Your way of cooling your PC?

[Arctucas]

Custom loop, GPU air.

See System Specs.

 

[Keullo-e]

Custom loops are nice, but too much of a hassle for way too little benefit in my opinion.

Though once you get it going, it's pretty hassle-free after that the only part I hate is getting air out of the loop.

 

[AusWolf]

Though once you get it going, it's pretty hassle-free after that the only part I hate is getting air out of the loop.

But for what, 5% more thermal headroom? Each to their own, but I'll pass.

 

[Keullo-e]

But for what, 5% more thermal headroom? Each to their own, but I'll pass.

I get your point. The best thing in watercooling is that it's easy to dump the heat out of your system

 

[AusWolf]

I get your point. The best thing in watercooling is that it's easy to dump the heat out of your system

I get your point too. But the assembly and maintenance still put me off. I love building PCs, but the technicality of designing a loop is a bit too much DIY for my taste.

 

[faye]

Long ago at the height of madness I was running phase change on the CPU (Xeon X3220, basically a server binned Q6600) and a custom loop with dual D5s, dual 360mm radiators (with thick high static pressure Panaflo fans) cooling all 3 8800GTXs and the 780i northbridge on the motherboard. It was... Stupid. All that built in to a Lian-Li PC-V2000B Plus II with a 1KW PC Power & Cooling PSU and 4 7200 RPM WD Blacks in RAID 0. Living dangerously.

It took a long time to get that bad - I bought a bunch of used AquaComputer water-cooling stuff off the forums I used to frequent and managed to cobble together a cooling loop for one of the then 2 8800 GTXs, then I built a second loop for the CPU, then that got moved to the GPUs and expanded when I got the phase unit.

It was a lot of fun, and part of me really misses all the tinkering, but the other much louder and more reasonable part of me that's nearing 40 wants nothing to do with any of it and reminds me the monstrosity had to be plugged in to two different 20 amp circuits in the house (one for the phase unit, one for the PSU) or it would pop breakers.

I do wish I could find pictures - like 99% sure some have survived on an old hard drive somewhere, but brief searches when I'm feeling motivated over the last few years have come up with nothing.

I get your point too. But the assembly and maintenance still put me off. I love building PCs, but the technicality of designing a loop is a bit too much DIY for my taste.

There's little to none in a larger case.

Basically any CPU block that fits. Same with the GPU block. As much radiator as you can fit/afford. One Liang D5 if it's one or two blocks and one or two rads, 2 if it's more than 2 blocks and 2 rads. Soft tube and compression fittings cause we're adults and don't have time for nonsense. Get a pump/res combo if you have space, run a fill port with the longest upright tube to it you can fit if there's no space for a res. People overcomplicate this stuff.

Now... Is it worth it? No. Not unless you value quiet far, far, far more than money. But it's not hard to figure out.

 

[Keullo-e]

I get your point too. But the assembly and maintenance still put me off. I love building PCs, but the technicality of designing a loop is a bit too much DIY for my taste.

I gotta admit that I hate designing it and oh hell no, I'll never go for the hardtube way, soft tubes all the way

 

[Chrispy_]

Long ago at the height of madness I was running phase change on the CPU (Xeon X3220, basically a server binned Q6600) and a custom loop with dual D5s, dual 320mm radiators (with thick high static pressure Panaflo fans) cooling all 3 8800GTXs and the 780i northbridge on the motherboard. It was... Stupid. All that built in to a Lian-Li PC-V2000B Plus II with a 1KW PC Power & Cooling PSU and 4 7200 RPM WD Blacks in RAID 0. I was living dangerously.

I got the itch to push CPUs as far as they could go back in 1999-2000 with custom-loop-cooled Peltier/TEC on Athlon Thunderbirds. Man, that rig was loud and fast, but condensation management was a nightmare back then as there wasn't any smart monitoring for the TEC to stay above the ambient dewpoint temperature. I'd hate to deal with phase-change! Insulation and vaseline/cf spraycoat mandatory, right?

 

[AusWolf]

There's little to none in a larger case.

That also puts me off to be honest. My preferred size is m-ATX, or even m-ITX as long as the specific case doesn't make maintenance too hard.

I value silence, but I value ease of maintenance even more. High quality fans, no OC and relaxed fan curves are my way to go.

Edit: I admit, soft tubing makes me wonder sometimes, but nah... Maybe one day.

 

[faye]

I got the itch to push CPUs as far as they could go back in 1999-2000 with custom-loop-cooled Peltier/TEC on Athlon Thunderbirds. Man, that rig was loud and fast, but condensation management was a nightmare back then as there wasn't any smart monitoring for the TEC to stay above the ambient dewpoint temperature. I'd hate to deal with phase-change! Insulation and vaseline/cf spraycoat mandatory, right?

