For the mini itx build I have planned in august. I'm thinking of doing a black and white themed silent as possible build (some people may have seen me ask about advice on other things for this build) , yet I want to overclock a decent amount, Therefore I'm looking for an aftermarket cooler for a 780(ti or normal), or 290x cooler (as yet undecided which gpu I'm gonna go wth), I came across the accelero III cooler, which supposedly beats the gigabyte windforce 3x cooler by about 25 degrees on a 670 (note: case I'm using is a 250D, which fits gpu's up to 300mm, the accelero cooler measures 288mm long, so it fits), though I'm unsure as to whether I should just do a full watercooling loop (these also work in the 250D, with a bit of modding), but, ive never done a watercooling loop before. So I was wondering what I should do, I could always throw an nzxt kraken on there I guess, but then I'd need to buy another aio to go along with the one I'm using for the cpu, which would mean everything would be cramped in such a small case. So I come here asking for advice on what I should do, thankyou to anyone who replies :)
Bump
SInce you are going to get a high end card, probably go the liquid cooling route. but just check your budget, i have been planning to liquid cool my rig but once you add the stuff up it can cost as much as your whole PC did. also if you want to drag your PC around to lans, customs loops can make your PC very heavy
you are looking at $120 for an EK water block for one of those 2 cards you mentioned 1st, and that's before you have bought anything else, pump, fittings, reservoir, tubing, pump controller, etc. all of those together can add up to several 100 dollars pretty fast.
im not sure about the aftermarket air coolers, you would definately have to do some reading up, as most of them often end up getting deisgned around the reference card configurations, so it can be quite difficult to find an air cooler that will fit a non-refernence card.
on CPUs, closed loop liquid cooling isnt that much better than a high end air cooler, but im unshure of if the same would apply to a graphics card.
bottom line is that this really depends on your budget. and how much DIY you are prepared to do
people have been modding all in one liquid coolers on to the gpus, (http://www.overclock.net/t/1203528/official-nvidia-gpu-mod-club-aka-the-mod) the nzxt kraken is just a commercial implementation of that.
here are some pics of what i did.
If I were to do a custom loop it'd have to be the cheapest possible loop since I dont have much laying around.
I have a question anarekis, how much cooler did your gpu run with the aio cooler on it?
20 °c improvement overall. Stock highs where 73°c now it's 45°c max over clocked too.