I’ve had a custom loop for years now. It’s overkill for my current build but I’ve been using these components for 5 years without issue. I built this loop specifically to handle the heat output from an overclocked i7 Ivy Bridge and 3 overclocked GPU’s in a single loop while maintaining fan speeds around 1100 rpm and the redundant pumps at 50% load. It’s whisper quiet even pulling 1100 watts from wall.
That being said, it was expensive to build. Especially getting quality parts that will be reliable. If you are not going to do overclocking, run multiple gpu’s, and don’t care about fan noise, then there is no reason to do a custom loop. Specially for just one component. The best use case for AIO’s is small form factor and mobile rigs for LAN parties and the like. Air cooling should be fine for a stationary tower, running the components at factory settings, in a case designed for decent air flow.
It’s not worth it in any way.
AIOs - they are less efficient, usually cost more, less reliable than an air cooling. I mean I bought a 240AIO, replaced the stock fans with better ones and it still lags 5C behind my NH-D14.
Custom loop - way WAY too expensive and time consuming and even less reliable… It’s entirety a showpiece.
Yes, water can dicipate more heat, but it’s so much more expensive, time consuming and difficult to maintain I’m not really sure it’s worth it for every day use. I mean talking performance for money and effort.
My 2 cents is that it is not worth it and it is overrated.
We do not do it for cooling - if you need to run TDP over 200W on a single chip, then you do not run a regular system.
EDIT: Hybrid/Custom high-end GPUs are great, those do benefit a lot from water. Which is understandable due to the high TDP.
Now there are reasons to do it:
It is not that different price wise to a good air cooler
It is cool to achieve your childish goals
It performs better in higher temperature environments (Bad cases, hot rooms)
Allows you to build low noise builds - there is no high frequency noise with decent pump.
I have a Phobya G-Changer Xtreme NOVA 1080 radiator, cooling a 1950x and a vega64. I saw people fussing over formulas for trying to get enough cooking while still having shit fit in a case. I stuck my setup in a Norco RPC-432 4U Short Depth Rackmount Case, and ran couplings outside the case and called it a day. No kill like overkill.
Frankly I could probably connect two or three more computers to the silly thing.
When I last moved my computer (thank goodness for quick disconnect couplings) I forgot to hook up the 180mm fans. I’ve run the thing full throttle and I didn’t even notice a difference in temps. “Passive” watercooling edit I moved my setup which was previously close to the wall, and it turns out that an air circulation fan I have going in the middle of the room was actually creating some decent airflow along the wall corners behind it. It was still fine for normal use, but I couldn’t do a stress test anymore without it starting to heat up. So while still not as impressive, A little airflow goes a long ways with this thing.
It’s currently just hanging off the side of my half height server rack frame with rope. I’m actually going to be redoing everything soon as my collection of hard drives finally needs to be banished to the garage. I’ll probably just hang it off the wire shelves I use then.
It ain’t gonna get me a date that’s for sure. Which is fine, that’s what the zinc, lecithin and maca maca root are for. Now that’s some real big dick energy right there.
Depends. For machines like the powermac G5 (even the G4 TBH) it makes a massive difference when the cooler has the ability to average out the heat output of the overall core. Especially on a G5 quad or 2.7 GHz chipset.
But I have more info than when I started.
