Having used open loop coolers for the better part of a decade, I'll second that the DDC pump is going to be the loudest part if running at full speed unless you go crazy with fans. (I really wish someone would design a more suitable pump from the ground up instead of just slapping a modified top on the stock model.) However while it's picky about it's operating voltage you can slow and quiet them using PWM control. My current loop has a CPU, Mobo Mosfets, GPU, and a 560 radiator. Using an 4yo Swiftech DDC pump (not sure exact model they've got several of them) I've found that PWMing it to about 70% drops the high pitched pump noise below the noise floor of my low speed fans while only raising core temps by about 1-2C.
I'm surprised they didn't use a pump like the DDC-1T PWM which is a 10w version that does 420l/h and is pretty much silent. I have one in my PC and even with an XSPC Raystorm V3 CPU block, Aquacomputer Krygraphics GTX 780ti full block, XSPC ex360 and ex280 radiators, and quite a few 90' and 45' XSPC rotary fittings, my DDC-1T PWM has a flow rate of 0.91gpm according to my Aquacomputer Aquaero with high-flow meter.
The part which the pump connects to the reservoir really concerns me. From the looks of it, It's just the barbs that come with DDC stock top (which we usually replace with custom ones to fit standard fittings plus better flow) go straight into the opening of the reservoir without any tightening measures. Are you sure that is not going to leak?
The benchmark results are pretty impressive, but hardly worth the risk of mixing liquid with electricity or the added cost over just using the manufactuerer certified heatsink and fan that comes in the box with the CPU. So the processor runs at 40 degrees instead of 70. That's utterly meaningless to me when the max temp for a chip is typically +90 degrees and certainly not worth any additional cost at all much less a cost that includes the problem of pumping fluids around a system that works perfectly well with circulating air.
It's a hobby. It can have some benefits, but it's a hobby first and foremost in my opinion. Yes, I could overclock my CPU and GPU some more while under water, it has a bit less noise and it can be more versatile. But modern aircooling is also pretty good, usually cheaper and not that much louder if you select good components. Though I will always spend a bit more to get a better cooler compared to the boxed offerings (headroom in the summer, dust buildup, better overclocking, quieter operations). But it depends on your setup and taste. :)
That I can understand. Everyone has something they waste time and money on just for fun, but I don't think there's a practical reason behind it. I leave my desktop computer with it's 95W 860K CPU sitting in the mud room (no AC...basically my front porch) and run it headlessly to stream games. It spent the summer in ambient temps of around 80-85 degrees streaming games via Steam and the entire time it was and still is on the pre-Wraith HSF that came in the box with the CPU.
Sure, I thought about replacing the cooler with something non-OEM or even getting a Wraith second hand from ebay or something, but there's absolutely no reason to do so. I can't rationalize spending even a minimal amount of money on it and then going through the trouble of opening the case up to replace the HSF. I might clean the dust bunnies out next spring, but at this point any additional cooling would serve no practical purpose.
There is a VERY practical purpose to water cooling which you're missing. If you've ever used a high end air cooler (and I have a cupboard full of them, up to the top shelf Thermalright Silver Arrow) then you know that they're HEAVY. This isn't a problem if your computer sits at your desk until cleaning time or your next upgrade cycle. I can promise you that having a huge cooler on your motherboard can be precarious if you tend to lug your PC around at all. You have to be pretty ginger with your movements.
The reason I went to water cooling is now when I lug my PC around, I don't have to worry about component stresses. Given that I have a nice AIO loop on my CPU and run all SSDs, I could boot kick my tower and not worry about data loss or yanking the mounting post for my air cooler through the fiberglass of my motherboard.
Actually, my argument is in favor of OEM-boxed coolers that ship in retail packaging with the CPU. Those have never been too heavy for the mounting mechanisms that support them. The situation of an overweight air cooler is a self-inflicted wound that wouldn't have required the proverbial medical attention of liquid cooling had the person in question never picked up the overweight air cooler knife to begin with.
That works for people hard of hearing, those willing to put up with abysmall thermals and/or loud noise or those like you who have enough space and willingness to put the source of the noise in another part of their dwelling.
