Water cooled gaming PC...is it worth the risk?

Go with automotive, at least motor bike standard of cooling if you want it t to run risk to a minimal level. All it takes is one lose screw. Cover the board In a good quality epoxy Just in case, it is what most of a circuit board is made with, helps reduce any direct water damage. The heat sink areas do require special care as as epoxy's heat transfer ain't good. Proceed with caution. Mixing in some fine grain silicon carbide is a starting point if I was going to invest in it.

How powerful of a computer do you need? My build is around 600 and I dont need it water cooled. But im also not playing 4k games or VR games. SO it really depends on what your looking for.



SOunds to me like your going way to big to fast. Start small and build up. Great things about computers is you can always upgrade them later.

a reply to: CX

Honestly I don't think it's worth it....Though I have seen some really cool liquid cooled machines. There's some really cool do it yourself vids on YT...Personally I'm not a fan of water cooled because i see it as just something else that could go wrong.

a reply to: CX

Pre-built aka closed loop water cooling is perfectly safe. The question is whether it is worth the markup. For me it isn't. For an enthusiast it might be.

It all depends upon what you want to do. Air cooling should be enough.

If you're doing some heavy duty gaming and are overclocking your cards then some liquid cooling might be a good idea. It's mostly safe and I think they sell inert liquids you can use to not ruin your pc in case of a leak.

Of course you can always get a portable AC and port that into your case as well.

Or do like this guy.



Or maybe you have an extra fridge.

Thanks for all the replies, much appreciated.

Whilst it's a first gaming pc for me, I also dont want to buy something that needs upgrading soon.....so I'd rather pay out a bit now if I can.

CX.

most watercoolers are after noise reduction thease days the overclocking is a pluse i do it to move the heatload outside my house and a hoby ... but if you want more power alone its normaly the smallest bank for your buck

dont buy a aio cooler they break and leak alot for around 100 usd when for 200 usd you can get a small kit and know it wont leak

There are a few considerations for water cooling.

Price wise, the newest all in ones are pretty comparable to the top air coolers, so its more of a matter of preference, and perhaps most importantly, environment.

The risk really isn't as high as many seem to believe. But, the reality is that it is fluid. By electronics.

The common practice is to run the water loop for a day or so on its own. For custom loops, once you get hands on with a quality compression fitting.. you probably wont be nearly as concerned with leaks. And, its also good to remember that electronic circuits getting wet is no issue whatsoever, its wet circuits being on that's the problem.

You can look at the all in ones as an entry point, but they will usually only work for a single socket, can't usually be refilled, and are more than a little difficult to expand in the future.

The next step is to look at kits like this or thisone. They eliminate a lot of the "cons" of an all in one, but still can benefit from upgrades like replacing the water block and fans.

The last option is building a full custom loop from the ground up, but I wouldn't necessarily suggest it as a starting point to learn. You can do it, of course, but to build comfort levels its usually best to work towards it. In reality, the kit option pretty much is a custom loop.

A water cooled system definitely performs better, is generally quieter (still uses fans, after all), and to some it just looks cool. But, it isn't for everyone, and most wont really see the full benefits of it beyond a quality air cooler.

a reply to: CX

Nah, just get a good PC from the get-go.

No heat problem & fast without an overclock.

Honestly, there are truly amazing CPU & GPU combo's which outperform anything that existed a year ago.

And all that extra expense for water cooling gives diminishing returns.

But if you have money to burn, sealed water cooling units are safe, but I have seen some where their effectiveness diminishes over time.

Also, a custom built water cooled rig looks great and has value as artistic expression. Sure it has to be maintained and if you screw up it can kill your PC, but if you do things with great care, use very pure water, quality coolant additives, good quality components and take ages testing everything before 'going live', there's little risk.

you should look into passive cooling. once you've had a silent pc for awhile anything else seems like an old Victorian contraption.

I personally have an air cooled rig with the exception of the CPU which has an AIO hydro unit on it and the temperatures are all fine. It's overclocked pretty much as far as it will go and it idles at 25c then hits around 60c under heavy load which I don't think is bad at all considering the AIO was only around £100. With the air flow I have the GPU and HDD's idle at around 30c and the system is reasonably quiet too.

My next build will have a complete custom water loop but it's literally for the looks and nothing more, as long as you have decent air flow going through your case then the temperatures will be fine, it's all down to how much you want to invest in how the rig looks. I'd highly recommend going air with an AIO for CPU for your first build, you'll get the performance and good temps without having to shell out £100's more on water cooling parts.

