The Neophyte's Custom Liquid Cooling Guide: How To, Why To, What To Expect
by Dustin Sklavos on September 30, 2013 12:01 AM ESTIf our whole hypothesis is that watercooling is (in most cases) superior to air cooling, then we need some measure of data to prove it. That means building our system and cooling it under air first, and seeing just how much overclocking performance we can get out of it before heat becomes too serious an issue. This is difficult to fully quantify; luck of the draw means we could wind up with stellar, efficient overclockers on both the CPU and GPU sides, or absolutely lousy ones. Haswell, in particular, seems to be afflicted with unusually high variation between individual chips.
To get some idea of how assembly goes in the Corsair Carbide Air 540, you can refer to my review. Suffice to say the system came together pretty easily. The modular nature of the SSD cages allowed me to remove all but one, and the 3.5" drive sleds went unpopulated but connected for the future. My biggest concern was the lack of clearance between the Noctua NH-U14S and the top GeForce GTX 780.
It looks like they're touching, but fear not, they're just playing the scariest game of "I'm not touching you" I've ever seen. This board is designed for quad-GPU graphics systems, which puts the primary PCIe x16 slot at the top. The upshot of that is the excellent spacing between the two cards: they're two slots apart, allowing for plenty of airflow between them.
Ignoring for a moment the fact that I've always been lousy at cabling, we're presented with something of an issue. The Carbide Air 540 doesn't really necessitate neat cabling since that cubby in the bottom left of the photo is typically where the mass of cables always goes. However, the AX1200i is a very deep power supply, and that cubby is where I intend to put the pump and reservoir. This is, in my opinion, a failing of the Carbide Air 540's design: there's a tremendous amount of open space at the top right, and no real way to occupy it.
Overclocking on air wasn't actually tremendously difficult, but it's where I ran into some real issues with the i7-4770K. This is...not a spectacular sample. VRIN starts at 1.812V, and the VCore's default voltage is already at 1.2V. With load line calibration set to Turbo, I was able to get the chip stable at 4.3GHz, but VCore was reading ~1.3V in Windows. Thermals were reaching the low 90s under OCCT. 4.4GHz and 4.5GHz were both bootable, but thermally too dangerous. For stability testing, I did a five minute run of OCCT followed by a run of POVray 3.7 RC, per Ian's suggestion.
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The two GeForce GTX 780s fared a bit better. I maxed out the power and temperature targets, and while the fans got pretty loud, I was able to get a +125 offset on the core and stunning +550 offset on the GDDR5, leading to a peak boost clock of ~1150MHz and a GDDR5 clock of 7.1GHz. Any higher than that on the GDDR5 would work, but produce artifacts. Peak boost was pretty tough to maintain, though, with the cards regularly dipping back at least a couple of boost bins under EVGA OC Scanner X. Stability testing was initially done with OC Scanner X, but I found it to be remarkably unreliable. Per Ryan Smith's suggestion, I switched to using a Crysis Warhead benchmark and then running Fire Strike Extreme in 3DMark. Crysis Warhead was pretty good at ferreting out unstable overclocks, but 3DMark was fantastic at it.
All in all, the overclocks were decent, although the i7-4770K apparently lived to underwhelm. I'm also a little disappointed the 780s couldn't hit 1.2GHz under boost on the core, but the excellent GDDR5 overclock takes some of the sting off of that.
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egotrippin - Monday, October 14, 2013 - link
I'm about to nerd out so forgive me...
Some of the conclusions from this article aren't representative of what you can truly do with water cooling but rather the limitations of the equipment you selected.
For starters, the addition of a pump doesn't automatically mean more noise. The pump you selected can sound like an angry wind up toy and it generates a lot of heat and vibration. A Laing D5 Vario/MCP 655 pump is whisper quiet, especially with a Koolance PMP450 top on it. It can be running at full speed pushing 4.6 liters per minute through the system and so long as it's decoupled properly from any hard surface in the computer case then you wouldn't be able to hear it if it was 6 inches from your ear.
I run a 3930k overclocked typically to 4.4 GHz although I've done higher and if I'm running prime 95 or Intel burn-test my temps are about 66C TOTAL and not 66 DELTA?! If your room is a comfortable 24 C does that mean your CPU temps are 84C on water? Something isn't right. I don't know that chip but maybe it needs to be Delidded and Lapped. I had that same Apogee HD block before on a 3930k which is a much hotter chip and my temps never reached that high.
The fans you are using have a familiar style... because they look just like the Scythe Gentle Typhoons which have the best noise/static pressure of any radiator fan I've seen tested. If you used Gentle Typhoons, temps would be lower and the whole thing would be quiet.
The coolant you used is probably less efficient than distilled water. The only coolant I've used that delivers lower temperatures is Ice Dragon which is heavy and expensive and cuts your flow rate in half. Distilled water works great and it's $1
I can't tell for sure but it looks like small diameter tubing was used. Using 1/2" inner diameter tubing delivers higher flow which means lower temperatures.
Those radiators are anorexic. I don't think they come much thinner than that. Use something with a bit of heft. My rad is 80mm thick which is twice the thickness of those Swiffys. This allows for substantially more cooling and also higher flow rate which, again, increases cooling and lowers noise.
My 3930k + my GTX 690 dual GPU card can both be overclocked and Folding or benching with all cores/gpus at 100% and it can be silent enough that if it weren't for the power light, you wouldn't know it was on. I briefly used air on my GTX 690 and it sounded like a hair dryer and filled the room with the scent of charred air much like the smell of turning your heater on for the first time in winter.
If anybody reads this, you can expect better results if you buy better components. I started off with Swiftech because they were cheap and also they were carried at my local MicroCenter. I quickly graduated to better parts. The Apogee HD is an excellent water block and the Swiftech MCP35X2 and MCP655 pumps are both excellent pumps (but neither were used here).
prismatics - Wednesday, October 16, 2013 - link
Why did you only post OC Liquid benchmarks? I'm interested in Non-OC liquid numbers. I have no interest in overclocking, I just want the quietest, most efficient system.mc2k4 - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link
Terrible article, would put off anyone from watercooling. Those results are horrendous.woogitboogity - Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - link
I did a custom build CPU/Northbridge/GPU with the cooling loop going outside the case to the reservoir about 5 years ago...I will admit that when the thing ACTUALLY worked for a while it was insane... granted it was 5 years ago but even then seeing lukewarm temperatures on essentially every component at full load was pretty impressive.
BUT... I feel that one thing missing from this article is a reality check: I work in experimental physics and I have had to work water cooling and even liquid helium cooling for magnets. 5 years ago the vendors of water cooling hardware implied a LOT more than they could back up in practice... since then their claims have only gotten more extravagant. At least in the days when people did water cooling from scratch they did not have marketeers offering false assurances in the form of warranties that clearly do not cover damage due to other hardware.
BOTTOM LINE: I think the subtext of this entire article that needs to be clear is that custom water cooling should be treated as a VERY expensive hobby. Expect to lose every component... period. If that is not an acceptable outcome don't do it. I say this because I deal with experimental cooling all the time and I got burned by the sub-par cooling hardware offered not too long ago (same hoses and cooling block designs... still using water).
Drittz121 - Friday, February 28, 2014 - link
Just do yourself a favor. STAY AWAY from this company. Yes they look good. But when it breaks and it WILL. All they do is give you the run around. They have had my system for over 2 months trying to fix the garbage they sell. Worse company out there for support. DONT BUYalpha3031 - Sunday, June 22, 2014 - link
What about these new Devils Canyon chips?