That's a lot of exaggeration. Stock coolers are ear-splitting monsters that let the chip run at unsafe temperatures. There are literally billions of PCs that have been shipped with OEM coolers over the years and while a few designs have been fatally flawed (I'm looking at you ECS GREEN320 laptop with your whiny hair dryer blower on a 1GHz VIA C3 processor) the vast majority of them provide years of problem-free service by keeping the CPU within manufacturer specified temperature limits without causing undue end user stress due to poor acoustic design.
Keep it in perspective. I'd happily agree that temperatures might be lower and the computer might be quieter with a bit of attention paid to cooling, but the way you're putting things seems overly dramatic.
I moved to custom loop to get rid of "angry vacuum cleaner" (back in 8800GT days). My pump is sitting in a foam inside the case and radiator is external, passive and quite big. In combination with noise dampening case and semi-passive PSU it's silent at city night (I guess in significantly quieter environment you could hear a bit but not really much).
Liquid cooling is for people for want/need extreme performance, generating tons of heat in the process. Heatsinks that come out of the box cannot handle it. There is also the question of noise, for cooling an OCed system on air produces - generally - more noise than on liquid. Those, however, do not seem to be circumstances that apply to you, so you better stay on air.
If they're using an AIO, chances are the combined pump + fan noise is actually noisier than a dual stack tower heatsink. (2x 120mm or 140mm fan + pump noise VS 2x 120mm or 140mm fans and no pump).
If they've built a custom open loop, then chances are that they've over-engineered the solution (as the few who go this route have the cash to spend and are willing to go all the way) and are using a thick radiator, a large reservoir, a large but quiet pump, and fans that don't ever need to spin up to address increased heat on intensive tasks, and at this point, they might actually have a quieter solution.
Lots of chances involved, it seems. In the end, what makes sense - generally - is to understand your problem and look for the best way to solve it. For some, air will do; for others, not. Check Corsair's H110iGT review @ Guru3d: it is as quiet as the venerable Noctua NHD15, but 9C cooler when overclocking an i7 4790k. Oh, and it also significantly lighter than 1.32kg. But then there is our friend BrokenCrayons, mixing bunnies with pancakes...
What's the poinnt of overclocking it? The home user's typical workloads don't benefit from overclocking and if they do, the increase in performance is marginal and not worth the effort. Sure there's showboating to friends and emotional self-gratification, but those aren't tangible rewards. If emotional satisfaction is what you gain from that sort of thing, then knock yourself out, but in my opinion, it's wasteful, childish, and silly.
>The home user's typical workloads don't benefit from overclocking Typical home users aren't spending at least a thousand dollars on a custom built PC, and investing in the enthusiast platform (x99) as opposed to the standard desktop platform (H170).
>the increase in performance is marginal and not worth the effort. My 6600k went from 3.5GHz to 4.6GHz after an overclock and minor overvoltage to ensure system stability. I don't think that's at all marginal. Additionally, many boards are coming with EZ Overclock modes if you invest in a K-series CPU + Z170 chipset motherboard. You go into the BIOS and select their preset. I started with Gigabyte's G5 Gaming's 6600k @ 4.4GHz preset and changed the multiplier from 44 to 46 and the core voltage up by +50mV. ASUS boards have a dynamic overclock function that goes through a series of reboots to find your processor's best overclock, which can change from chip to chip. It's nowhere near as hard as you make it out to be and a 31% increase in peak performance for the same money spent isn't as inconsequential as you make it out to be.
>Sure there's showboating to friends and emotional self-gratification, but those aren't tangible rewards. Rewards such as going from 90 FPS min, and 130 FPS average in a game on a 144hz Freesync monitor to a 110 FPS min and 155 FPS average is an actual tangible benefit to me. In fact, that's indicative of the extra performance I got, without having to lower a single graphical setting to achieve.
>in my opinion, it's wasteful, childish, and silly. In my opinion, it's wasteful, childish, and silly to try to force your opinion that overclocking is against your religion on an internet site full of enthusiast PC users. You're not an enthusiast PC user that likes to overclock? Fine by me. I don't go around saying that people should always buy overclockable K-series CPUs rather than settling on a basic i5 or i3, as everyone has different use-cases. But I certainly don't really care to hear from morons who say my real world gains from overclocking a $200 processor are wasteful, childish, or silly.
Just FYI, that's the pay I get from a half-day of work. Why the hell do you care if I overclock some sand made into circuits? Why do you think you have any say in how other people spend their money?
