Liquid Cooling 101 - Needs Updating

bomberboysk

Active Member
it would help to include nickle in your comparison charts
Heatsinks arent nickel plated for its effeciency in transferring heat, but more for the excellent base quality than can be achieved with a nickel electroplated finish, ensuring a better contact area with the cpu heatspreader. Another reason is that it just looks sweet when its got a dark and shiny nickel finish.
 

Geoff

VIP Member
I accept with information: Multiple components within a computer generate excessive amounts of thermal energy, which must be removed to prevent damage. Items such as processor, video card's GPU/RAM, motherboard's chipset, memory, or hard drive are all generally dependent on air cooling mechanisms to remove this heat.
The processor and video card are two devices which produce the most heat, and those are taken care of by the water cooling. The rest are still cooled from the case intake/exhaust fans.
 
Maybe it would be a good idea to advise people not to buy water cooling kits since they generally really, really suck?

I wouldn't say this is a guide at all, actually.

This should be teaching the people how to build a water cooling system/kit themselves, i.e: Rad, pump, block, res, coolant, tubing, barbs and fans, not just "Buy a kit".
 

Stoic Sentinel

New Member
Maybe it would be a good idea to advise people not to buy water cooling kits since they generally really, really suck?

I wouldn't say this is a guide at all, actually.

This should be teaching the people how to build a water cooling system/kit themselves, i.e: Rad, pump, block, res, coolant, tubing, barbs and fans, not just "Buy a kit".

Well, whenever anyone says they're going to "buy a kit," we object anyways, and most people don't read stickies anyways... sadly.

I would say bomberboysk is the best on the forum with watercooling. But there might be others that just don't pipe up!
 

funkysnair

VIP Member
Maybe it would be a good idea to advise people not to buy water cooling kits since they generally really, really suck?

I wouldn't say this is a guide at all, actually.

This should be teaching the people how to build a water cooling system/kit themselves, i.e: Rad, pump, block, res, coolant, tubing, barbs and fans, not just "Buy a kit".

not all kits are bad, my opinion is that the self contained ones suck-you know the ones with one single radiator trying to cool a cpu?

there are some kits out there by people like swiftech who make kits that are not self contained but contain all the parts seperate for you to build yourself

so its not a matter of "kits are crap" it depends on the kit itself....

thermaltake have kits like swiftech where you have to build them yourself but there pump is week and so is the acrylic on the cpu block and there radiators are poorly made!

if you buy a kit you need to do alot of research and make sure it has the capabilitys to cool your cpu and the quality to last!
 

meticadpa

New Member
not all kits are bad, my opinion is that the self contained ones suck-you know the ones with one single radiator trying to cool a cpu?

there are some kits out there by people like swiftech who make kits that are not self contained but contain all the parts seperate for you to build yourself

so its not a matter of "kits are crap" it depends on the kit itself....

thermaltake have kits like swiftech where you have to build them yourself but there pump is week and so is the acrylic on the cpu block and there radiators are poorly made!

if you buy a kit you need to do alot of research and make sure it has the capabilitys to cool your cpu and the quality to last!

Swiftech's kits are generally pretty good as they use the components from their water cooling line (Eg: MCP655 pump, MCR 220 radiator) for the most part, and their stuff is of some of the highest quality. (Well, pumps and CPU blocks are; radiators aren't so amazing, but they're decent enough.)

Thermaltake/Thermalfail/Thermalbreak/Thermalleak on the other hand... No. Their stuff is horrible. Not just is it horrible to look at, but performance leaves a lot to be desired. Oh, and did I mention that they're probably the least reliable kits you can possibly buy?

All the components in their kits are of sub-par quality. When you combine multiple sub-par items together... you get chaos.
 

Mr.Corruption

New Member
Swiftech's kits are generally pretty good as they use the components from their water cooling line (Eg: MCP655 pump, MCR 220 radiator) for the most part, and their stuff is of some of the highest quality. (Well, pumps and CPU blocks are; radiators aren't so amazing, but they're decent enough.)

Thermaltake/Thermalfail/Thermalbreak/Thermalleak on the other hand... No. Their stuff is horrible. Not just is it horrible to look at, but performance leaves a lot to be desired. Oh, and did I mention that they're probably the least reliable kits you can possibly buy?

All the components in their kits are of sub-par quality. When you combine multiple sub-par items together... you get chaos.

Being an ex-owner of a thermaltake kit, I concur. Not only was the cooling performance TERRIBLE but the connections were hellish to set up and it also leaked. Thankfully the leak happened while I was testing it outside of my system.
 

bomberboysk

Active Member
Swiftech's kits are generally pretty good as they use the components from their water cooling line (Eg: MCP655 pump, MCR 220 radiator) for the most part, and their stuff is of some of the highest quality. (Well, pumps and CPU blocks are; radiators aren't so amazing, but they're decent enough.)

