Water Cooling Yes or No – Any advice welcome - Question about noise and Maintenance

[silent-fan]

Hope the text is okay, english is not my first language.

 

 

I will treat myself with a new computer soon. This time, I was thinking about water-cooling it because of the high heat GPUs and CPUs give off nowadays. It would be my first water-cooled-system. I am struggling with 2 issues though on which I find little to no information and the information is conflicting as well.

 

 

Maybe you guys can give me some insight from your experiences? Any advice is very much appreciated.

 

 

1. Maintenance / Longevity.

I want to do this build as a “one-time-thing” and would be quite annoyed If I have to do any maintenance at all (like changing the water or the tubing or anything like that). I used my current system for a good 5 years and I am planning to do the same thing with this build. The system will be staying inside (protected from UV-light) and completely stationary. I will be using only high-quality components and water of course. Can I expect the water-cooling to run for 5+ years maintenance-free without leaking or clogging by itself? I know that I have to get the dust off the fans from time to time and stuff like that, but is more maintenance required for water-cooling than with an air-cooled system?

 

 

2. Noise of the pump in idle

I am a bit of a silent-computer-fanatic and don’t want to hear the system at all while in idle. With air-cooled-system this is no problem (my current system is basically silent unless I am very very close to it) with high-quality low-noise fans and a noise-insulating case.

The pump will be running on idle of course, and if I the pump makes some noise, than it doesn’t matter how quiet the fans are. I don’t find any information online about the noise of the pump unfortunately. People seem to be only testing whole systems, preferably under load and I don’t need this information since I know air-parts will be silent as they are now. Maybe some of you have experience with this or had similar concerns as well?

 

 

Other factors like costs are not really an issue. I am most concerned with the noise and the maintenance / longevity.

 

 

Thanks again, as I said, any shared experience is very much appreciated.

 

Edit: If you can reccomend a specific pump that is really quiet, that would be very good of course

Edited October 21, 2023 by silent-fan

[Acewing]

If you're unsure, I always say go with air

 

But in the first place, what are your planned PC specs?

[IkeaGnome]

5 minutes ago, silent-fan said:

and would be quite annoyed If I have to do any maintenance at all (like changing the water or the tubing or anything like that).

Go air cooling. 

[RONOTHAN##]

3 minutes ago, silent-fan said:

I want to do this build as a “one-time-thing” and would be quite annoyed If I have to do any maintenance at all (like changing the water or the tubing or anything like that)

Then don't do custom water cooling. AIOs might be OK for this, but their reliability is a little hit or miss past the 3 year mark. With a custom water loop you want to swap the fluid about once a year. 

 

5 minutes ago, silent-fan said:

The pump will be running on idle of course, and if I the pump makes some noise, than it doesn’t matter how quiet the fans are. I don’t find any information online about the noise of the pump unfortunately.

If you find a D5 pump, those things make next to no noise at all times. A pump will usually only make noise if it's dying. 

 

Basically, given your maintenance requirements, an AIO might be OK, but I'd probably just stick to air cooling if you can. Unless you're going for a 14700K/14900K, this isn't likely to be too much of a problem. 

[silent-fan]

It will be high-end stuff. 14900K and 4090 with lots of RAM and SSDs. I haven't decided on the precise specs since I don't know if I will be cooling with air or water.

[PDifolco]

2 minutes ago, silent-fan said:

It will be high-end stuff. 14900K and 4090 with lots of RAM and SSDs. I haven't decided on the precise specs since I don't know if I will be cooling with air or water.

A 14900K kinda need at least a 360 rad, even the biggest aircoolers can't really manage 250W+ (Noctua rates the DH-15 for 180W..) 

If you don't want any maintenance go for a reputable brand AIO with possibly a long warranty, for example Arctic has a 6 years limited warranty that would apply if the pump fails I think

If you  want watercooling for the GPU you need either a custom loop or get  a GPU AIO , there's  some by Alphacool, Corsair  and NZXT, but really it's not needed on  a 4090, they've excellent cooling

 

 

 

[Bananasplit_00]

You don't want to do maintenance? Go air.

