Builting a Desktop /w liquid water cool system?

Hello, I'm trying to built a computer and I need help.. What would be some suggested information as to what I should focus and look at more.. It's going to be a gaming computer and I like to be able to leave my computer on 24/7 with torrents on, 1 game, web browsers, music, chat software, mirc... so pretty much leave it on 24/7 with an average of 5 processes on which mainly is the game taking up most memory.. I would like for PC to make minimum sound making it quiet as possible and the computer to be superb.. I would like some suggestions and/or a good setup for the best bang for my bucks..

Hope the limit doesn't go over $1500.. This does not mean I wish to spend all of it to get better specs but its fine as long as its worth it.

Thanks.. I would also need a lot more info on this liquid water cooling system for PC because I heard that is the best way to keep your computer cool and quiet... So keep in mind, a nice case to allow customizations throughout the years would also be helpful
Oh, and if I can afford a monitor within my budget, that would be awesome! ty

I wouldn't recommend a water cooling system unless you really want to spend a lot of time and effort tweaking all components of the system.

Even then, water cooling isn't necessary unless you plan on overclocking, nor would it be necessarily quieter. You're replacing the sound of a few fans with the sound of a water pump and the fan on the radiator.

What do you mean by "tweaking all components of the system."?

Isn't overclocking so much better? Oh, so what are the benefits of water cooling? I thought it was better, more expensive but overall cooling vents better and the sound is less noisy...

Only reason to watercool is if you are an extreem overclocker .... You can still OC some (if you feel you need to) on air just not as much as you can with water cooling.

IMO OC is so overrated and decreases the lifespan of your pc and uses more electricity and is noisier.

Just get a decent cpu and you'll be fine. Put the water cooling money towards a better GPU/CPU or more RAM or bigger SSD
Less maintenance, longer life lower operating costs.

OC is for stat geeks. In real life does little.

Quote from boltman2007 : Only reason to watercool is if you are an extreem overclocker .... You can still OC some (if you feel you need to) on air just not as much as you can with water cooling. IMO OC is so overrated and decreases the lifespan of your pc and uses more electricity and is noisier. Just get a decent cpu and you'll be fine. Put the water cooling money towards a better GPU/CPU or more RAM or bigger SSD Less maintenance, longer life lower operating costs. OC is for stat geeks. In real life does little.

Overclocking increased the speed at which I can encode video and render 3D models.

It only uses a little more electricity when I do hardware intensive processes, such as encoding video, rendering, etc. At idle, it uses the same amount of electricity.

I also use the Cooler Master 212+ heatsink with 2 120mm fans. It's pretty darn quiet.

As to lifespan, I'm willing to bet most other components of your computer will die out before your processor.

Quote from nyczalex : What do you mean by "tweaking all components of the system."? Isn't overclocking so much better? Oh, so what are the benefits of water cooling? I thought it was better, more expensive but overall cooling vents better and the sound is less noisy...

There are several components to a water cooling system, including all the tubing, the water block (heatsink attached to the processor), the radiator, the pump and the reservoir. You have to get the components to work together well, adjust the speed of pumping, bleed the air out of the system, mount the water cooling system to your case, somehow, make sure all leaks are accounted for, etc.

Water cooling is a hassle. and as mentioned above, only worthwhile if you plan on doing major overclocking. It's not necessarily less quiet. It still requires a fan to blow air through the intercooler and the pump will also make noise. Water cooling was definitely less noisy than the horribly noisy 60mm fans of yore (back in the Athlon Thunderbird days and early Pentium 4 days), but considering the vast majority of quality heatsinks come with 120mm fans, water cooling probably won't be appreciably quieter.

There are plenty of people doing big overclocks on air. The advantage that a regular water system has when you're overclocking is that under load, an air cooler will have to spin faster and get louder to handle the increased temperatures. A water cooler won't get much (if any) louder as load increases.

Personally, there are only a couple instances where I would use water cooling:
1) I got a slickdeal on a closed loop CPU water cooler like the Corsair H60.
2) I wanted to use some sort of chiller to get colder than ambient cooling.

It's possible to do a silent (or near silent) water build, but you'd need water blocks for the CPU, GPU and motherboard and a big external radiator. Even then, you'd still need to pick your PSU, RAM and hard drives (probably using only SSDs) very carefully if you wanted to run with no case fans.

You can still build a very quiet air cooled computer, you just need to pick a good case with large, high quality fans and preferably rubber standoffs for the HDDs and PSU and a good aftermarket CPU cooler. Hardest part will probably be finding a powerful, quiet GPU.


OP: Have you considered splitting this up into two separate builds? It's pretty easy to build a quiet, inexpensive, low power system that could run 24/7. Then you could spec your main machine without worrying about noise or power usage.

Quote from nyczalex : What do you mean by "tweaking all components of the system."? Isn't overclocking so much better? Oh, so what are the benefits of water cooling? I thought it was better, more expensive but overall cooling vents better and the sound is less noisy...

Yes OC is so much better, or so they said.

Seriously why most people always think their CPUs need OCing in order to perform day-to-day tasks? Meanwhile few people know how to troubleshoot speed bottleneck when things are not fast?