Thermaltake/Thermalfail/Thermalbreak/Thermalleak on the other hand... No. Their stuff is horrible. Not just is it horrible to look at, but performance leaves a lot to be desired. Oh, and did I mention that they're probably the least reliable kits you can possibly buy?

All the components in their kits are of sub-par quality. When you combine multiple sub-par items together... you get chaos.

Being an ex-owner of a thermaltake kit, I concur. Not only was the cooling performance TERRIBLE but the connections were hellish to set up and it also leaked. Thankfully the leak happened while I was testing it outside of my system.

Agree with the thermaltake, however swiftech kits i prefer to stay away from. The MCR line of rads are somewhat mediocre when it comes to flow loss and heat dissipation, the tubing is generally cheap, the barbs are terrible, the pumps are fine(however i prefer the ddc over the d5), and the waterblocks are fine, plus anymore more and more kits have been including those cheap plastic hose "clamps".
 

meticadpa

New Member
Agree with the thermaltake, however swiftech kits i prefer to stay away from. The MCR line of rads are somewhat mediocre when it comes to flow loss and heat dissipation, the tubing is generally cheap, the barbs are terrible, the pumps are fine(however i prefer the ddc over the d5), and the waterblocks are fine, plus anymore more and more kits have been including those cheap plastic hose "clamps".

Swiftech's blocks are great. :)

Their radiators aren't amazing, though, but at least they are cheap.

I've not had experience with their barbs though, I use Fatboys.

If I was going to buy a pre-built kit, it'd probably be a Swiftech kit if I couldn't order a Petras kit.
 

bomberboysk

Active Member
Swiftech's blocks are great. :)

Their radiators aren't amazing, though, but at least they are cheap.

I've not had experience with their barbs though, I use Fatboys.

If I was going to buy a pre-built kit, it'd probably be a Swiftech kit if I couldn't order a Petras kit.

Yeah, i use fatboys in my loop as well. The barbs they include are standard "hi-flow" barbs, which are basically taking a standard g1/4 barb from the hardware store, chrome plating it, and adding an oring. Even for the price of the swiftech rads being "cheap", even cheaper are the XSPC radiators RS line, which offer much better flow rate than the MCRXXX line and also have higher heat dissipation capabilities than the swiftech radiators. And yeah, the swiftech blocks are great for the price(especially something like the XT) but some are pretty mediocre(eg- apogee drive which is basically a ddc with a copper plate attached as a "waterblock".

Quite easily i could sum it up by saying swiftechs are ok, but making a thread and asking for help with a parts list is the best way to do it if you are new to water.

http://blog.petrastech.com/index.php?itemid=7 just found a video that shows the "non conductive" fluids are complete bs :D

Well, some actually are non conductive and will stay non conductive(feser one i think it is, its based on a really thin oil) because just like oil submersion cooling it wont conduct, however many of the coolants such as the one in that video are just water with anticorrosive additives and dye added. I wish i still knew what one they were using but since that was posted its now a different blog.
 
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just a noob

Well-Known Member
Yeah, i use fatboys in my loop as well. The barbs they include are standard "hi-flow" barbs, which are basically taking a standard g1/4 barb from the hardware store, chrome plating it, and adding an oring. Even for the price of the swiftech rads being "cheap", even cheaper are the XSPC radiators RS line, which offer much better flow rate than the MCRXXX line and also have higher heat dissipation capabilities than the swiftech radiators. And yeah, the swiftech blocks are great for the price(especially something like the XT) but some are pretty mediocre(eg- apogee drive which is basically a ddc with a copper plate attached as a "waterblock".

Quite easily i could sum it up by saying swiftechs are ok, but making a thread and asking for help with a parts list is the best way to do it if you are new to water.



Well, some actually are non conductive and will stay non conductive(feser one i think it is, its based on a really thin oil) because just like oil submersion cooling it wont conduct, however many of the coolants such as the one in that video are just water with anticorrosive additives and dye added. I wish i still knew what one they were using but since that was posted its now a different blog.

i doubt that it's oil based as it contains ethylene glycol
 

funkysnair

VIP Member
i have used that primochill ice stuff and it was terrible, the gunk dam it.... had to pull my loop apart to get all the gunk out!!
 

TheCompFailure

New Member
This was a very good thread [-0MEGA-]. I learned a lot of information i never new about before. This got me really interested in watercooling. "Thanks a lot"
 
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