Vista - Air versus water cooling

Get the Sunbeam core contact freezer for Intel or the thermalright ultra 120 for AMD, they are both rated #1 for those brands on frosty tech. Heres the link Top 5 Intel & AMD Heatsinks on Frostytech it's a great site.

Well I wasn't planning on switching to water at all, waay too much work.., just curious who'd be pro and con, and seems everybody's pro. Thanks for the threads guys

Cheers,

Amplid

New guy here and since I will be asking LOTS of Vista questions I wanted to add a slightly different perspective on this thread. I am currently building a Vista 64 machine for video editing. Even with a very fast processor, fast FSB, and a ton of RAM and disk space a single video render with modest effects and titles can last for four hours or more. During that four hours the processors are pretty much maxed, the graphics card can be working overtime, and the box is going to throw some serious heat. For these reasons I have gone initially with liquid cooled CPU and GPU cooling blocks. Later if needed I will add north & south bridge blocks and ram blocks. Yes I am paying a bit more, but considering the price of ram, motherboard, CPU, and my time it is a small investment.

I did want to address a couple of issues I saw raised.

Leaks, put things together correctly, use premium components and the system will not leak. Now a wise person will bench test the system for 24-48 hours supplying power only to the pump, but that is just SOP.

Algie, most modern coolants contain an algicide so that is not really an issue. ( you cannot just use water, that is asking for trouble )

Electrical shorts, again, most modern coolants are non-conductive and even with a leak while running will not short your system out.

Maintenance is simply changing the coolant once a year, which you should be cleaning your PC that much anyhow.

Again, it is an additional expense and I would not do it for my "home" machine, but as a needs based solution it does work nicely. ( And ya it looks pretty cool as well, lol )

Best regards,
Harry

Long time reader, first time poster.

Watercooling is something I have been considering for a while now.

I'm quite experienced with air cooling..Having used several different types, modding GPU fans onto chipsets etc.....Which have all worked well I must say.

The rig I have at the moment, has a crapload of ram, an overclocked CPU, and overclocked GPU and about six fans. It goes flat out and it needs to. However the fans are just not cutting the mustard. Temps are just cranking and it makes me nervous.

When I put the pc under load, it is running absolutely flat chat load for stints of up to five or six hours....

Water cooling is becoming more appealing as each waft of hot air moves across my bench....

Summer is coming here, and I honestly think that watercooling is the way to go...

And some of the "kits" such as a couple of the Thermaltake Bigwater units ARE a somewhat cheap and reasonable place to start, whilst maintaining some quality...such as compression fittings and decent pumps/radiators.

I do see it as a massive step however.....and would be nervous as hell upgrading.