 

You should replace your coolant something like yearly and clean the loop when you have it apart. Soft tubes also have a finite life, the heat will get to them. The clear ones go bad much earlier than the black stuff.

[silent-fan]

5 minutes ago, PDifolco said:

A 14900K kinda need at least a 360 rad, even the biggest aircoolers can't really manage 250W+ (Noctua rates the DH-15 for 180W..)

That is why I am thinking about watercooling. Otherwise I would be fine with air. I don't want to overclock or anything, but it would be nice to get the full power off the CPU

Quote

go for a reputable brand AIO with possibly a long warranty, for example Arctic has a 6 years limited warranty

That makes a lot of sense, thanks. Maybe this is a good option. Do you know anything about the noise that the AIO-pump makes?

 

[Shimejii]

36 minutes ago, silent-fan said:

It will be high-end stuff. 14900K and 4090 with lots of RAM and SSDs. I haven't decided on the precise specs since I don't know if I will be cooling with air or water.

Do you actually need a 14900k? What will you be doing with the computer that you require the 14900k in your mind? Most people will be fine with a 14600k/14700k or 7800x3D if you are just gaming.

 

13900k/14900k have to be tuned a bit, otherwise they will just be quite hot. id say just get a 360mm AIO and replace it every 3-5 years, since air cooling may be a bit more restrictive.

 

Also get an ILM replacement plate, you dont need the 60$ Thermal Grizzly one.

[PDifolco]

28 minutes ago, silent-fan said:

That is why I am thinking about watercooling. Otherwise I would be fine with air. I don't want to overclock or anything, but it would be nice to get the full power off the CPU

That makes a lot of sense, thanks. Maybe this is a good option. Do you know anything about the noise that the AIO-pump makes?

 

Thank you

It may be me, I don't have a super good ear, but I didn't ever heard my pumps, and had up  to 3 with 2 AIOs linked with a additional D5 pump...

 

 

[silent-fan]

7 minutes ago, Shimejii said:

Do you actually need a 14900k? What will you be doing with the computer that you require the 14900k in your mind?

Well, "need" is a big word, of course. But by now, I do need a new system alltogether since my current system really is a bit aged (7th gen Intel). I am planning to use the new system for many years and simply want to go high-end so that I don't have to upgrade every 2 years. And since the 14900k with a 4090 is the fastest there is as of now, so I would like to go for that.

[silent-fan]

3 minutes ago, PDifolco said:

It may be me, I don't have a super good ear, but I didn't ever heard my pumps, and had up  to 3 with 2 AIOs linked with a additional D5 pump...

Thanks a lot, that is very herlpful information

[PDifolco]

8 minutes ago, silent-fan said:

Well, "need" is a big word, of course. But by now, I do need a new system alltogether since my current system really is a bit aged (7th gen Intel). I am planning to use the new system for many years and simply want to go high-end so that I don't have to upgrade every 2 years. And since the 14900k with a 4090 is the fastest there is as of now, so I would like to go for that.

What are you going to do with the rig ?

If you're gaming a 7800X3D has same gaming performance than a 14900K for less than 50% power consumption

And a 4090 only makes sense at 4K or in a few graphics intensive game at 1440p with RT, else it'll be totally bottlenecked by any CPU even a 14900K

 

[thrasher_565]

i think the 14900k still bottle necks the 4090 so you will need to replace the cpu to get the full power of the 4090 anyway...

[thrasher_565]

7 hours ago, Schnoz said:

The definition of a "bottleneck" depends widely on what application you're using. A 13900K system with an RTX 2060 that I worked on recently wasn't bottlenecked by the GPU because the owner used it for non-GPU intensive tasks, such as stock trading.

 

Not to mention that the 14900K is literally the fastest thing Intel has right now. It's the second-fastest gaming CPU, and it beats Ryzen in productivity tasks.

 

 

you dont buy a 4090 to do stocks...

a13900k and 2060 is a better pair

 

i think you missed the point... with the 4090 and 14900K  the gpu will staty at 50% used for the 5+ years

[thrasher_565]

Just now, Schnoz said:

Stay 50% used for what? Which application? Which resolution?

