Custom Water Cooling

[Supermast]

Thinking of water cooling my rig seeing that everyone including linus has his custom watercooled pc.But will i have to deal with leakage or built up residue in the resivoir or i should just stick with a pre filled water cooling unit. Plse advise

Thinking of water cooling my rig seeing that everyone including linus has his custom watercooled pc.But will i have to deal with leakage or built up residue in the resivoir or i should just stick with a pre filled water cooling unit. Plse advise me water cooling enthusiasts.

[Enderman]

very few people have a custom watercooled PC. less than 1% of PCs in the world have custom liquid cooling, it just seems like more because this is a tech forum.

and custom loops are very expensive, over $500 for a good quality one so unless you want to spend that much plus a lot of work, just buy an AiO which will perform well too

[MrChavelo]

First of all, do you need to watercool your parts?

 

If yes, and you do not have money falling out of your butt, and you do not want to take the risk of damaging any components, then take a prefilled one.

 

Otherwise -> custom

[Syte]

Pre Filled AIO water cooling is infinitely easier. Water cooling custom loop is for those who want to challenge their enthusiast skills and want their system to reflect that challenge. Other than better GPU cooling there is no (inherent) performance benefit to basic custom looping compared to a good AIO. But it gives you full control of your system, it lets you choose what pump you want, what flow rate it's running at, how much radiator space you need, what colour/style you want your tubes in, what coolant you want to use, what fans, where you want everything to go, how you want it to look, etc. There is a performance benefit on the very high end of things due to higher potential flow rate and a better radiator in a custom loop, but is the lower 2-5 degrees really worth $100-$200 more for performance sake? No, absolutely not.

 

For me it's like 144Hz, once you hit that magical 144FPS 60 FPS and air/AIO cooling becomes "just playable" instead of "good."

 

The irony is my 5820k isn't that heavily overclocked since I'd prefer to run it light rather than heavy on voltage. Probably because I plan on leapfrogging the Broadwell-E launch.

 

Damage to components occurs because of carelessness the vast majority of the time, even if you somehow get water on your components it's distilled water, just properly remove it and you're fine. Leaks don't happen if you do things right, if you go HAM and use 50 different compression 90 degree angle fittings chances are one of them will eventually break over time especially with hard-tubing, but if you use soft-tubing and good compression screw-on fittings you're talking decades before they fail if you install them correctly, and even then when the o-ring fails it'll probably leave the fitting clogged so no water can escape anyway, I've seen this before.

[GhostHitWall]

watercooling for performance, go with a AIO or high-end tower cooler.
for the look, it's really just subjective , but i assume you will like custom loop.
A custom loop often involves certain modding. That's the fun and also the extra work.

Overall, I think if you are still asking whether it's worth it or not, you should stay with pre-filled at his moment.

They got the performance and price/performance and look.

A custom loop even for a simple soft tubing needs way more attention, unless you know by certain you want to make this sort of hobby or at least enjoy it, dont go for it.

[Shaaaddoooww]

Custom loop>all. I dropped 20-30C off load temps during rendering after I switched to a custom loop from a corsair aio. I'm mildy overclocked though, and I ran the AIO for 3 years at a decent OC. Ofc I bumped that up a bit more when i went custom loop . As long as you put thought into how everything will be, it's not all that bad. Assembly is easiest IMO and the hardest thing for me is bleeding air out.

[spwath]

Custom loop is only if you want it, you never need it.

 

I wanted it, so i got it.

[bobbywave]

If you only care about overclocking your CPU, or you have a very efficient GPU (I'm looking at you Maxwell) there is little performance benefit to a full custom loop over a decent AIO with a 240mm radiator. 

 

Maxwell GPU's have been able to hit TDP cap on air cooling even at max voltage with safe-ish temps (of course they could be better, and lower temps generally results in a longer life).

 

I however have a pair of 7950's and an FX-8350 in my loop with a 3x120mm and a 3x140mm radiator. It dropped my GPU temps 23 degrees Celsius and gave me the headroom i needed to up the voltage on my GPU's and get a better overclock.

 

Also, building my own loop as been a great experience, albeit an expensive one.

 

The choice is yours, on forums there are always going to be differing opinions. It depends on your dedication to maximum performance, your love of pushing boundaries, and of course the size of your pocket book.