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Discussion on: Side Project: Water Cooling My PC

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slavius profile image
Slavius

Hi,

I was wondering why did you decide to water cool you PC?

I am running Core i7 7700k at 4,5GHz base clock reaching 40 degrees Celsius idle with plain air cooler with ambient temperature at about 30.

Can you elaborate more on the tasks you do that require water cooling and what temperatures you reach idle and under stress before and after?

Thanks.

Cheers. S.

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moriahmaney profile image
Moriah Maney

For fun and aesthetics but also high temperatures. The i7 8700k is known to be a hot chip, and I live in Florida where the ambient temp can get very high.

I didn't get a ton of time to test the i7 under load because I upgraded to it right before watercooling, but the temperature right now idling is 33 for the CPU and about 30 for the GPU, which is an idle temp drop of around 20 degrees if I'm remembering right. Under load my setup now barely cracks 50. I primarily use this computer for gaming and upgrade it/water cooled it as a hobby.

This is all before overclocking which I plan to do eventually, so keep that in mind as well.

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slavius profile image
Slavius

Nice, thanks.

Looking forward for you to provide some comparison before/after eventually.
Also some aspects as reduced/increased noise from the pump or what your general experience with water cooled system is.

I never had water cooling before and would love to hear from you any pros/cons for me to reconsider it as my next project ;)

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moriahmaney profile image
Moriah Maney

The noise has decreased significantly to the point of being almost entirely silent even under load -- this is usually the case for most water cooled computers.

Pros:

  • Better temps, especially if overclocking
  • Quieter
  • More efficient
  • Looks super cool

Cons:

  • Expensive
  • Difficult
  • Much more maintenance than an air cooled PC
  • Potential risk of water spills -- this really doesn't happen that often unless directions are ignored or something else.
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slavius profile image
Slavius

I never had issues with temperatures. (the last one I remember was on P4 Prescott Extreme Edition I had about 10 years ago?)

Usually high temperatures arise from few factors:

  • bad chip design - do your research and buy CPU that's not a reversed nuclear powerplant
  • bad thermal paste - all chip manufacturer provided pastes are bad. Buy silver based thermal paste for $5 and save yourself hassles later
  • bad radiator/cooler - stock coolers (maybe apart from Zen's Ryzen and Threadripper) are probably designed to run in idle desktops? Not sure why they include a piece of aluminum thrash with a several hundreds of dollars worth of CPU chip. A decent cooler can cool a cpu even on low RPM.

And yes, I do crypto mining and gaming with 2 VGAs in SLI with temps below 55 with air cooling only (in summer).

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moriahmaney profile image
Moriah Maney

Please consider that I already know this information and do not need you to explain something to me that I am incredibly knowledgeable in. Thanks very much.

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slavius profile image
Slavius

I was not targeting you with my comment.

We're not here alone. Someone reading might find the information useful.

Many people do not know this and then they are wondering why's their CPUs thermal throtling and they get poor performance even tho they run latest high-end models.

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moriahmaney profile image
Moriah Maney

Fair point! As that wasn't indicated in the previous comment I did not read it that way and I apologize. Thanks!

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murkrage profile image
Mike Ekkel

To be fair: It does come across as if it's targeting OP. That's how I read it, at least. This is mainly because you mention that you specifically don't have issues with air cooling and that you apparently do crypto mining with air cooling in summer (which seems like information that wasn't really necessary).

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slavius profile image
Slavius

The irrelevant information about crypto mining should make it obvious I was not replying to anything the same way as I was trying to give advice how to deal with temperature problems, which she clearly never mentioned. I just wanted to share my 5c with my 30 years of experience with computers.

I apologize if I didn't make myself clear enough.