no fans, pump was on 
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Ahh now I feel stupid for missing that part.
I wonder how long it would take for heat soak in a loop if the pump was left off.
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Depends on the load, at low loads you might not even notice.
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It’s not actually passive (which is why I used “suspicious” quotes), there are pumps.
It’s just that the thing is so massive that it doesn’t really need fans to dissipate any load from a single computer.
When I realized that the fans weren’t on and the temp was completely fine, I stress tested it for a few hours to see if heat soak would effect anything. It didn’t really. Just a couple Degrees C.
That said, it IS still dumping heat in my room, so I’m not keen to generate some numbers to post atm. Maby this weekend if I remember. Originally I had it in the window of my old place, blowing heat out.
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Just a couple of degrees with a stress test? That’s impressive
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To clarify, I was doing some minor stress testing already because of some bios update or something when I noticed my fans were off, so it was “stress test vs longer stress test”. I never bothered to reconnect them after seeing how well it did. I went ahead and did a quick test, just to make sure I wasn’t “misremembering” a load of bullshit.
Note:
These are Tdie (so adjusted real temp, not the higher reported protective Tctl)
Prime95 was set to “small FFTs (tests L1/L2/L3 Caches, maximum power/heat/CPU stress”
All of these are with no fans. I don’t even have connectors outside the case right now.
The cpu is at stock speeds.
Idle, shortly after waking up from sleep = 29.0C
Basic tasks, also still shortly after waking up from sleep = 32-40.0C
Prime95 immediately = 51C
Prime95 after 15 minutes = 58.3C
Prime95 after an addiional 40 minutes = 61.0C
Prime 95 after another 10 minutes = 61.0C
At this point it seems perfectly stable. If I left this going, it’d probably climb somewhat less as a matter of heat soaking the water, and more a matter of heatsoaking the air in my fucking room, which WAS somewhere in the low 70’s roughly guessing, and now is definitely a bit warmer.
Two minutes after stopping Prime95 = 39.0-45.5c (jumping around, I guess it’s doing some background task)
After another 10 minutes or so = 34.5C
Last I checked, AMD recommends max of 68 Tdie for long term constant use. I believe this is also the temperature at which point it will start to throttle itself.
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IMHO, in 2019…
- liquid cooling for CPU = over-rated. Use a good air cooler. They’ve been tested to work just as well and a lot less screwing about and cost. Especially if you’re looking at the cheap closed loop kits. Also less to fail, and if the fan(s) do fail - the passive cooling still works via case fans, etc. **
- liquid cooling for GPU = you can get a lot better cooling, a lot quieter than possible via air. basically because you can run a much bigger heat-sink (the radiators) and bigger, slower fans than is possible in a PCIe slot - and GPUs pull a lot more power than CPUs generally (where a tower cooler will keep up).
- That said… if you’re going to liquid cool a GPU, then you “may as well” do the CPU as well unless you’re getting a GPU only kit (e.g., from Alphacool - and even then, the alphacool kits are expandable via quick-disconnects, soo…).
Given the above, i’m looking at the alphacool kits for my Vega 64 and may as well add the kit for my CPU as well.
Above is based on not attempting extreme (or any, really) overclocking. Purely based on noise and close to stock-rated performance. But then i consider overclocking to be mostly a waste of time these days. You might 10%… at the cost of time spent stability testing/tweaking/etc. Don’t have time for that. Just buy a better cpu/gpu when they’re available.
YMMV.
edit:
** exception may be if you’re building to a small form factor where liquid may help you get more surface area for cooling due to physical constraints around the CPU area…
I guess the TLDR: It depends, but keep it simple.
If you can get enough surface area for cooling the expected heat load via air coolers, and enough airflow for a simple fin stack to work - DO THAT! there is less to fuck up.
If you need to shift a lot of heat out of a small physical space, transport it out of that small area via liquid, to a big-ass radiator (or collection of them) and run large slow fans to minimise noise and maximise heat dissipation.
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I share most of the mentioned opinions about AIOs and Air Coolers, Noctua FTW.
But let me add a thing or two about custom water cooling that i haven’t read or only briefly read here.
The Noise argument for example. That you can move the noisy fan and radiator part where ever you like, and size it how ever you like, makes custom basically unbeatable.
Current normal builds can be quiet at idle, but under usage the noise will rise obviously. If that is Ok for you, no problem, no need to go for custom loops.
But if you want to have your build remain silent even under full load, custom loops are your only option basically.
Starting with the problems facing such builds.
purely from a noise perspective, once the fan-noise is gone, spinning rust will be the loudest, probably followed by your pump.
No problem eliminating the spinning rust, but getting the pump to shut up is rather hard, especially since basically no one i have ever seen in the YouTube scene has actually looked closely at pump noise.
Or maybe my d5 is just shit.
Assuming you got your pump quiet, coilwhine will be the next thing.
Mainly from the GPU, and after that probably from the PSU.
Another problem can be the PSU cooling.
In my current situation, i have evga supernova g3 1000W that is silent until it gets to warm and starts cooling itself. It sadly is mounted right behind a Radiator on my inwin 303 and therefore can’t cool itself down below its “don’t need cooling” point anymore.
Making it now the loudest thing around.
A friend in a similar situation but NOT with it it being behind a radiator, had the same problem with a evga supernova 1600G2.
He’s currently on a Corsair and even though it’s fan is spinning and being used, it’s better in that regard then the evga.
Edit: could be that the Evgas don’t have such great fans, or rpm control or what ever. Do they need them though ? can’t really blame them.
So to summarize that, in terms of noise and making it quiet, there are a lot of things to consider and get right until you may achieve that goal, and it will probably spiral out into decision after decision to make it more quiet.
