Watercooling setup with low maintenance?

[maremp]

I’m considering doing a water cooling build for over 5 years, but never committed to it. Primarily it was a consideration of price, but now that I can afford the cost, I’m also thinking about the ongoing maintenance and if I need water cooling in the first place. 
 

My primary consideration is noise, I want the system to be as quiet as possible. 
 

I currently have NH-D15 which was relatively quiet on i7-6700K, but now on Ryzen 7700x it can get noisy, even with negative PBO tune and adjusted fan curve. I was thinking about an AIO, but this solves only a part of the problem. 

For the gpu, Asus TUF 6800xt does well and thankfully does not have a whiny noise, but the fans still create significant blower noise when at full load. 
 

With water cooling I do not plan to do anything special and no colored liquid, just clear mix or distilled water. 
 

Are there measures I can take to reduce required maintenance? Or is it just a nature of water cooling setup to require coolant flush and cleanup every year or so?

[podkall]

@WoodenMarker@GOTSpectrum

[GOTSpectrum]

I mean, there are additives that you should be adding, anticorrosives, antibio stuff... running straight DW will cause issues fast. 

 

Throw some glycol in there for good measure and the liquid should last a couple years, but best to flush it yearly so you can keep an eye on system. When you empty it dump it in a bucket and look for off colours, build up, biofilms, that kinda thing. 

 

PS I run an AIO card and AIO cpu cooler, they last usually 5-10 years so the life of the system give or take. I read in detail about watercooling before deciding to go the AIO route 

[podkall]

21 minutes ago, GOTSpectrum said:

I mean, there are additives that you should be adding, anticorrosives, antibio stuff... running straight DW will cause issues fast. 

 

Throw some glycol in there for good measure and the liquid should last a couple years, but best to flush it yearly so you can keep an eye on system. When you empty it dump it in a bucket and look for off colours, build up, biofilms, that kinda thing. 

 

PS I run an AIO card and AIO cpu cooler, they last usually 5-10 years so the life of the system give or take. I read in detail about watercooling before deciding to go the AIO route 

Wouldn't different Noctua cooler be quieter? or on par with quietness as AIO?

[GOTSpectrum]

5 minutes ago, podkall said:

Wouldn't different Noctua cooler be quieter? or on par with quietness as AIO?

That depends, nocs are great, I like AIOs cause it has high thermal mass, so takes longer for the fans to have to spin faster, meaning if you use your pv like normal you can set a pretty aggressive fan curve and it is whisper quiet 99% of the time unless you ar erendering or something 

[podkall]

1 minute ago, GOTSpectrum said:

That depends, nocs are great, I like AIOs cause it has high thermal mass, so takes longer for the fans to have to spin faster, meaning if you use your pv like normal you can set a pretty aggressive fan curve and it is whisper quiet 99% of the time unless you ar erendering or something 

Right, because of the water, physics.

[maremp]

34 minutes ago, GOTSpectrum said:

I like AIOs cause it has high thermal mass, so takes longer for the fans to have to spin

That was why I have started exploring AIOs in the first place, and then recalled my idea of full-on custom loop. There are scenarios where the cpu ramps up just enough to kick in the fans for a couple of cycles, and then ramps down. I still have to play around with the fan curves to see if I can make this better with the current setup. 

 

But the other thing is, as I've mentioned in the first post, when under heavy gaming load, the gpu fans are loud enough to be heard through my open back headphones or through speakers when gaming on TV, so I have to increase the volume or tune out the noise.

[GOTSpectrum]

1 minute ago, maremp said:

That was why I have started exploring AIOs in the first place, and then recalled my idea of full-on custom loop. There are scenarios where the cpu ramps up just enough to kick in the fans for a couple of cycles, and then ramps down. I still have to play around with the fan curves to see if I can make this better with the current setup. 