The other suggestion I'd make is to be sure to get an aftermarket GPU. The stock edition cards run really really hot, my asus 980ti has never gone above 65c under load while my mates stock 980ti runs at almost 70c idle and then hits the high 80's when he runs a game on it

originally posted by: Gothmog

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
I say go for the liquid nitrogen cooling option.

Then you're gaming like a boss.

You can overclock to like 60,000% and lightning bolts of coolness will shoot off your S# then.

Cry-cooling needs to be left up to experts. Above my pro status.

I’ve done dry ice and phase change never bit the bullet and bought a dewar for LN2 only killed one mono and cpu out of many and that was my bad I let it prechill too much and the VRMs iced over and I was running a AMD64x24800 at a 50% of IIRC 3.6ghz had the world record for about a week until an ES chip under LN2 and a modded mobo overtook me I was using a stock DFI LANparty mobo. Anywho when those VRMs started working hard it started to melt and got to where I didn’t have dielectric grease and killed the faithful old board and cpu but it was a good point to call it quits on pushing it quite so far.

As far as water cooling get a good AIO and just keep an eye on it pull the cover if it’s not plexi sides and use it as an excuse to dust and give the internals a visual once over. I have a custom loop and the only problem I had was with some rotary fittings starting to leak but I use a red fluid and my computer sits on my desk window facing me so I was able to shut it down clean off the coolant and dry everything thoroughly and fix my leak and it’s back going strong 24/7 if you do a custom loop do yourself a favor and get good fittings.

a reply to: grey580

I’ve done both but he’s doing it wrong unless that thing has an SSD the hard drive needs to be sitting on top of the fridge! Amatures :-p

a reply to: Rikku

My rig is nearly passively cooled via a custom loop for the cpu and gpu and a gigantic 200x400x80mm rad and the fans only come on when the loop water temp reaches a set threshold so up to 3/4s full load the fans aren’t even spinning and the 200s whisper.

The fun in the late 90's trying this stuff out was fun when you didn't have all the prebuilt stuff you had today and had to basically risk it but coming from a mainframe background using water cooling you got to know how things worked and also working at a uni I got access to a lot of CNC machinery and with the usual bribes of beer and the latest copy of whatever you could pretty much get anything done.

The general view is that the performance gain is not that much in real terms but looks good and if you fancy it then go for it.

a reply to: Maxatoria

Performance gains are strongly linked to environment.

Really, most wont even mention their ambient temps, much less talk about "deltas."

Concepts like passive cooling essentially rely on controlling the delta through the surrounding environment.

Liquid cooling really comes into its own with either high ambient temps (though the radiator can still saturate), or high core temps (as a result of OC). In a typical application, performance gain wont be much in real terms, but that demographic probably doesn't even look at system temps to begin with.

Things certainly used to be a lot more finicky, across the board. I, for one, am more than happy to leave that behind! Thank the gods its not that way anymore, at least from the perspective of someone who builds systems for other folks.

Solely depends on what you are going to do. Are you gaming 4k with a ridiculous fps? Multiple graphics cards? Just a single? Your hardware will determine the sort of cooling your need. If your first gaming rig, I recommend just doing air cooling, single graphics card, 2k not 4k, it still looks great and will run great.

If you can pick your cooling, Noctua is great. I have used it in my last two builds. Large (so get a large case), but works great. And water cooling is safe enough now, but if you are not familiar with changing wattage in your bios for OC, don't. Use the high performance in a board like Asus, and just roll with that. Will be fine. : )

a reply to: BigDave-AR

You have a 16"x8"x3.5" radiator on your computer???

Did I read that correctly?

a reply to: CX

I recently bought an Alienware PC that is liquid cooled and am more than happy with it now.
There is not a game it won't run.

The only advice I have though if you go with a prebuilt PC,
get the biggest power supply you can with it,
especially if Alienware.

Mine would reboot itself when I first got it, and after doing some deep research I found that with Alienware PCs,
if you don't get the larger power supply,
it will reboot due to not enough power. The only solution I found to fix my problem was to turn off the LED lights so I don't draw as much power.

Works like a charm now though.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: BigDave-AR

You have a 16"x8"x3.5" radiator on your computer???

Did I read that correctly?

It’s more like 2.5” deep but otherwise yessir I’m one of those “overkill is underrated” types!