 

If you're talking about something like 1080p gaming, which is CPU-intensive, then yeah, the CPU is likely to be the bottleneck. But at 4K gaming, which is GPU intensive, then the GPU is basically bound to be fully utilized.

 

Gaming aside, some applications have almost no possible CPU bottleneck. For instance, Folding@Home uses so little CPU that one of the relatively weak cores of my 2699A V4 (each core is a Broadwell core that only goes up to 3.6 GHz) is enough to handle two 2080 Tis at full tilt. There is no bottleneck there.

 

If you're pairing a 4090 with a 14900K, you're pairing the fastest GPU with one of the fastest CPUs. You can't say what's bottlenecking what without further knowledge on what's actually being run.

no no matter what app you use the gpu will be 50% even at 4k. the cpu is too weak to send enough stuff to the gpu to make it work...

 

[thrasher_565]

4 minutes ago, Schnoz said:

 

This is an oversimplification. I can guarantee you that, if I stick a 4090 in my 2699A V4 system right now and run Folding@Home on it, it will perform exactly as well as other people running 4090s in 14900K systems. Because what's happening there is:

 

CPU: "Here, take this data. Don't come back to me until it's finished."

GPU: "Okay, I'll calculate it for you!" (doesn't return until several thousand clock cycles later)

 

In this case, the CPU barely has to send any data to the GPU. It just needs to sit around and occasionally do work. In this way, even a comparatively weak CPU can handle a powerful GPU.

thats not how it works...and i never said it wont work it just a wast of moeny and op dose not want to to any matnace. no cpu upgrades. built it and forget it. it would stay cool and quiet well the cpu runs balls out 100% all the time. witch is a hot cpu and most likely kill the aio much faster. since they dont want to upgrade it be better buying a gpu that gets used 90% (dont no what that be)

[thrasher_565]

26 minutes ago, Schnoz said:

I'm taking university-level computer-science courses, and I can say that is definitely how it works. The 14900K is far more than powerful enough to drive a 4090 for nearly all applications.

 

Think about it--if the 4090 was just so flippin' powerful that no current CPU, not even the current-gen, top-end 14900K, could even handle 50% of its power, reviewers would have pointed it out, and it would have a negligible performance lead over the 4080, since...y'know, modern CPUs wouldn't be able to drive it to its full potential.

 

That isn't the case though. Not only is the 4090 faster than the 4080, it's a full 25% faster at 4K, on average.

 

 

You can have a system that spits out a ton of heat while running cool and quiet. My system is exactly that. Dumping over 1,600W of heat with the CPU remaining at 50 C and the GPUs at 65 C.

 

This is not an AIO we're talking about. This is a full-custom loop. The D5 pump will easily be able to handle elevated coolant temperatures, along with everything else in the rig, assuming reasonable parts selection. The advice I have in the first reply I made here is personal experience for creating a long-lasting rig even in the most stressing conditions.

 

op dose not want to do maintenance so not recommending a custom loop...

 

an aio is the only thing the can kinda cool it even then its iffy and may not use the full cpu

 

just because your taking university-level computer-science courses dose not mean your right.

 

all the reviews say that the 14900K cant max out the 4090... no idea were you got that they say they dont...

 

the 4090 is the fastest gpu out there of cores it would beat the 4080...

 

i dont want to keep saying the same thing over and over thats not what i want to be doing all im going to say about this.

 

i get my facts wrong too all the time im getting older and hard to remember things...

 

ill point this out its ok to buy a 4090 IF your going to upgrade cpus...

Edited October 22, 2023 by thrasher_565

[thrasher_565]

1 hour ago, Schnoz said:

 

ok so i think i got it backwards my bad. looks like the cpu it too powerful i think? witch would be fine for futcher upgrades i guess. could also be that pcores and ecores use different % and there displaying the wrong one with msi afterburner?

regardless you would be wasting moeny

 

i cant exsplane how water cooling works and why some needs filling up more often then others. im guessing its heat but i dont no. tdp is not the things to use.

 

my dads old system (i5-3570K oced with 2x 360 and d5 pump) thow that was just the cpu not gpu) and his custom loop went 2 years with no matnace well i heard others having to refill there loop like once a week?

Edited October 22, 2023 by thrasher_565