 

But the other thing is, as I've mentioned in the first post, when under heavy gaming load, the gpu fans are loud enough to be heard through my open back headphones or through speakers when gaming on TV, so I have to increase the volume or tune out the noise.

have you looked into modular AIO kits for your GPU, see if thats an option 

[maremp]

3 hours ago, GOTSpectrum said:

have you looked into modular AIO kits for your GPU, see if thats an option 

I've searched but haven't found much, only things like this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/k1bf4l/for_the_brave_6800xt_owners_aio_compatibility/

I'm not exactly sure what EKWB product do they mention, I think it's this: https://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-quantum-reaction-aio-rx-6800-6900-d-rgb-p240-amd-radeon-edition

Which is EOL so no hope of getting one and basing from the Wayback Machine, the list price was $399, which is just too much.

 

But even before reading the thread above, I've heard concerns that generic AIOs usually do not cover other parts of the gpu, so memory and other chips can heat way over the comfortable range.

 

But another interesting thing I've found is Alphacool's AIO specific for 6800xt/6900xt: https://www.alphacool.com/shop/aios-sets/gpu-aio/29336/alphacool-eiswolf-2-aio-360mm-radeon-rx-6800/6800xt-strix/tuf-with-backplate

 

But even at this lower price compared to EKWB I'm not sure, 270€ for GPU AIO and another 100-150€ for CPU is already more than a half of the price of a custom loop. 

[GOTSpectrum]

4 minutes ago, maremp said:

I've searched but haven't found much, only things like this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/k1bf4l/for_the_brave_6800xt_owners_aio_compatibility/

I'm not exactly sure what EKWB product do they mention, I think it's this: https://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-quantum-reaction-aio-rx-6800-6900-d-rgb-p240-amd-radeon-edition

Which is EOL so no hope of getting one and basing from the Wayback Machine, the list price was $399, which is just too much.

 

But even before reading the thread above, I've heard concerns that generic AIOs usually do not cover other parts of the gpu, so memory and other chips can heat way over the comfortable range.

 

But another interesting thing I've found is Alphacool's AIO specific for 6800xt/6900xt: https://www.alphacool.com/shop/aios-sets/gpu-aio/29336/alphacool-eiswolf-2-aio-360mm-radeon-rx-6800/6800xt-strix/tuf-with-backplate

 

But even at this lower price compared to EKWB I'm not sure, 270€ for GPU AIO and another 100-150€ for CPU is already more than a half of the price of a custom loop. 

I was thinking something like this, you would have to confirm its compatibility though

 

https://nzxt.com/en-GB/product/kraken-g12 

 

Even has active cooling for the other parts. Just grab any aio with the same mount

[maremp]

12 minutes ago, GOTSpectrum said:

https://nzxt.com/en-GB/product/kraken-g12 

Do you have any experience with this? I wonder how well it performs and how loud is the additional built-in fan? 

[GOTSpectrum]

3 minutes ago, maremp said:

Do you have any experience with this? I wonder how well it performs and how loud is the additional built-in fan? 

I have tested a card with this added to it, it was pretty quiet, that isn't a blower fan, it just like a regular case fan so it isn't any louder than one of those

[airborne spoon]

water cooling is always the answer. I don't do anything much on my computer and i water cool it because its fun, looks cool, and i just enjoy the build process of bending all the tubing. I say if you have the disposable income to support going water cooled then go do it.

[thrasher_565]

https://www.alphacool.com/download/datasheet/ENG_14459_Alphacool_Eiswolf_2_AIO_360mm_Radeon_RX_6800-6800XT_Strix-TUF_with_Backplate_datasheet.pdf

[maremp]

On 11/17/2022 at 10:19 PM, airborne spoon said:

water cooling is always the answer. I don't do anything much on my computer and i water cool it because its fun, looks cool, and i just enjoy the build process of bending all the tubing. I say if you have the disposable income to support going water cooled then go do it.

I've ended up doing exactly that and in hindsight, I totally agree. I'm very happy with the low temps and practically silent operation even at high load. And it was interesting to build, I've learned something new.