Water Cooling Kits

Gigamer · Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2005 10:25 am Post subject: Water Cooling Kits

Ok, thought you guys could help me out being the insane overclockers that you are.

I'm looking at water cooling kits and I just don't know which ones are good. They seem to be one of those things that you just have to buy and have experience with. There's not really any numbers or tests to go with unless you find a review. But here's what I'm looking for;

An Athlon XP/64 cooler that fits inside the case, don't want anything on top or sitting outside the case. I have 4 drive bays and only 1 in use so it's fine to fit in those, and I want to cool mainly the CPU, VGA is great but would just be icing on the cake.

Now the CPU I have now is an XP 2000+ that gets about 105(F) at load 98-99 idle, motherboard stays at around 34(C) at load and 32 at idle. I do plan on getting a Athlon 64 4000+ soon, is switching to water cooling worth the $150 or so I'll have to spend?

I'm using 1 80mm in front intake, 2 80mm as exhaust in the back of the case, a coolermaster copper heatsink/fan on the CPU. I have a Chaintech GF5700 apogee with a huge dual fan heatsink on it...runs very cool. My PSU is a Thermaltake silence 480w with 2 fans that are adjustable. The case is a Chieftech Dragon mid tower(lots of internal space).

I was looking at this one...comments please:
http://www.xoxide.com/aquagate.html

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[KoG]^weaZel · Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2005 10:49 am Post subject:

honestly if you are looking to watercool you should check out swiftech and Asetek. They both make very well built kits. And they would perform alot better than the Aquagate. But with these other kits you may need to do some modding to get thim in the case. But its something that is worth doing if you are going the watercooling route.

The one thing that I would recommend is using a minium of a single 120mm radiator. I have used the 80mm type both single and dual, and have not been satisfied with their performance.
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Gigamer · Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2005 11:16 am Post subject:

Yes, I've been reading the swiftech site and looking on frozenPC.com.

I like the 120mm fan radiator setup on the back of the case (where the normal exhaust fans would be) but in my case the holes are for the 80mm fans.

I like this one here, would be perfect for me...except for the size of the fan.
http://www.swiftnets.com/h20-120-R3a-0.asp

This is the exact case I have (the silver one, 2nd row down, middle).
http://www.chieftec.com/products/Workcolor/Dragon.htm

So, yeah, the swiftech setup looks nice but how can I mod that case to fit a 120mm fan in the back?

[KoG]^weaZel · Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2005 1:51 pm Post subject:

you may be able to mount the 120mm radiator to the top of the case. (remember when I said it may take some modding)
There is a good example of this in Noxide's thread in the Case Gallery. I also have one in there with the same type of case that he is using with a similar set-up. But these will give you an idea on how to do it.
_________________
I tweaked and it tweaked back! So I Tweaked some more!

"Barney is like the Michael Jackson of PBS." - James Tybeerious