Water cooling?

[WoodiE]

I've been wanting to try water cooling in my computer for a while but the high price and up keep just didn't seem worth it added with the fact that I've been a little chicken to put my PC near water.

Well I've had an Intel E8500 laying around for a bit and figured now would be a good time to install it to replace my E4500 before I installed Win7 64bit. In doing so I was looking at new coolers for the E8500 when I came across the Corsair Hydro CWCH50, a self contained CPU water cooler. Completely sealed and no maintenance needed. Looked online and found a ton of good stuff about it so I figured I'd try it out. Should be here next week!

At any rate, does anyone use water to cool their PC and if so what are you thoughts about it?

 

[rcnut143]

I don't know anything about water cooling a PC but I've gotten nothing but a smile from Windows 7 64bit.

 

[beason]

i dont personally have it, but i built a pretty high end system (at the time) when i used to do repair. he used one of the thermaltake cases with with built in Rad on top, and pump/tank, in the bottom. we set it up to cool the cpu, gpu, chipset, and hard drive he did a lot of gaming, and even overclocked it a bit, and it never got more then 1deg above ambient.

there is some stuff that is supposed to make the water "wetter" and help it cool. he also added some UV die and had black lights in it for pop. I'm pretty sure that thing is still running and its been like 6 years.

I'm sure you know.. with the cool dry weather. watch the esd! we fried his video card setting that one up.

now peltier, phase change, or submerged cooling.. THAT sounds fun!

 

[syphon68]

Woodie in the early days I fabbed up some scary looking closed loop systems using cooling blocks that weren't that great but now there are tons of options out there. I have installed 2 different versions of the Rezerator for people and have also installed Gigabyte Galaxy, the only thing to watch for is make sure that your fittings are snug and good thermal paste. I think with the modern processors they have so much overclocking headroom good air cooling is enough that my gaming rig 6850 has been nothing but rock solid for a year @ 3.8 ghz(3 ghz stock). One geek to another once I got the air flow right in the Antec 900 case I am using. The CPU and GPU don't even get warm, OK maybe I over geeked sorry. btw I have had the same CPU up to 4.4 ghz but I had to jack the voltage up to get there and didn't feel it was a happy place to be

 

[WoodiE]

Well the installation of this water cooler was just a bit tricky until you realized how it all worked, after that it worked like a champ. It makes the inside of the case look so much cleaner and it's doing a wonderful job cooling.

Need to start doing the break-in cycles on the computer but other than that I've been pretty impressed with the rebuild.

 

[syphon68]

you know the Drill woodie pics please

 

[flm_savage]

i thought about water cooling for awhile when i was oc'ing pretty heavily but i moved my pc around alot so i never thought it would be wise. I also got my 2.66Ghz proc to 4.0Ghz on air with acceptable temps so i never really worried about it. 4.2Ghz is another story. lol