Why don't you custom water-cool your PC?

[W1zzard]

We're wondering what's holding you back from getting into watercooling, custom-watercooling, specifically.

 

[Calmmo]

Time, money, reliability, lack of plumbing degree.

 

[Caring1]

Too much maintenance for the 1C or 2C difference between top air coolers and good A.I.O.s.
I prefer a decent A.I.O. for ease of installation, appearance and space saving.
Custom loops are a joke and so are the comments attempting to justify their use.

 

[bobsled]

Already do!

 

[Sithaer]

I have no reasons/not needed as I'm not ocing anything or running hardware that heats up too much even with affordable air cooling.

Only thing I'm considering is an AIO once I upgrade my CPU but only cause I like their look/design, no other reason. 'I don't fancy having a brick in my PC like most air coolers'

+I wouldn't want to maintain it, cleaning my PC every few months is enough for me. 'except for the glass panel, thats cleaned more often'

 

[kapone32]

I will probably never build a custom loop for my CPU. My TR4 Noctua cooler has proven to be beast and there is no need and AIOs are more than capable. Where I will always watercool is my GPUs. The fact that modern GPUs since Vega (Sapphire Nitro) have become monstrosities, for me almost necessitates using a waterblock. The mitigating factors though are noise, temp and clock that make water cooling academic to me. To be honest it was the introduction of the zero fan policy as 49 C is not where I want my GPU to idle and if there is no fan it is radiating that into the core of the case.

 

[Palladium]

Too much risk and cost for too little actual returns.

Even I found CPU OCing to be pretty pointless back in 2014, so I decided then to get a 4790K on a non-Z mobo.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

The cost/benefit and risk/reward ratios are all out of whack for me. Air cooling is so dirt simple: attach fan to hunk of metal. Failures with liquid aren't necessarily more likely, but can be more costly. The only thing to go south with air is a fan, at which point you just slap a new one on and call it a day. A bad pump is a whole lot more expensive and more difficult to replace. Leaks can kill expensive hardware. All for maybe 5-10% over decent air cooling? Not to mention that if I were willing to spend that much on custom or AIO cooling, I'd just buy faster parts in the first place.

 

[Athlonite]

To much faffing around and I'd have to swap my Silverstone RV02 for something a decent sized rad would fit but I'd probably not like the case

 

[kapone32]

To much faffing around and I'd have to swap my Silverstone RV02 for something a decent sized rad would fit but I'd probably not like the case

The RV02 is a killer case. Very detailed but excellent heat dissipation. I replaced mine with a Thermaltake Core X9.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Price is mostly why people get turned off custom loops and settle for an 5 year warranty aio for 150.us+- instead even if they want to get away from a giant chunk of aluminum air cooler that covers the entire top of the motherboard for 40-80.us

Also custom loop products or even kits are wonky even from the water cooling leaders like ek that is just to date started making fittings out of brass then nickel plating.. them instead of metal and nickel plating them which can also fail I've got some that came with a p280 ek kit

Little vinegar really shows where the nickel plating came off and now you see where the term mixed metal comes from, manufactures use it to save a buck lol
But yeah usually they just refer to mixed metals as don't use aluminum parts with copper loops...


Then you get into fluids
Well you'd think this was the easy one right, not really this stuff can really cause havoc if it looks like this stuff and it's not so noticeable if colored fluid is used acid green is what I used, what a staining/ water block clogging disaster chalk it up to early release bad batch beginners luck right lol


Maintenance isn't so bad if you don't get bad products and take extra measure to filter your fluid even if you use distilled water and inhibitor and biocide treatment testing every couple months to maintain ph7

These come in really handy paired with quick disconnects add to the system or remove easily while cleaning/ filling it and run it for a couple weeks after at the least to pick up all the little stuff that will end up stuck in your gpu or cpu water block causing you to disassemble and manually clean them
Spectre 2369 Premium Clearview Fuel Filter

But it's really about having fun

 

[Cobain]

Useless imo. Good for looks and that's it.

 

[INSTG8R]

I have since the P4?

 

[TechLurker]

I did since the FX-8370 and FX-9590 days, and still do for my main rig, but I've since downgraded to AIOs or air coolers for everything else I've rebuilt over time. It's been nothing but a PITA to keep maintained, and the high upfront costs was always a motivation killer. Moreso with all the constant testing for leaks and bleeding out air bubbles after every loop deep clean.