<...aren't spending at least a thousand dollars...> Typical home users really do drop over 1K on their computers. It's a lot more common than you might think. I'm surprised you'd open this post with a claim about costs and then make a counter-point using a diametrically opposed perspective at the end of it.
<...went from 3.5GHz to 4.6GHz...> The numeric value of the overclock isn't the focal point of that argument. There are a lot of other factors that contribute to a computer's capabilities. Your word processor and e-mail fetching won't dramatically change due to your efforts. Games, though entertainment and not particularly important, won't see benefits either even with very high end graphics cards as AT's recent benchmarks analyzing CPU performance have previously proven. So yes, I still feel it's not consequential and certainly not worth the effort.
<...going from 90 FPS min, and 130 FPS...> I highly doubt there's a situation in which a framerate increase of the numbers you're expressing reasonably results solely from overclocking a CPU in the scenario you're describing.
<...don't really care to hear from morons who say...> I'm not forcing my opinion on anyone. No one is being chained to their chair and made to read, think about, or respond to my comments. If my comments encourage the occasional person to think about computing and put it into a different perspective, then I'm happy to have done so. If that requires they go through a little discomfort during that self-analysis wherein they redirect their anguish at me in the form of name-calling, then so be it. However, that portion of your post does support my comment about how childish these sorts of things become and the sorts of people attracted to such ideas. I imagine you weren't setting out to support that portion of my argument, but I'd be remiss were I not to point it out.
<...the pay I get from a half-day of work...> Cleverly using a response to hint at your personal wealth. Hmm...interesting.
you highly doubt there's an fps situation!? what's your problem, crysis1 for example is known to top out around 80fps on all modern gfx cards due to cpu limits that only a cpu overclock can increase
all game benchmarks that have an amd cpu against an intel cpu clearly show a drop in fps (if not average then it's the minimum) on the same gfx card
all the people talking of 60hz or 'a 1070 is overkill for 1080p' completely ignore 120+
all the singlethreaded software alone is being gimped on the more expensive platforms since those cpus are lower blocked than the regular consumer ones, so overclocking is the only way to have more cores AND stay at 4ghz
Other than the minor insults and bragging about your income, this was an excellent rebuttal. I would like to see more of this type of debate/discussion. :)
<And there you lost all credibility in this discussion.> Why would anyone worry about establishing credibility in a comments section under an article about a computer water cooling system? Of all the things in life there are to worry about, that seems pretty insignificant. It's a bit like worrying about what your friends think of the color of crayon you used on the birthday card you made for your parent in elementary school art class. :)
I have a roughly 30% overclock on my graphics card that is water cooled and it results in an FPS gain from 35-40 to a nice solid 60fps locked. Interesting how the moment someone makes a point which refutes your claims, out comes the condescending attitude and insults. The sign of someone who lost the argument.
Using a dielectric liquid helps mitigate risk of a leak, as does occasional maintenance. Just like a car, and speaking from experience, a liquid cooler leak is generally slow and can be caught before damage is done. The only time I've had a leak was after getting back from a LAN party where my case was being transported and the next morning I noticed my carpet was wet (the system had been on all night)
One of the fittings was just a little lose and needed to be tightened. I lost about 60ml of coolant and it trickled over my videocard and motherboard to the bottom of my case. Since I use an inert coolant and wetter water as a deox no damage was done.
Ι agree with BrokenCrayons. Not to mention that squeezing more performance out of CPU's above a certain point easily achievable by Air Coolers is meaningless after 2011 and the introduction of the i5-2500k.
Only component worth of liquid cooling is the GPU IMO.
Thats sort of the point I'm getting at here. CPU performance has become a lot less relevant in recent years. Sandy Bridge's realease is a pretty good place to draw a line in the sand about when that sort of thing happened. I'd say perhaps a little earlier than that, but the target of acceptable CPU performace is still moving along slowly, but hardly keeping up with the release of new generations these days which in turn devalues the meaningfulness of overclocking and therefore the usefulness of creative cooling methods.
GPUs are another story, of course. Higher screen resolutions and maybe VR depending on whether or not it survives the coming couple of years will continue to drive GPU demand and maybe make it worth the effort to do something unusual with a video card to wring a little more out of it.