I don't know what advantages water cooling brings, I do know matters change sizes under different temperature(expanding and shrinking). Putting water circulation in an enclosed environment surrounded by electronics means even with the tiniest leak, it's sudden death for one or more components of your $1500 investment.

Using a power horse and leaving it on 24/7 for torrenting doesn't make much sense to me either except during the winter times when you need more heat. Gaming is the only task I can see here that requires 200W or more power while all other tasks only need 60W or less. Just saying.

If you're going to overclock, try to keep voltage bumps to a minimum. Those are what kills components, not how fast it switches. Personally, I always undervolt. Before CPUs became power efficient, I used to save ~40% of the CPU's power with a ~5% performance drop, which was a huge deal with CPUs eating up 100-150W+. Even now I can shave off 10-15% at max load.

I wouldn't go for liquid cooling anymore. There's too many things that can go wrong there and there's not that much of a benefit over air cooling. It's much better (although maybe not easier) to get a case with good airflow and figure out how to run wires and drives and placement and throughput of fans and of course a good HSF. The more power efficient the other devices you're adding are, the better the OC too (lower temps).

For bang for your buck and silence too, invest in a good case, invest in a quiet efficient power supply, invest in large quiet fans, and invest in an SSD drive as your OS drive.

http://silentpcreview.com/ has some good information if you don't mind digging around.

Thanks for the reply guys.. So what I'm getting is that water cooling is for OC to the extreme which is highly unnecessary for gaming and everything i listed but more needed for video editing and such.. How much do you gamers overclock it to? OC users also need a good power supply

What I should be looking now is for a good case as a in spacey one? What about power supply? Do I look at the volts

As for having 2 separate builds, do you mean two pc's? One without watercool and one with it? I don't think I have space for 2 computers right now

Quote from nyczalex : What I should be looking now is for a good case as a in spacey one? What about power supply? Do I look at the volts

Case: 19", front to back.

All PC power supplies put out the same volts because they're required to, for compatibility with the computer hardware. Get a power supply that's highly recommended by expert reviews, such as those at HardOCP, SilentPCreview, JonnyGuru, XbitLabs, ExtremeOverclocking, and TomsHardware. AnandTech is not included because they don't seem to have enough technical know-how for testing PSUs.

Do NOT try to water cool a power supply -- high voltage inside makes it very risky. Also do NOT buy a factory water cooled power supply that isn't UL or CSA certification in its water cooled form. -- some companies take UL or CSA certified air cooled PSUs and modify them for water cooling, which voids the UL or CSA certification and probably makes them a lot more hazardous as well.

I'm hesitant about water cooling because water and electricity can be a dangerous mix, and somteimes the result is no quieter than direct air cooling.

Quote from boltman2007 : OC is for stat geeks. In real life does little.

For those that do it, it's more of a hobby than anything. It's no different than people who soup up their cars and never take them to the track.

So yeah, I'm trying to build my own computer.. Hope I don't go over $1500 with room to upgrade though out the years. Putting it together shouldn't be a problem at all, I will get someone to do it for me and I will watch and learn. Hoping this PC can last 4-5 years ...

CPU CHIPSET - i5 LGA 1155 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6819115072

MOTHERBOARD - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6813157271

MEMORY RAM - 2x http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...am&x=0&y=0

VIDEO CARD - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6814130604

POWER SUPPLY - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6817139005

HARD DRIVE - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6822136533

FAN - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6835608018

MONITOR - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6824236052

CASE - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6811129021 or http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6811147153

What other parts do I need? SSD? what is that? Is that like a new alternative to an hard drive?

I have some questions:
what is SLI and do I need it? I'm a hardcore gamer with a budget.
what do i need and how to do overclocking?
what and how many fans would i be looking for?

Please give me any info you can to help.. Are my parts bad choice? Is it not worth it? Any better recommendations? etc... thanks alot.. sorry if i am not too well knowledged.. I am in no rush of building this PC... Probably search around and learn more info and will built it in another 1-2 months.. so I will also be on the lookout for some Super slick deals that doesn't even make me have to think twice.

Quote from nyczalex : Thanks for the reply guys.. So what I'm getting is that water cooling is for OC to the extreme which is highly unnecessary for gaming and everything i listed but more needed for video editing and such.. How much do you gamers overclock it to? OC users also need a good power supply What I should be looking now is for a good case as a in spacey one? What about power supply? Do I look at the volts As for having 2 separate builds, do you mean two pc's? One without watercool and one with it? I don't think I have space for 2 computers right now

Actually video editors that are serious don't overclock. They have really long render times, 5-6 hours would be a minimum for them, days are not uncommon. Overclocking on that long of render times leads to lots of instability. They can't afford to have a system crash 3/4 the way through a 3 day render or burn up chips. Most buy prebuilt systems from big OEMS to get this stability. This does not mean a home built system isnt stable in stock form, most vidoe editors just buy.

