Why you shouldn't water cool your PC!

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

One of my previous setups had dual overclocked Xeons (before Intel figured out how to kill that idea) with dual Noctuas. They were hanging off the motherboard, which was mounted vertically in a tower. Then I read about stressing your motherboard with all that weight. And getting to other components was a nightmare because the coolers blocked everything.

AIO for me since then. Quiet and cool.

[westman 257]

If you test coolers on for example 8600k run it deafault (no OC) mesure the powerdraw on the wall 110W most of the coolers have a lot of headroom the difference is almost not mesureable.

I have my 7980XE bench cpu mounted in a open testbench , did a fast test to see how high OC i can get from it with noctua D15, 280 AIO, 540 customloop , 10C chiller.

started with defalut settings and run Aida64 stresstest and mesure the powerdraw from the wall get 260W then run it with min vcore get 220W the diff to D15 and AIO ,540 2deg C.

after that i test the max stable OC with D15 4.4ghz 490W it was the max

aio 280 did slightly better 4.5ghz 4.5ghz 580W

custom water 540rad 2xD5 4.6ghz 660W

chiller 10C watertemp 4.8ghz 810W

when i bench this  cpu at 5.0ghz with 2X2080TI  2200mhz on the chiller 5C the power draw is +1800W

As most of the Flightsimmers OC there cpu.s the cooling make difference its the heat that degrade the cpu  if you run a 9900k at 85-90c deafult clock ( poor cooling) that cpu degrades faster then a 5.1ghz customloop with 65C during load.

[G-RFRY 1,707]

It begs the question why do companies that build and supply high end gaming and sim PCs use water cooling one Big one comes to mind in the US that build specialist flight sim PCs are they ripping of the custom off !!!.  

[Dougal 165]

I find it amazing how we all have very different experiences with similar (or even identical) kit, and thus very different opinions on such items.

Like Martin, I'm a huge 'FAN' (pardon the pun) of Noctua kit.  Before I ever used a Noctua CPU cooler, I tried (and failed) with no less than THREE different AIO coolers on 2 different PCs. I had both the H100 and H115i coolers from Corsair; the H100 leaked all over my system, and the pump on my H115i died!!!  Was that "unheard of" I hear you cry lol?  Not in my house.

The Noctua items that replaced both of these were both much quieter AND better at cooling my overclocked systems.

A year or so ago, purely for fun and experimentation, I went down the 'full custom water loop' road. All I can say is WOW!  My 7700k will now run at 5.2GHz if I really push it, but its totally stable at 5.0GHz.  I couldn't even get close to this with the AIO's, but then, I guess that's probably not what they were designed for.  Also, when applying a heavy overclock with the AIOs, my PC sounded like a 747 on its take off run, and I couldn't bring myself to replace all the fans for quieter, much more expensive items.

Re the Corsair AIOs, much as I'm usually very pleased with the quality of their kit, when they eventually replied to my multiple requests for help, they implied the leak must be due to "incorrect installation methods". I still buy Corsair kit, as i'm not willing to shoot myself in the foot over a little misplaced 'pride' lol.

Edited May 3, 2019 by Dougal

[Ron Attwood 3,464]

Electronics and water in the same box is Witchcraft and shouldn't be allowed! 🚱

[stans 702]

I think if you want really good water cooling, the heated water needs to be routed through a cool can.  What's a cool can?  A container that has a coiled metal tube in it and you fill the can with ice (50-50 water and ice is the most effective mix) or dry ice and the liquid pumped through the tube gets cooled.  This will sap the heat right out of the water coming from the CPU.  Drag racers used to use these on fuel lines to prevent gasoline from vaporizing before it gets to the carburetor.  Without something like that, the water going to the CPU will be no cooler than ambient air and after the computer has been running for a while, it is likely to be above ambient air temperature.

[martin-w 3,234]

19 hours ago, w6kd said:

First, the title of this thread is a bit disingenuous..."Why you shouldn't water cool your PC with an AIO cooler"  would be a more accurate description of the video's subject matter (though I don't agree with that characterization of the video).

 

 

Just to mention, although you probably realised this, the title of the "thread" is simply the title of the video. Just cut and paste, not my opinion. Click bate by Linus probably. It's very clear to all that a properly designed custom loop is the way to go if you desire the best cooling and don't care about the need for maintenance or the significant cost.  

 

Quote

I have a Noctua NH-D15 sitting in my spares box that I intended to use, but it wouldn't fit--the heat sinks on my performance memory DIMMs are too tall, and the footprint of the ginormous Noctua cooler puts it over one of the DIMM slots. 

 

This is why I have said many times that you are better off with an NH-D15S, rather than an NH-D15. The "S" variant is offset so as to provide more clearance from the uppermost PCIe slot and also has one fan instead of two. One fan as opposed to two makes very little difference to cooling. It's a mere two degrees. The velocity of the air that passes through the heat sink is the same, all the extra fan does is increase static pressure slightly. I wouldn't advise anyone to buy the D15, no point for a mere two degrees. There's no issue at all, for the same reason, in removing the 140 fan on the D15 and just leaving the centrally mounted 150 fan in place. Also true of course that tall heat sinks are a gimmick, and it's debatable if really required. 64mm is clearance is single fan mode for D15, and 65mm for D15S. 