This setup would be easy to cut the noise by simply swapping out the fans, changing the mounting location of your pump and resevoir, and finally adding some dynamat around the pump and mount site. Dynamat was used back in the day by car stereo enthusiasts to deaden vibration from the subs in your vehicle. I would imagine something better is available today as I haven't messed around with the stuff for nearly 20 years.
If we're talking sound isolation material, then thick Rock Wools (used as in-wall insulation or as wood-framed panels in hi-fi home theatre rooms) and Sorbothane (used to acoustically/vibrationally isolate two objects, through a sorbothane gasket, feet, pads, etc)
Neither material is particularly ideal to place inside a computer case.
The most sure-fire method to totally remove the noise from a PC is to literally move into another room. You can connect the peripherals such as mouse, keyboard, monitors through extended cables running through the wall into the adjacent room's closet, for example.
I stopped even thinking about water cooling when the CPU ability trajectory crossed my needs line. In fact I no longer consider overclocking. A good Intel CPU now, stock, is almost *twice* as powerful as my high-wattage OC'd beast from 8 years ago. Even that rig rarely struggles now, and when there is a slowdown it is almost always due to the GPU or the disk I/O.
If I were building now I might OC by a few percent, and upgrade a bit from the stock air cooler, but that's it.
Speaking generally here, to the average enthusiast. Put your money in the GPU, the disk I/O, and lots of RAM. Pushing your CPU will bring no perceptible gains for the expense, increased heat, and reliability concerns. In particular, forget about water cooling.
It really depends on the application you're running. Generally, the CPU isn't taxed much, and you're right about that.
But in other cases, the CPU is taxed _a_lot_ and having a fat overclock can make a large difference. For example, right now I'm planning a dedicated streaming PC, complete with 3 general purpose capture cards (HDMI/Analog video per card). OBS can use Intel QuickSync, etc, but the entire point of having a dedicated streaming PC is to have a high quality streaming experience that offloads extra video capture work to a different PC. The best video quality comes from utilizing x264 to single-pass encode incoming raw video, and of course, this is software encoding so it's taxing on the CPU.
I can't honestly explain the outlier of the 6700 being significantly faster than a higher clocked 6700K, but ultimately that x264 single pass performance relies mostly in having high IPC first, and lots of cores second, which is why 3.5GHz 28 thread monsters sit lower on the list as compared to a 4.7GHz 8 thread 4790k.
Right now, I'd say the best possible dedicated streaming PC would have a highly overclocked (~4.8GHz) 6700k, which would likely allow the user to set up slower presets for a potentially higher quality stream, given a fixed bitrate upload speed (as in Twitch), etc.
So yeah, in some cases a fat overclock does help. It really comes down to whether the task is CPU/GPU/Storage starved. (Amdahl's law, etc.)
One thing I'd like to see mentioned in the review for a kit like this that I didn't see here (did I miss it?) is expandability. Can I add a vga cooler in the line and the pump/fans/radiator can handle it? Can I add two cards?
I'm not saying you couldn't do this, because obviously you can, but what's the impact to the coooing performance if you put a 150-200W GPU part in the line here.
Since this is the first cooling loop review they've done in forever they're hopefully looking for feedback on what they'd like to see in future reviews and that's what I'd like to see.
Someone looking at a kit like this would obviously, IMO, be looking at it as a starter kit to expand upon in the future. A review should address what impact that expansion could have on the cooling performance of this kit.
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saratoga4 - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
>copper block and a latheCopper block and mill. Lathe is the spinning one that works on pipes, mills are the drill type devices that cut blocks.