Quote from nyczalex : So yeah, I'm trying to build my own computer.. Hope I don't go over $1500 with room to upgrade though out the years. Putting it together shouldn't be a problem at all, I will get someone to do it for me and I will watch and learn. Hoping this PC can last 4-5 years ... CPU CHIPSET - i5 LGA 1155 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6819115072 MOTHERBOARD - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6813157271 MEMORY RAM - 2x http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...am&x=0&y=0 VIDEO CARD - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6814130604 POWER SUPPLY - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6817139005 HARD DRIVE - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6822136533 FAN - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6835608018 MONITOR - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6824236052 CASE - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6811129021 or http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...6811147153 What other parts do I need? SSD? what is that? Is that like a new alternative to an hard drive? I have some questions: what is SLI and do I need it? I'm a hardcore gamer with a budget. what do i need and how to do overclocking? what and how many fans would i be looking for? Please give me any info you can to help.. Are my parts bad choice? Is it not worth it? Any better recommendations? etc... thanks alot.. sorry if i am not too well knowledged.. I am in no rush of building this PC... Probably search around and learn more info and will built it in another 1-2 months.. so I will also be on the lookout for some Super slick deals that doesn't even make me have to think twice.

SLI/Crossfire are running 2 or more (Up to 4 I think now) graphics cards linked together. They are for extreme gamers with a really big budget. Performance is not a 2x increase over having one card either. It pays to do your research. Since your budget is going to be very tight, with this build as is I would buy one good, high end card and maybe add one more in the future. You also need a MB with enough fast PCIE slots. I know there are some limitations with the i5 processors.

For OC, you need Good ram, a good motherboard (Quality Caps, Quality Power control circuits, etc), Stable Power supply, and heat management and read up on how to do it properly.

Fans, Depends on your case, and what all you put in it. There is a huge difference in fans. The quite ones are expensive, but they tend to have less airflow. Make sure you figure up your CFM balance, you want more push than pull.

As far as your parts and the noise level. The heatsync you picked is HUGE, and EXPENSIVE, and while that brand always gets great reviews for how quite they are, I think you would be better served by something a bit cheaper for now. You will have other components that are louder, like the PSU, case fans, and almost certainty the GPU under load. Have you looked at the closed loop water cooling systems? They are cheaper and have good performance, it might also be cheaper than this thing.

Your Ram links go to many products not just one. It looks like you are looking at 16gb? That is overkill, and since your on a budget I would put a few of those extra dollars somewhere else for now, and wait for a great deal to pick up some more in the future if you need it, which you probably wont.

Since you have time to build this, start reading the enthusiasts sites. It sounds like you have been out of the loop for several years so I kind of question how serious of PC gamer you are (sorry). http://www.tomshardware.com/ and http://www.hardocp.com/ (Forums) and http://pcper.com/ are my top sites.

Quote from LiquidRetro : SLI/Crossfire are running 2 or more (Up to 4 I think now) graphics cards linked together. They are for extreme gamers with a really big budget. Performance is not a 2x increase over having one card either. It pays to do your research. Since your budget is going to be very tight, with this build as is I would buy one good, high end card and maybe add one more in the future. You also need a MB with enough fast PCIE slots. I know there are some limitations with the i5 processors. For OC, you need Good ram, a good motherboard (Quality Caps, Quality Power control circuits, etc), Stable Power supply, and heat management and read up on how to do it properly. Fans, Depends on your case, and what all you put in it. There is a huge difference in fans. The quite ones are expensive, but they tend to have less airflow. Make sure you figure up your CFM balance, you want more push than pull. As far as your parts and the noise level. The heatsync you picked is HUGE, and EXPENSIVE, and while that brand always gets great reviews for how quite they are, I think you would be better served by something a bit cheaper for now. You will have other components that are louder, like the PSU, case fans, and almost certainty the GPU under load. Have you looked at the closed loop water cooling systems? They are cheaper and have good performance, it might also be cheaper than this thing. Your Ram links go to many products not just one. It looks like you are looking at 16gb? That is overkill, and since your on a budget I would put a few of those extra dollars somewhere else for now, and wait for a great deal to pick up some more in the future if you need it, which you probably wont. Since you have time to build this, start reading the enthusiasts sites. It sounds like you have been out of the loop for several years so I kind of question how serious of PC gamer you are (sorry). http://www.tomshardware.com/ and http://www.hardocp.com/ (Forums) and http://pcper.com/ are my top sites.

Thanks for the reply... Yes, I have been reading a lot on those computer tech sites and one being tomshardware So you would suggest 1 high end card around $400 then 2 mid range cards around $200-250 since the difference won't be that big? How do I find about going to look for a good mobo that is enough slots? Which and what slots am I looking for/need? I know i need to look out for the ram slots but what else attaches to it? As for the correct power supply, i am honestly completely lost on how to pick a good one... I know I was one that is more safe than sorry (more power than less) and the cooling should all work out fine considering that I am looking at some good cases and additional fans to add inside. Yeah, I was looking at 16 gb ram.. 2 sets of 2x4gb .. I normally run a lot of apps/programs so I thought I would need more.. I'm planning to have 2 games, lots of browsers loaded, lots of chat programs, and a bunch of other apps on at all times.. Do you have any recommendations on what I should look at/or get? What is wrong with my built?