Honest advice please.

[Spev]

Alright guys, man this makes me so mad to talk about. So for the past 1-2 months I have been learning about water cooling. I was super excited to do it. In my new build (check sig for info) I was planning to go freaking ham and water cool my cpu AND my gpu as well. This wasn't a water build for the faint of heart, here were/are the expenses.

 

$166 - Alphacool rads xt45, 240 and 360 

$60 - Raystorm CPU block

$56 - Current expense for accessories (tubing/fittings/coil, etc)

$80 - Swiftech MCp655tm

$50 - EK x3 150 reservoir

$135 - EK GTX 970 waterblock (the EVGA FTW isn't released yet judging by their recent 970 block I'm saying $135)

$50-75 - Extra compression fittings/tubing needed for loop.

 

Some of these are guestimates, but here's a rough total: $622......hory shet.

 

 

 

 

Here's my current thoughts........drop my plans. I already own the Alphacool rads, and the $56 expense which is not refundable. I can still return the Alphacool rads if I wanted to. Might have to pay a $10 restocking fee. Everything else HASN'T been ordered. Now I have three options:

 

Option 1: Keep one of the Alphacool rads, purchase Raystorm block for $60. Use my current/old XSPC bay res pump and liquid cool my CPU. After returning one rad, and purchasing the block, accounting for restocking fee, I would probably not owe or get back much at all, within margin of error you could say. Then go SLI with 970s.

 

Option 2: Return both Alphacool rads. Use my Noctua NH-U14s as my CPU cooler, already owned. Drop liquid cooling completely...........go SLI 970s.

 

Option 3: Go with the water cooling and cool CPU/GPU. Only one GTX970, two water cooled 970s would just be too damn expensive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I sat down tonight pondering my expensive, I just said holy shit. it's not that I don't have the money, if I wanted to, I could do this and call it a day. However, not only is there the hassle of setting this up, but It's going to cost me probably 200+ more dollars than going SLI would. Yes, my case won't be as "bad ass" and I won't be able to have super low GPU temps, BUT my performance would take a huge jump for the better with two 970s. I would SAVE money doing this, and have two graphics cards.....I have never done SLI before, but after thinking this over I became to reconsider my water cooling ideas........

 

 

 

 

 

 

For any of you that have taken the time to read though this, thank you. Now I would appreciate your advice. I'm guessing most people might tell me to go SLI, if not that's ok please give me your honest answer. But man when I think about it what's the point? My GTX 970 currently is around 72C under heavy load, nothing dangerous. I have never SLId before so I'm not sure how temps go, would it be much hotter in my case with two GPUs? I'm not sure, but anyways let me know what you guys think I should do. Thanks.

[Excon]

Full custom loops arent for everyone, if you think you need the performance more than the looks then by all means go for it.

[Dredgy]

@Spev watercooling is for aesthetics and fun, performance gains are minimal, and performance-wise it will almost always be better to buy new hardware.

 

$662 could buy you new graphics cards, more RAM, more storage.

Heck, it's almost enough to upgrade your system to X79 with a 6 core CPU.

 

So your performance will be much better SLI. But if you want looks, or want a fun project and learn a new skill, watercooling is where it's at.

[Deroven]

Aye, as said. It depends on whether you want to build a watercooled PC or not.

Basically, will you have more fun fiddling with the coolers and stuff, or playing games with your SLI cards, and not fiddling with your PC?

Building PC's higher than the "normal" specification really makes no sense in the long run, but it's an hobby... I guess.