And yes, milling my first gpu cooling was pretty annoying. So much nicer these day :)
DanNeely - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
Having used open loop coolers for the better part of a decade, I'll second that the DDC pump is going to be the loudest part if running at full speed unless you go crazy with fans. (I really wish someone would design a more suitable pump from the ground up instead of just slapping a modified top on the stock model.) However while it's picky about it's operating voltage you can slow and quiet them using PWM control. My current loop has a CPU, Mobo Mosfets, GPU, and a 560 radiator. Using an 4yo Swiftech DDC pump (not sure exact model they've got several of them) I've found that PWMing it to about 70% drops the high pitched pump noise below the noise floor of my low speed fans while only raising core temps by about 1-2C.Oxford Guy - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link
The pump in the EK L 2.0 kits is pretty quiet when suspended.Andrew LB - Wednesday, February 8, 2017 - link
I'm surprised they didn't use a pump like the DDC-1T PWM which is a 10w version that does 420l/h and is pretty much silent. I have one in my PC and even with an XSPC Raystorm V3 CPU block, Aquacomputer Krygraphics GTX 780ti full block, XSPC ex360 and ex280 radiators, and quite a few 90' and 45' XSPC rotary fittings, my DDC-1T PWM has a flow rate of 0.91gpm according to my Aquacomputer Aquaero with high-flow meter.Aerodrifting - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
The part which the pump connects to the reservoir really concerns me. From the looks of it, It's just the barbs that come with DDC stock top (which we usually replace with custom ones to fit standard fittings plus better flow) go straight into the opening of the reservoir without any tightening measures. Are you sure that is not going to leak?BrokenCrayons - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
The benchmark results are pretty impressive, but hardly worth the risk of mixing liquid with electricity or the added cost over just using the manufactuerer certified heatsink and fan that comes in the box with the CPU. So the processor runs at 40 degrees instead of 70. That's utterly meaningless to me when the max temp for a chip is typically +90 degrees and certainly not worth any additional cost at all much less a cost that includes the problem of pumping fluids around a system that works perfectly well with circulating air.Death666Angel - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
It's a hobby. It can have some benefits, but it's a hobby first and foremost in my opinion. Yes, I could overclock my CPU and GPU some more while under water, it has a bit less noise and it can be more versatile. But modern aircooling is also pretty good, usually cheaper and not that much louder if you select good components. Though I will always spend a bit more to get a better cooler compared to the boxed offerings (headroom in the summer, dust buildup, better overclocking, quieter operations). But it depends on your setup and taste. :)BrokenCrayons - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
That I can understand. Everyone has something they waste time and money on just for fun, but I don't think there's a practical reason behind it. I leave my desktop computer with it's 95W 860K CPU sitting in the mud room (no AC...basically my front porch) and run it headlessly to stream games. It spent the summer in ambient temps of around 80-85 degrees streaming games via Steam and the entire time it was and still is on the pre-Wraith HSF that came in the box with the CPU.Sure, I thought about replacing the cooler with something non-OEM or even getting a Wraith second hand from ebay or something, but there's absolutely no reason to do so. I can't rationalize spending even a minimal amount of money on it and then going through the trouble of opening the case up to replace the HSF. I might clean the dust bunnies out next spring, but at this point any additional cooling would serve no practical purpose.
letmepicyou - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
There is a VERY practical purpose to water cooling which you're missing. If you've ever used a high end air cooler (and I have a cupboard full of them, up to the top shelf Thermalright Silver Arrow) then you know that they're HEAVY. This isn't a problem if your computer sits at your desk until cleaning time or your next upgrade cycle. I can promise you that having a huge cooler on your motherboard can be precarious if you tend to lug your PC around at all. You have to be pretty ginger with your movements.The reason I went to water cooling is now when I lug my PC around, I don't have to worry about component stresses. Given that I have a nice AIO loop on my CPU and run all SSDs, I could boot kick my tower and not worry about data loss or yanking the mounting post for my air cooler through the fiberglass of my motherboard.
BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
Actually, my argument is in favor of OEM-boxed coolers that ship in retail packaging with the CPU. Those have never been too heavy for the mounting mechanisms that support them. The situation of an overweight air cooler is a self-inflicted wound that wouldn't have required the proverbial medical attention of liquid cooling had the person in question never picked up the overweight air cooler knife to begin with.Death666Angel - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
That works for people hard of hearing, those willing to put up with abysmall thermals and/or loud noise or those like you who have enough space and willingness to put the source of the noise in another part of their dwelling.BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
That's a lot of exaggeration. Stock coolers are ear-splitting monsters that let the chip run at unsafe temperatures. There are literally billions of PCs that have been shipped with OEM coolers over the years and while a few designs have been fatally flawed (I'm looking at you ECS GREEN320 laptop with your whiny hair dryer blower on a 1GHz VIA C3 processor) the vast majority of them provide years of problem-free service by keeping the CPU within manufacturer specified temperature limits without causing undue end user stress due to poor acoustic design.Keep it in perspective. I'd happily agree that temperatures might be lower and the computer might be quieter with a bit of attention paid to cooling, but the way you're putting things seems overly dramatic.