Yep. Everything was sprayed, then covered in Vaseline, then multiple layers of closed cell foam. When something went wrong (as it often did) it was a miserable process just getting /to/ the components, nevermind diagnosing and replacing things.

 

[Dragam1337]

Now... Is it worth it? No. Not unless you value quiet far, far, far more than money. But it's not hard to figure out.

And even then you can still get your setup super quiet on air

 

[Chrispy_]

And even then you can still get your setup super quiet on air

• Maximum performance
• Silent
• Cheap and hassle-free

You can pick any two.

 

[Chicken Patty]

I have used AIOs for my CPUs in the past, but they've been a bit of a hit and miss depending on the CPU I was using (they're kind of rubbish on AMD's X3D ones). So now, I voted air.

Custom loops are nice, but too much of a hassle for way too little benefit in my opinion.

My first AIO on my 7800X3D is the Liquid Freezer III 360 and it's as good as my custom loop in terms of temps. I haven't had it long enough to know about pump life, etc. But I guess time will tell. Very happy with it.

 

[Dragam1337]

• Maximum performance
• Silent
• Cheap and hassle-free

You can pick any two.

The amount of performance you are giving up by undervolting is miniscule these days though, so i consider anything other than a super easy setup "not worth it".

 

[Keullo-e]

My first AIO on my 7800X3D is the Liquid Freezer III 360 and it's as good as my custom loop in terms of temps. I haven't had it long enough to know about pump life, etc. But I guess time will tell. Very happy with it.

Arctic's AIOs are great and they have awesome price/performance ratio.

 

[AusWolf]

My first AIO on my 7800X3D is the Liquid Freezer III 360 and it's as good as my custom loop in terms of temps. I haven't had it long enough to know about pump life, etc. But I guess time will tell. Very happy with it.

I've heard good things about the Liquid Freezer series on X3D. I didn't have so much luck with my Silent Loop 2, unfortunately. It's a brilliant AIO on basically anything except for my 7800X3D.

 

[Keullo-e]

I've heard good things about the Liquid Freezer series on X3D. I didn't have so much luck with my Silent Loop 2, unfortunately. It's a brilliant AIO on basically anything except for my 7800X3D.

I have the OG Corsair H70 on my 2nd rig, just needed a refill and it still performs great. Those asetek AIOs just work

 

[AusWolf]

Another factor whether water is worth it is your part choice. The 7800X3D can easily maintain max boost under high-end air, and my Sapphire Pulse 7800 XT is super quiet by default. I could possibly get more performance out of it while keeping it quiet under a water block, but even then, it's an extremely power limited card, so there isn't much to do with it, unfortunately.

 

[Chrispy_]

The amount of performance you are giving up by undervolting is miniscule these days though, so i consider anything other than a super easy setup "not worth it".

Yeah, I always undervolt my GPUs and I also undervolt the CPU that's on air.

The best card I had for undervolting was an RX480 years ago that was rock stable at 0.825V and that meant that the reported core-only power draw dropped from 140W to 85W without a single MHz drop from the default clocks.

 

[Arco]

• Maximum performance
• Silent
• Cheap and hassle-free

You can pick any two.

I think the LF II does a good job of doing all three. I have mine set to ramp up to 45% fan speed under load and it is quiet. Really its the IHS thermally bottlenecking transfer of heat to the AIO.

 

[Chicken Patty]

I've heard good things about the Liquid Freezer series on X3D. I didn't have so much luck with my Silent Loop 2, unfortunately. It's a brilliant AIO on basically anything except for my 7800X3D.

It truly has been known to be great with X3D chips. The offset mounting is particularly great for the X3D chips as it focuses on the hot part of the CPU. They thought it out pretty well to be honest.

 

[Arctucas]

I gotta admit that I hate designing it and oh hell no, I'll never go for the hardtube way, soft tubes all the way

+1 Tygon4evar.

 

[Dragam1337]

Yeah, I always undervolt my GPUs and I also undervolt the CPU that's on air.

The best card I had for undervolting was an RX480 years ago that was rock stable at 0.825V and that meant that the reported core-only power draw dropped from 140W to 85W without a single MHz drop from the default clocks.

Yeah, both my gpu and cpu are undervolted aswell.

Not undervolting quite as much as you, as it's not needed - running 2700 mhz at 925mv, which keeps it below 70c with 800 rpm

 

[Keullo-e]

Yeah, both my gpu and cpu are undervolted aswell.

Not undervolting quite as much as you, as it's not needed - running 2700 mhz at 925mv, which keeps it below 70c with 800 rpm

1200mV -> 1075mV on my 6700 XT. Rock solid and boosts better than with its stock voltage.

 

[Pasi123]

Air cooling.

DeepCool Assassin III, i9-10900X @ 250W

Thermalright Silver Arrow, X5670 @ 4.4GHz