The Neophyte's Custom Liquid Cooling Guide: How To, Why To, What To Expect
by Dustin Sklavos on September 30, 2013 12:01 AM ESTObviously there's a tremendous amount of information to sift through. This is without a doubt the longest article I've ever personally written; normally I leave the comprehensive works to my more gifted colleagues. I couldn't resist the challenge or the opportunities that presented themselves, though. Even as I write this, I'm testing an engineering sample i7-4770K donated by iBuyPower and finding it to be an infinitely more capable performer than the original retail chip I used. That's not a black mark on CyberPowerPC; it's not like they deliberately sent me a bad chip. It's more a reflection of the chip lottery that is a fact of life for enthusiasts.
Whether or not a custom liquid cooling loop is worth the time, effort, and expense is really going to be a matter of opinion for each individual. As someone who likes working with his hands in general, there was a lot of appeal in just building something, and a tremendous amount of satisfaction when, performance metrics be damned, the thing worked. When that pump fires up and you hear that coolant start circulating, and then after you've filled up the system just seeing the coolant cycle...that's rewarding. This is something that a lot of people have accomplished, sure, but it's much more work than just assembling a computer and sticking a CLC on the processor.
Performance wise, if you're trying to get a better overclock on the CPU, I think we're at the point where a good closed loop cooler is probably going to be enough. Dumping boatloads of voltage into it just to get incrementally higher performance past the chip's inflection point doesn't really do you any favors long term, so any increased thermal headroom a loop can offer you is somewhat negated.
Where I think watercooling really shines is when you apply it to graphics cards. High end graphics cards are ripe for it, with air coolers that are already being pushed fairly hard. Watercooling tanks the temperatures on those, and if you're feeling adventurous, can theoretically allow you some room to play with voltage and get a healthier bump in performance. I think it's worth it just for the low thermals and substantially reduced noise, personally, but if you're looking to sandwich two or more cards together, it's also nice not to have to worry about suffocating air coolers.
Finally, it's important to accept the limitations on the hardware you have. Chip lottery means that watercooling may just not give up the performance you were hoping for. It's often said that there are no guarantees when it comes to overclocking, but in the backs of all of our minds, with each generation of hardware, what we really want to know is "what's the typical overclock." What we really think is that we can count on the "typical overclock," but that's not true, and hopefully my experience here demonstrates that. Ian has an i7-4770K in his lab that won't go any higher than 4.2GHz for love or money. Overclocking is always going to be a gamble.
There are no clear recommendations that I can offer at the end of this experience; the best I can do is present you with the information and my experience and let you decide for yourself. I will say that Swiftech in particular has been tremendously helpful, overnighting me parts when I made mistakes and being exceptionally patient in answering any questions I had so that I could pass that information along to you. With a system like this on hand, it's difficult not to want to experiment and play in this new space, so expect at least an update or two with what I've done and tried and with more information in the future.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
106 Comments
View All Comments
madisoncarter127 - Monday, September 30, 2013 - link
himadisoncarter127 - Monday, September 30, 2013 - link
My last pay check was $11000working 10 hours a week online. My brothers friend has been averaging 17k for months now and she works about 18 hours a week. I can't believe how easy it was once I tried it out.dgingeri - Monday, September 30, 2013 - link
You've sold me on the case, and convinced me to not try water cooling for a while longer, and possibly never. It looks like a lot of hard work for little to no reward. I'll stick to my H100. The case looks great, though.Shinobi_III - Monday, September 30, 2013 - link
If you put the pump in a reservoir, you will no longer have a "noisy" pump.Noisy being a rather absurd wording, considering how incredibly little noise a EHEIM 600l/h pump produces.
That pump you used in the article is ridiculous, what is that, a pump for ants?
And compression fittings are complete suicide, they fail sooner or later.
Perfectly regular ridged slide-over fittings, and a zip tie if you're nervous, will never fail.
And the coolant is ridiculous too, get "long life" automotive coolant, mix it 1:10 and you will never need to worry again. Those bottles are just rebranded, ready-mixed glycol with a giant price tag.
HisDivineOrder - Monday, September 30, 2013 - link
Watercooling GPU's makes sense, but how long before CLC is common on those? It can't be long since everyone's used to CLC's on CPU's where you don't even need water cooling at all. I imagine it won't be long before GPU's too don't need watercooling anymore since they'll be integrated into the CPU.Given that Intel will make its own version of Mantle in short order that they'll pay entire publishers to use, I'm pretty sure we can kiss any advantage discrete cards have goodbye. I'm sure Intel will send AMD a fruit basket for both the idea and making everyone okay with it.
ImSpartacus - Monday, September 30, 2013 - link
Hot damn, this is comprehensive as fuck.Good article!
livingplasma - Monday, September 30, 2013 - link
Thanks for the great article, it's good to see a major tech site like Anandtech cover the often misunderstood art of water cooling. Just skimmed through the comments and a lot of my fellow water cooling guys/gals made some very important points. From my experience it is most important for radiator fan orientation to act as INTAKES. Flipping those top fans to intake can decrease your load temps ~8 degrees celcius from my experience as the way it's currently set up the top 2x120 radiator is using the air from the 3x120 radiator (which is already saturated with heat). Properly decoupled pumps will minimize noise/vibration transmission to the case and with the MCP35X's PMW control it can run very quietly when slowed down 50% which is more than enough flow for most setups. Radiators themselves are low flow resistance, full cover gpu blocks are probably next and CPU blocks tend to have the most but even maxing out a pump only decreases temperatures CPU by a degree or two (plus now the pump is dumping in more heat as well). Removing the stock GPU cooling setups is probably the biggest contributions to water cooling being more quiet than a regular air setup and even with a modest setup the temperature differences are huge as shown with the author's setup.1Angelreloaded - Monday, September 30, 2013 - link
Dustin, Do you know the difference between a Serial and Parallel loop? or how the High flow and Low Flow pressures effect heat dissipation on certain blocks? I understand this may be your first time setting this up; however, in the computer field research is everything, you already know this just like modifying a car without research you end up with an underperforming and underwhelming creation. This is not how a liquid cooled setup should be set up at all, and BTW your Proc temps are higher because the Air source feeding it is already heated from your GPU Rad outlet, try reversing the flow on intake to exit Flow and your CPU temps will be better, CPUs on average run at lower temps on full loads compared to GPUs that can average 70-80 C especially while gaming.hot120 - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
Man, there are quite a few fake 'experts' critiquing this fine article. It seems everyone wants the article done their way. Delid this CPU, change that fan, move this radiator, use that Kill Coil. Enough is enough. It is a basic article on watercolling, and is not meant to cover EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE configuration. Only the most extreme of the extreme computer users will consider delidding their CPU's. Only the most insane of the extreme computer users will spend $800 on a custom loop to shave 5-10 degrees off their CPU/GPU temps. I'll take my $100 and by a CLC and live happily ever after with my CPU that is +10 degrees (over custom) and my air-cooled GPU. Some of you are tripping!pandemonium - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
Thanks for the introduction article to watercooling. To me - verified according to the results - this says it's still not worth it for a general user and gamer. The cost of increased power, thermals, and noise do not appear to outweigh the performance increase. I know other setups produce better results, but this is a good sample for not bothering with it.Watercooling is still for benchmarking...and that's about it.