 

[Grings]

I am running watercooling simply because i have had some half decent gear (primarily a d5 pump) for about 17 years or so, and changing a part every now and then is cheaper than buying a Noctua or equivalent air cooler.

I really didn't see the point of going to town on it with my skylake 6700k, i wouldn't have seen a worthwhile benefit from delidding/liquid metal etc.

The price and availability of gpu waterblocks has put me off doing a full watercooling loop on my last few builds too, i didn't bother with my current 1070 as i cant ever hear the thing spin up anyway, and they don't clock any higher on water to the point its worth spending extra on. If i could actually get my hands on a 3080 i probably would get a block, as they do seem to sustain higher clocks on water.

Right now I'm looking at what waterblock to get for my 5800x, for the moment i have a frankensteins block consisting of an ek supremacy mx (with an evo copper plate) which i bought an AMD mounting plate for £3, the bolts that come with the mx are the wrong length for the AMD or EK backplates, so i re-used some old mounting bolts from an ek supreme. The thing still has an intel jet plate in, you get the AMD one with the bolt set that matches with the mount plate i bought, but they were £12. It cools ok for now so i didnt bother.

I'm thinking about getting the Aquacomputer Next with the offset mount (for 3000-5000 series Ryzen) as its cheaper than the Optimus or TechN blocks

 

[R00kie]

I already do, and since I'm a sucker for good aesthetics and quiet operation, it was the only way to go.

 

[N3utro]

I already do and on the long term it's worth it. You get the most of all your components, get crazy good temperatures with extremely silent computer. When my computer is idleing i can just disable the fans and it becomes full fanless, it's perfect.

Plus the price of a waterblock is not much more than the one of a high end aircooling rad and you can find good price on used components.

If you use good hardware and test your loop for leaks before using it there is no risks.

Maintenance is pretty easy. I just open the port on the radiator, collect the fluid in a container then use a manual pump (kinda like the one you use for a bike's wheel) to push the remaining liquid out.

 

[erocker]

A good sealed AIO is just easier.

 

[Amite]

Those days are gone

 

[PaulieG]

I ran custom loops for several years. I felt like it was not only worth it, but it was fun to get the loop just right. Thing is, it's another thing to add to this hobby than can displace so much time and energy. I just don't have the hours and hours to dedicate to it anymore, and my body/brain can't handle staying up until 2am tinkering and still manage to get up for work at 6am.

 

[sam_86314]

I voted "afraid of leaks", but that's just one of many reasons.

Maintenance, cost, and noise are the other big ones for me. As far as noise goes, I'd think that air cooling has better potential for silent operation.

As it sits now, my fully air-cooled system is almost silent when idle, still very quiet under heavy GPU load (aside from the coil whine), and only really gets noisy under extreme CPU load.

The loudest part of my system is my GPU coil whine. I'm sure if I replaced my GPU with a less whiny one and got some better fans, my system could be silent under nearly all loads.

 

[Gmr_Chick]

I chose Price, but only because I could only choose one. Maintenance and lack of skills would be my other two picks. Also, while I've seen some custom loop builds that were truly beautiful, I tend to think they aren't worth the extra time/money/upkeep when a good AIO or air cooler will do just as good of a job and be cheaper. But whether it's a custom loop or an AIO, they both share the same weakness - potential for leaks --and this is something air coolers don't suffer from.

I'm running a Corsair H100i RGB PRO XT (goddamn that's a mouthful) AIO at the moment, but I also have a Cooler Master MA610P air cooler. I originally bought the AIO for my 10700K, reading how hot the damn thing got, but now that I'm back on Ryzen, I'm wondering if the AIO is necessary...

(Don't get excited peeps. I'm still keeping the AIO )

 

[Sunny and 75]

Aesthetically, water-cooled PC is the sexier PC!

 

[1d10t]

My PC in old days



I need that water cooling system, because its a necessity to tame Vishera 5Ghz and dual R9 290 1.2GHz. Any cooling solution at that time, be it air cooling or AIO, doesn't offer much cooling capabilities, so choices are obvious. From option above I chose price, not because "cost " but rather "worth", my current basic air cooling are quite capable doing their job

 

[Ferrum Master]

I happy to see over 100peps actually having a loop.

Pretty much price is the biggest hurdle. Other than that... It is just art.

Seconds... my GPU haven't seen temps over 50C ever. It gained constant performance boost from it, so there is still a valid point considering new tech boost algos, that rely on really low temperatures.