Watercooling in 2019, should I go back?

[Netami]

A bit of backstory:
When I built my current PC in early 2015, I installed a custom water loop (soft tubing) for my overclocked 4790k and reference GTX 970. The loop ran great for years with little maintenance other than routine drains/refills (using a bio-cide agent and distilled water). Recently due to some hardware changes I removed the loop and installed a Hyper 212 EVO back, which works fine for my current mild OC, but I do sort of miss have a watercooled build for some reason.

 

My real question today is this; especially considering Ryzen 3000 series dropping today (I think?), in my situation, would you bother going back to watercooling? I would like to upgrade to the 3700x pretty soon, and maybe a RX 5700 if it looks promising post release. It seems components are a lot more enegy efficient these days (unless you go full 9900k/threadripper), so I'm wondering if it's worth the extra cost, especially as a student), to buy a new pump/res combo and go back to water.

[LukeLinusFanFic]

Linus made a video about this recently - you should probably be fine with a high end air cooler.

 

I get missing the cool factor, but I suppose that if you upgrade your CPU and for some reason the cooling performance isn't enough, you could always change it - prices are only coming down.

 

Unless you say "f it, I'm an enthusiast and I'm willing to spend that money for the fun of the cool project" which I'm all for.

[Netami]

2 minutes ago, LukeLinusFanFic said:

Linus made a video about this recently - you should probably be fine with a high end air cooler.

 

I get missing the cool factor, but I suppose that if you upgrade your CPU and for some reason the cooling performance isn't enough, you could always change it - prices are only coming down.

 

Unless you say "f it, I'm an enthusiast and I'm willing to spend that money for the fun of the cool project" which I'm all for.

Yeah that's pretty much where I'm at. I know the performance of watercooling will be super close to a NH-D15 or similar, but I'm so close to that "fuck it, I'm an enthusiast" mark of going back to a custom loop.

[andrewmp6]

The ryzen line won't overclock high enough to need more then a nice tower cooler for it.Now some gpus run hot and kinda need to be water cooled.But today we do have budget companies like bykski and barrow which do make great parts.Some even run with in spec of ek and cheaper.I'm in the same boat as you are on which way i should go.Last time i touched water cooling i had a danger den block lol.

[Blze001]

On 7/7/2019 at 1:56 AM, LukeLinusFanFic said:

Linus made a video about this recently - you should probably be fine with a high end air cooler.

For the CPU, the GPU is still typically pretty loud.

[LukeLinusFanFic]

41 minutes ago, Blze001 said:

For the CPU, the GPU is still typically pretty loud.

Is that so? I found GPUs one of the parts where you don't get a high roi on water-cooling.

 

I have a 970 strix and the fan almost never turns on, even today.

[xreaperx22]

the new ryzen chips are going to be easier to overclock due to the fact they decoupled the memory from the infinity fabric,so if you want to really oc that bad boy i would do another custom loop,maybe hard line this time its not that bad to do really,specially if you use petg tubing.

[Tristerin]

You can do a custom loop, using science, for cheaper than a mid/high end air cooler.

 

Mixed metal loops are my specialty.  Prestone 50/50 Premix Antifreeze with Corguard has better properties than Tier 1 custom loop fluids for biocide and anticorrosion.

 

Or you could listen to manufacturers trying to sell you their loop lol.

 

Copper AM4 block - $15

Food grade tubing - $7

Aluminum radiators - 240mm $15 (comes with screws and barb fittings), 120mm $9 (comes with screws and barb fittings)

Pump/Res combo - $25

Fluid - $2 (1 bottle of antifreeze has lasted me multiple loops and its only 1/3rd gone)

 

$73 shipped (using Aliexpress and Ebay, new items) to your door custom loop.  My last loop had 2 120 rads in it however so it cost $82 to do a triple radiator loop for the CPU for overclocking purposes (4.2 ghz R7 1700 @ 1.4vCore)

[Blze001]

3 hours ago, LukeLinusFanFic said:

Is that so? I found GPUs one of the parts where you don't get a high roi on water-cooling.

 

I have a 970 strix and the fan almost never turns on, even today.

Well, my 780 and 1070 were blowers so I know those are special needs, but I remember my HD7770 making quite a bit of noise when gaming. Much louder than the Hyper212 I had on my Phenom at the time.