Now to the cost and penis enlargement side.
Hardlinetubing, the gorgeous penis enlargement that takes a lot more effort, isn’t necessary, unless you want it because you want it!
Soft-tubing gets the job done perfectly, eliminating the effort to bend the tubes.
The main Cost factor in larger builds is actually the fittings. The cheap ones are like 3$ each, but on the bling bling rigs you can calculate like 8$ each and suddenly you spend multiple hundreds on fittings.
So my choice was to buy them used, if you hunt for it and wait, you can get the individual parts cost down to like 2$ each for a hardtube fittings for your show-build.
Or you go softtubing with for example barb-fittings and zipties.
Good barbs cost below 2$ each and considering that you aren’t doing any crazy shit, the amount of needed fittings (barbs) is kept to the absolute minimum. No 90° Rotarys or so either, just the barbs and tube.
Since the cost for a loop even with the reasonably well priced budget parts can easily reach like 300$ i myself like to buy everything used.
with everything i mean pump, reservoir, radiators and blocks.
Though you need to then put the effort into cleaning the parts very thoroughly before using them, otherwise you run into a lot of problems.
But in general, you can push the overall cost down to half of what the same loop would have cost you new, probably even more.
Another Risk worth mentioning is Mix and Matching components, since metal-quality differs between manufacturer, that can lead to problems.
Jay once made a video where a “endcap*?” was corroding away. Though i guess you can have that with any build, doesn’t matter used or new, mix and matched or everything from one company.
Now on to the maintenance side.
In a Scenario where you went all out, for example only Bitspower everywhere and no funky fluids, you will for certain have very very little problems and maintenance to do. Basically none.
And there is no reason it should suddenly start leaking other then a failure to assemble correctly, or material problems.
A friend had his Pump-Res combo crack, possibly due to age.
You can’t buy that thing anymore, probably for that reason.
To generalize all of the above into one smart statement:
The fewer parts, the fewer manufacturers, the fewer problems you will have. Seems Obvious right?
So if you want it as silent as it can get, and as cheap as possible,
you have to compensate with Effort and Smarts about what and how.
You could also classify custom water cooling as a hobby, justifying all the effort. ;D
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And to state something on the “is it overrated” question.
I think it isn’t overrated.
Though it isn’t for everyone for sure.
And i’m probably one of the worst to talk with about this, since it is a hobby to me that i explore myself on a budget buying used crap and not cleaning it properly, and using Primochil Vue and basically doing every fucken mistake you can do and shouldn’t.
Edit:
One funny one was me and a friend were trying to get the 4 way rx480 world-record on HWbot and were finally done building everything at 3o clock. Windows just had to finish updates, so we said “shut down in 30min” turned of everything else and went to bed.
After returning in the morning, we found the externally powered pump had stopped, possibly causing the water inside the cpu block to boil and shoot out of the block, drowning the board and the four cards.
Managed to repair the four cards eventually, never took the record though.
Yes. It’s all about the aesthetic and space you have to work with. And how much you want to worry about your cooler. A $50 air cooler will be just as cool as any AiO you can get.
Nothing that looks so damn awesome could be considered over rated. Aesthetics are everything.
Another part of water cooling is if you enjoy creating and building things.
It’s also not doom and gloom if a pump fails in a custom loop. A couple weeks ago I woke up on a saturday morning to a dead water pump. It was just clicking, no water flow. Having 2 radiators with 5 fans my 1700x and Radeon VII were both only idling in the 40C range even with no flow.
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Paralel pumps and checkvalves, hot spare you know?
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This is exactly why i am looking at the alphacool kits. (Eisbaer / Eiswolf - not sure on the spelling off top of my head).
They have plug and play gpu/cpu blocks plus radiators - and no need to fill, etc. You just plug them together via quick disconnect fittings.
Doesn’t even seem to be THAT expensive, vs. a full custom loop…
Water/liquid is a pretty good conductor of heat. Even if there is no flow… the water itself is a heat conductor…
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i enjoy the sound of running water
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AIO’s Yes!!. They are just as loud and have pretty much same performance as most air coolers now days?
AMD CPUs and both AMD and Nvidia GPUs can’t be meaningfully overclocked these days. By meaningful I’m saying you’ll get a couple percent, but nothing noticeable like 10 years ago. I’m sure Intel CPUs will quickly follow this trend.
Once that happens, cooling performance past a baseline typically pretty close to the stock cooler basically won’t matter. That’s what we’re seeing today with the stock AMD coolers, they’re good enough.
Better coolers on the GPU side still matter for AMD because they use blowers. Not really about performance, they’re just really loud. Once they move to axial cooling that won’t matter either.
My point here is that not only is liquid cooling overrated, pretty soon aftermarket cooling will be overrated too.
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You dont just get a better cooler because you want to overclock. Liquid coolers in particular have other advantages that you’ve either intentionally glossed over or you dont understand.
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Source. Thats bullocks dude. Just EFI issues tbch. Got to wait until they release fixes. Both companies have made statements on this. Ryzen first gen wasnt great but boy when you hit 4.0-4.2 GHz did it provide a significant jump. Same with overclocking say a 1080 Ti on the GPU side…
Threadripper would like to speak with you
It will never be overrated. Not so long as their is a community that loves to do it. Show me your numbers. Prove to me your claim that aftermarket cooling doesnt provide any meaningful advantage. Water cooling will never die because its efficient. It takes away a lot of heat and soaks it in the liquid…and gets rid of it in a radiator. Not to mention theres an aesthetic aspect. So the whole liquid cooling is gonna die stuff is just none sense