HollyDOL - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
I moved to custom loop to get rid of "angry vacuum cleaner" (back in 8800GT days). My pump is sitting in a foam inside the case and radiator is external, passive and quite big. In combination with noise dampening case and semi-passive PSU it's silent at city night (I guess in significantly quieter environment you could hear a bit but not really much).galta - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
Liquid cooling is for people for want/need extreme performance, generating tons of heat in the process. Heatsinks that come out of the box cannot handle it.There is also the question of noise, for cooling an OCed system on air produces - generally - more noise than on liquid.
Those, however, do not seem to be circumstances that apply to you, so you better stay on air.
JoeyJoJo123 - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
I'd clarify the "generally" part as follows:If they're using an AIO, chances are the combined pump + fan noise is actually noisier than a dual stack tower heatsink. (2x 120mm or 140mm fan + pump noise VS 2x 120mm or 140mm fans and no pump).
If they've built a custom open loop, then chances are that they've over-engineered the solution (as the few who go this route have the cash to spend and are willing to go all the way) and are using a thick radiator, a large reservoir, a large but quiet pump, and fans that don't ever need to spin up to address increased heat on intensive tasks, and at this point, they might actually have a quieter solution.
galta - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
Lots of chances involved, it seems. In the end, what makes sense - generally - is to understand your problem and look for the best way to solve it.For some, air will do; for others, not.
Check Corsair's H110iGT review @ Guru3d: it is as quiet as the venerable Noctua NHD15, but 9C cooler when overclocking an i7 4790k. Oh, and it also significantly lighter than 1.32kg.
But then there is our friend BrokenCrayons, mixing bunnies with pancakes...
fanofanand - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
I thought his points were valid and reasonable, far from mixing bunnies with pancakes.BrokenCrayons - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
To steal a certain internet meme, "Overclocking in 2016 makes about as much sense as a bunny with a pancake on its head."Aerodrifting - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
What's the point of running X99 i7 if you don't overclock? So you can be content with stock 3.0 speed?BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
What's the poinnt of overclocking it? The home user's typical workloads don't benefit from overclocking and if they do, the increase in performance is marginal and not worth the effort. Sure there's showboating to friends and emotional self-gratification, but those aren't tangible rewards. If emotional satisfaction is what you gain from that sort of thing, then knock yourself out, but in my opinion, it's wasteful, childish, and silly.JoeyJoJo123 - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
>The home user's typical workloads don't benefit from overclockingTypical home users aren't spending at least a thousand dollars on a custom built PC, and investing in the enthusiast platform (x99) as opposed to the standard desktop platform (H170).
>the increase in performance is marginal and not worth the effort.
My 6600k went from 3.5GHz to 4.6GHz after an overclock and minor overvoltage to ensure system stability. I don't think that's at all marginal. Additionally, many boards are coming with EZ Overclock modes if you invest in a K-series CPU + Z170 chipset motherboard. You go into the BIOS and select their preset. I started with Gigabyte's G5 Gaming's 6600k @ 4.4GHz preset and changed the multiplier from 44 to 46 and the core voltage up by +50mV. ASUS boards have a dynamic overclock function that goes through a series of reboots to find your processor's best overclock, which can change from chip to chip. It's nowhere near as hard as you make it out to be and a 31% increase in peak performance for the same money spent isn't as inconsequential as you make it out to be.
>Sure there's showboating to friends and emotional self-gratification, but those aren't tangible rewards.
Rewards such as going from 90 FPS min, and 130 FPS average in a game on a 144hz Freesync monitor to a 110 FPS min and 155 FPS average is an actual tangible benefit to me. In fact, that's indicative of the extra performance I got, without having to lower a single graphical setting to achieve.
>in my opinion, it's wasteful, childish, and silly.
In my opinion, it's wasteful, childish, and silly to try to force your opinion that overclocking is against your religion on an internet site full of enthusiast PC users. You're not an enthusiast PC user that likes to overclock? Fine by me. I don't go around saying that people should always buy overclockable K-series CPUs rather than settling on a basic i5 or i3, as everyone has different use-cases. But I certainly don't really care to hear from morons who say my real world gains from overclocking a $200 processor are wasteful, childish, or silly.
