8 AA plus we are on the advent of a new generation.

Well if it's not just for gaming I can't think of anything that really requires that CPU. You'd be better off getting a much cheaper one and making an AMD rig instead  freeing your gaming from media intensive tasks.



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Mazty on 12 February 2013
CGI-Quality said:
Mazty said:
CGI-Quality said:
Mazty said:


Why that i7? Get a cheaper one and double up on the GPU? Using top of the line 2.4Mhz DDR3?

Because this isn't just for gaming anymore and there's zero need to double up on a 690 unless you are running more than 3 screens and / or extreme OC'ing.


Metro 2033 on ultra with x4/x8 AA plus we are on the advent of a new generation.

Well if it's not just for gaming I can't think of anything that really requires that CPU. You'd be better off getting a much cheaper one and making an AMD rig instead  freeing your gaming from media intensive tasks.

- Played Metro for the first time on my current build last night. I averaged 75-80fps and only went as low as 43 once. Not really too concerned there. If you need two 690s for one game (especially a 2010 title), you're doing something wrong. Even Crysis doesn't require that for maximum results. ;)

- AMD? No thanks. Prefer NVIDIA as they have better driver support and I prefer PhysX over the alternative

- As for the rig itself (specs), already made my decision. Just wanted some insight on cooling

Metro settings? Certainly doesn't sound like they were maxed out....And Metro is more demanding then Crysis...

AMD as in AMD CPU. Far better value for media processing. 

Just sounds like you're wasting a fair bit of money on status components.



JEMC on 12 February 2013
CGI-Quality said:
JEMC said:

You could also use a closed loop liquid cooler for the card, Anandtech reviewed the Artic Cooling one for the GTX680 and were impressed by its performance, but they also mention that it's a pain in the a** to install and a bit expensive (not a problem for you) given that it will only work for the GTX680 cards.

Personally, I've thought of WC my graphics card (my CPU is perfectly fine with my Noctua heatsink), but my case isn't well suited for WC, and I don't want to buy a new one just for that.

Which case do you have?

Cooler Master HAF 932.

That's a better case for WC than mine, that's for sure

Given that you won't overclock, the only good reasons for going with water is because you want to try it or because you want a quieter system. A 2x120mm radiator (maybe half heigh given the lack of space) on the side panel could give you the same temps at a lower noise, or a bigger one outside of the case vould give you both temps and noise.

It's up to you to decide if you want to take the risk or if the possible rewards are not worth the rick of damaging you stuff.



Please excuse my bad English.

Currently gaming on a PC with an i5-4670k@stock (for now), 16Gb RAM 1600 MHz and a GTX 1070

Steam / Live / NNID : jonxiquet    Add me if you want, but I'm a single player gamer.

disolitude on 12 February 2013

Seeing this discussion is quite interesting to me... but truth be told, I'm so glad that I don't have the urge to build monstrosities like CGI is planning. Somewhere along of getting old I decided that 2-3 X yearly trips to Mexico and Europe are worth more than a nice PC rig.

You can still game properly on much cheaper PCs. For example. 6 months ago I found an barebones Shuttle PC AM2+ for sale and recycled some AM2+ parts like an Phenom X4 945, 4GB DDR2 and bought Radeon 7750. Pretty much everything I played works great and PC cost me 200 bucks. :)

720p + medium/high details + 4XAA or 1080p + low/medium details + no AA FTW.

Come to think of it, I have the fastest 95W AM2+ compatible CPU, fastest GPU that will work on a 250 W PSU... My PC is maxed out. Could use some water cooling. :)



Shinobi-san on 12 February 2013

I would say go with water cooling just for the experience.

Well if you just looking for gaming/rendering performance then i guess you don't even need to upgrade but if you're an enthusiast the idea of water cooling or anything really to do with building, customizing your PC should be enticing enough



Intel Core i7 3770K [3.5GHz]|MSI Big Bang Z77 Mpower|Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1866 2 x 4GB|MSI GeForce GTX 560 ti Twin Frozr 2|OCZ Vertex 4 128GB|Corsair HX750|Cooler Master CM 690II Advanced|

Mazty on 12 February 2013
CGI-Quality said:
Mazty said:
CGI-Quality said:

- Played Metro for the first time on my current build last night. I averaged 75-80fps and only went as low as 43 once. Not really too concerned there. If you need two 690s for one game (especially a 2010 title), you're doing something wrong. Even Crysis doesn't require that for maximum results. ;)

- AMD? No thanks. Prefer NVIDIA as they have better driver support and I prefer PhysX over the alternative

- As for the rig itself (specs), already made my decision. Just wanted some insight on cooling

Metro settings? Certainly doesn't sound like they were maxed out....And Metro is more demanding then Crysis...

AMD as in AMD CPU. Far better value for media processing. 

Just sounds like you're wasting money on status components a fair bit.

Read the edit for CPUs.

As for Metro, yes, everything juiced all the way up (very much how it would be with 680 SLI - which a 690 is within 90% of for Metro). I only play with everything on max. I averaged 80-90fps with Crysis maxed, modded, and FXAA injected. In fact, it becomes nearly as resourceful as Metro. I've only ever had issues with Far Cry 3, and that's only because it wasn't properly scaled for SLI at launch.

With Metro, there was some micro-stutter from time-to-time and it dipped below 50fps, as I said, once, but nothing remarkable. Really performed better than I epxected, given how many people sound like you.

And I've done all the research I need for parts, particularly for what I'm doing and how infrequent I plan to change builds after this one. Much of my work will require intensive rendering, serious multitasking, hyperthreading, and processing. The 690, however, is mainly for gaming. The specs are not just for "bragging rights", but that's moot anyway. :)


http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_680_sli_review,12.html

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_680_SLI/14.html

What's your current set up considering GTX680's sli'd avg 66/48...?

You may want to hold out for the Titan as that could easily surpass the 690 in SLI. Plus is the rendering you're doing CUDA supported? If so the Titan would an even better choice.