[martin-w 3,234]

23 hours ago, vc10man said:

Thanks for that fantastic heads-up, Martin. I am more or less aware that you are a Noctua----( who are my preferred manufacturers)--- aficionado, but was bidding my time to get the cooling, air or  water, for my i7-8086k based rig until I was more than 100% convinced a good Air Cooler would beat an AIO. This video is certainly an eye-opener.

 

Worth mentioning that the new generation NH-U12A is matching the performance of the NH-D15. To achieve D15 performance with just a single tower cooler with 120 fans, with a 220 watt heat load, is quite remarkable. 

https://noctua.at/en/products/cpu-cooler-retail/nh-u12a

£89.99 at Scan.

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/noctua-nh-u12a-asymmetric-single-tower-cpu-cooler-7-heatpipes-2x-120mm-nf-a12x25-pwm-fans-al-nickel

 

Quote

The NH-U12 is the fifth-generation of this design. The primary upgrade is the switch to Noctua’s own NF-A12x12 120mm premium fans that have been five years in the making and have an extremely tight clearance between the blade tip and frame. The NH-U12 uses two of them in a push-pull configuration, includes seven heat pipes, and has 37 percent more surface area compared to the NH-U12S. A live demo at the Computex 2018 booth showed the new cooler running next to the flagship NH-D15 and achieving performance within 1°C of it at 220W load. Noctua promises excellent PCIe and RAM compatibility with this cooler.

 

However... there is a new D15 in development that blows them all away. Not sure how long till it's available. It has more heat pipes and the next gen Noctua fans. 

 

Edited May 3, 2019 by martin-w

[martin-w 3,234]

22 hours ago, vortex681 said:

 Prone to early pump failure? - yes it's obviously possible, but now VERY rare with modern, high-end AIOs.

 

Really! "very rare" I guess it would make sense that pump design has improved over the years, and that they are now more reliable. However, that is purely speculation on our part. We have no definitive evidence of that because manufactures don't release any data in regard to failure rate. Both in terms of leaks and pump failure. There is certainly still an abundance of reports of failing pumps. Who knows, in principle I would agree, but to definitively state "VERY" rare without the evidence to back it up might be a bad idea. 

[martin-w 3,234]

21 hours ago, lzamm said:

One thing about water coolers is that they pump the heat right outside the case.  My SSD's run several degrees cooler since I switched from an air cooler to a Corsair h50 on my 4790k, some 4 years ago (no leaks yet either).

 

That depends how you configure it. If configured to exhaust, rad is ingesting warm enclosure air so CPU is warmer. If configured to ingest outside air, CPU is cooler but the warm rad air is entering case. 

[martin-w 3,234]

16 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

One of my previous setups had dual overclocked Xeons (before Intel figured out how to kill that idea) with dual Noctuas. They were hanging off the motherboard, which was mounted vertically in a tower. Then I read about stressing your motherboard with all that weight. And getting to other components was a nightmare because the coolers blocked everything.

AIO for me since then. Quiet and cool.

 

 

TWO Noctua's is something I've not seen before but in regard to the weight of a single D15, it's not an issue. Secufirm 2's spring retention system is excellent. I did some research a while back and the only issue I came across was when Tom's Hardware were dumb enough to ship a PC across the country with a D15 attached. The courier chucked it around in the back of the van and damage ensued. In normal use, no issues at all. Obviously it's madness to ship a PC with a big cooler still attached given the way couriers treat packages. Noctua coolers exceed Intel spec for static load deliberately, to improve cooling, but that's not an issue. Dynamic load is actually less than Intel spec.

There was an issue with Scythe coolers a few years ago, because the mounting pressures were very high and they weren't using a spring retention system. I recall Scythe sent out new mounting kits to owners. 

[martin-w 3,234]

23 hours ago, Jethro said:

Hi Martin,

 

Forgot to mention,  I don't mind the Brown and Tan fans, and these days you can buy prty colour coded tower covers, I think they have even made different coloured fans. (Black ones with grey anti vibration corner cushions)

 

 

 

I don't mind the brown and tan either. I do prefer black though, so I spent the extra on Chromax heat sink covers and black Noctua Chromax fans. Looks very nice. 

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

8 minutes ago, martin-w said:

TWO Noctua's is something I've not seen before

https://www.evga.com/articles/00537/

That's the mobo. I still have it as a media center PC.

I stand corrected BTW. Intel has not completely prevented OCing on Xeon processors, so such a system is still possible:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/11960/asus-announces-ws-c621e-sage-workstation-motherboard-dual-xeon-overclocking

I've never seen one of these systems in the wild though. And who needs 56 OCed cores?

 

[martin-w 3,234]

46 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

https://www.evga.com/articles/00537/

That's the mobo. I still have it as a media center PC.

I stand corrected BTW. Intel has not completely prevented OCing on Xeon processors, so such a system is still possible:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/11960/asus-announces-ws-c621e-sage-workstation-motherboard-dual-xeon-overclocking

I've never seen one of these systems in the wild though. And who needs 56 OCed cores?

 

 

What kind of case was that in? 😁

[Dougal 165]

Not that its very important now as Noctua have it sorted with a later release, but the big older coolers that interfered with tall DIMMS is extremely easily fixed with a Dremel;-)  Done it on two separate PCs