Just FYI, that's the pay I get from a half-day of work. Why the hell do you care if I overclock some sand made into circuits? Why do you think you have any say in how other people spend their money?
BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
<...aren't spending at least a thousand dollars...>Typical home users really do drop over 1K on their computers. It's a lot more common than you might think. I'm surprised you'd open this post with a claim about costs and then make a counter-point using a diametrically opposed perspective at the end of it.
<...went from 3.5GHz to 4.6GHz...>
The numeric value of the overclock isn't the focal point of that argument. There are a lot of other factors that contribute to a computer's capabilities. Your word processor and e-mail fetching won't dramatically change due to your efforts. Games, though entertainment and not particularly important, won't see benefits either even with very high end graphics cards as AT's recent benchmarks analyzing CPU performance have previously proven. So yes, I still feel it's not consequential and certainly not worth the effort.
<...going from 90 FPS min, and 130 FPS...>
I highly doubt there's a situation in which a framerate increase of the numbers you're expressing reasonably results solely from overclocking a CPU in the scenario you're describing.
<...don't really care to hear from morons who say...>
I'm not forcing my opinion on anyone. No one is being chained to their chair and made to read, think about, or respond to my comments. If my comments encourage the occasional person to think about computing and put it into a different perspective, then I'm happy to have done so. If that requires they go through a little discomfort during that self-analysis wherein they redirect their anguish at me in the form of name-calling, then so be it. However, that portion of your post does support my comment about how childish these sorts of things become and the sorts of people attracted to such ideas. I imagine you weren't setting out to support that portion of my argument, but I'd be remiss were I not to point it out.
<...the pay I get from a half-day of work...>
Cleverly using a response to hint at your personal wealth. Hmm...interesting.
kn00tcn - Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - link
you highly doubt there's an fps situation!? what's your problem, crysis1 for example is known to top out around 80fps on all modern gfx cards due to cpu limits that only a cpu overclock can increaseall game benchmarks that have an amd cpu against an intel cpu clearly show a drop in fps (if not average then it's the minimum) on the same gfx card
all the people talking of 60hz or 'a 1070 is overkill for 1080p' completely ignore 120+
all the singlethreaded software alone is being gimped on the more expensive platforms since those cpus are lower blocked than the regular consumer ones, so overclocking is the only way to have more cores AND stay at 4ghz
fanofanand - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
Other than the minor insults and bragging about your income, this was an excellent rebuttal. I would like to see more of this type of debate/discussion. :)kn00tcn - Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - link
winningalso one key thing about E series, they are usually clocked much lower, meaning single thread performance drops, affecting tons of use cases
Death666Angel - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
"but in my opinion, it's wasteful, childish, and silly."And there you lost all credibility in this discussion.
BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
<And there you lost all credibility in this discussion.>Why would anyone worry about establishing credibility in a comments section under an article about a computer water cooling system? Of all the things in life there are to worry about, that seems pretty insignificant. It's a bit like worrying about what your friends think of the color of crayon you used on the birthday card you made for your parent in elementary school art class. :)
Andrew LB - Wednesday, February 8, 2017 - link
I have a roughly 30% overclock on my graphics card that is water cooled and it results in an FPS gain from 35-40 to a nice solid 60fps locked. Interesting how the moment someone makes a point which refutes your claims, out comes the condescending attitude and insults. The sign of someone who lost the argument.Samus - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
Using a dielectric liquid helps mitigate risk of a leak, as does occasional maintenance. Just like a car, and speaking from experience, a liquid cooler leak is generally slow and can be caught before damage is done. The only time I've had a leak was after getting back from a LAN party where my case was being transported and the next morning I noticed my carpet was wet (the system had been on all night)One of the fittings was just a little lose and needed to be tightened. I lost about 60ml of coolant and it trickled over my videocard and motherboard to the bottom of my case. Since I use an inert coolant and wetter water as a deox no damage was done.
Achaios - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
Ι agree with BrokenCrayons. Not to mention that squeezing more performance out of CPU's above a certain point easily achievable by Air Coolers is meaningless after 2011 and the introduction of the i5-2500k.Only component worth of liquid cooling is the GPU IMO.
BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
Thats sort of the point I'm getting at here. CPU performance has become a lot less relevant in recent years. Sandy Bridge's realease is a pretty good place to draw a line in the sand about when that sort of thing happened. I'd say perhaps a little earlier than that, but the target of acceptable CPU performace is still moving along slowly, but hardly keeping up with the release of new generations these days which in turn devalues the meaningfulness of overclocking and therefore the usefulness of creative cooling methods.GPUs are another story, of course. Higher screen resolutions and maybe VR depending on whether or not it survives the coming couple of years will continue to drive GPU demand and maybe make it worth the effort to do something unusual with a video card to wring a little more out of it.
Batmeat - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
This setup would be easy to cut the noise by simply swapping out the fans, changing the mounting location of your pump and resevoir, and finally adding some dynamat around the pump and mount site.Dynamat was used back in the day by car stereo enthusiasts to deaden vibration from the subs in your vehicle. I would imagine something better is available today as I haven't messed around with the stuff for nearly 20 years.
JoeyJoJo123 - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
If we're talking sound isolation material, then thick Rock Wools (used as in-wall insulation or as wood-framed panels in hi-fi home theatre rooms) and Sorbothane (used to acoustically/vibrationally isolate two objects, through a sorbothane gasket, feet, pads, etc)Neither material is particularly ideal to place inside a computer case.
The most sure-fire method to totally remove the noise from a PC is to literally move into another room. You can connect the peripherals such as mouse, keyboard, monitors through extended cables running through the wall into the adjacent room's closet, for example.
Arbie - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
I stopped even thinking about water cooling when the CPU ability trajectory crossed my needs line. In fact I no longer consider overclocking. A good Intel CPU now, stock, is almost *twice* as powerful as my high-wattage OC'd beast from 8 years ago. Even that rig rarely struggles now, and when there is a slowdown it is almost always due to the GPU or the disk I/O.If I were building now I might OC by a few percent, and upgrade a bit from the stock air cooler, but that's it.
Speaking generally here, to the average enthusiast. Put your money in the GPU, the disk I/O, and lots of RAM. Pushing your CPU will bring no perceptible gains for the expense, increased heat, and reliability concerns. In particular, forget about water cooling.
JoeyJoJo123 - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
It really depends on the application you're running. Generally, the CPU isn't taxed much, and you're right about that.But in other cases, the CPU is taxed _a_lot_ and having a fat overclock can make a large difference. For example, right now I'm planning a dedicated streaming PC, complete with 3 general purpose capture cards (HDMI/Analog video per card). OBS can use Intel QuickSync, etc, but the entire point of having a dedicated streaming PC is to have a high quality streaming experience that offloads extra video capture work to a different PC. The best video quality comes from utilizing x264 to single-pass encode incoming raw video, and of course, this is software encoding so it's taxing on the CPU.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/53
I can't honestly explain the outlier of the 6700 being significantly faster than a higher clocked 6700K, but ultimately that x264 single pass performance relies mostly in having high IPC first, and lots of cores second, which is why 3.5GHz 28 thread monsters sit lower on the list as compared to a 4.7GHz 8 thread 4790k.
Right now, I'd say the best possible dedicated streaming PC would have a highly overclocked (~4.8GHz) 6700k, which would likely allow the user to set up slower presets for a potentially higher quality stream, given a fixed bitrate upload speed (as in Twitch), etc.
So yeah, in some cases a fat overclock does help. It really comes down to whether the task is CPU/GPU/Storage starved. (Amdahl's law, etc.)
bearxor - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
One thing I'd like to see mentioned in the review for a kit like this that I didn't see here (did I miss it?) is expandability. Can I add a vga cooler in the line and the pump/fans/radiator can handle it? Can I add two cards?qasdfdsaq - Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - link
Yes, and yes. That's basically the point of an open-loop system to begin with.(Incidentally I have the same kit and I bought it primarily to cool my ridiculous heating plant of a GPU)
bearxor - Saturday, October 29, 2016 - link
I'm not saying you couldn't do this, because obviously you can, but what's the impact to the coooing performance if you put a 150-200W GPU part in the line here.Since this is the first cooling loop review they've done in forever they're hopefully looking for feedback on what they'd like to see in future reviews and that's what I'd like to see.
Someone looking at a kit like this would obviously, IMO, be looking at it as a starter kit to expand upon in the future. A review should address what impact that expansion could have on the cooling performance of this kit.
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