Is Water-Cooling worth it?

[BathSaltZombie]

Def worth it, especially with a build like yours.  now days they're pretty reasonably priced, they perform great, my H105 keeps my 4690k very chilly.  I checked temp last night after 2 hours of gaming at it was 30 Celsius.  Also, they look great, and with a 2.5k build you gonna have some nice components to show off.

[Spev]

I'm planning on building a PC with a $2.5k budget, but I have one question. Is water-cooling worth it? Water-cooling adds more time to building a PC and adds another $100 or so to the price. But it also improves performance and of course, cooling. 

 

Current plan: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/gvHdWZ

I love my water cooled PC. I didn't go the AIO path because I don't trust them in my PC, so I went custom loop. Everytime I look/think about it I feel accomplished. I worked really hard on putting together/picking out parts for my custom CPU/GPU loop, spent a couple months selecting my parts. But whenever I see something that I wanna spend money on (ie: hey look at the Surface 3! Oh cool Apple Watch, etc, etc) I always think back to my loop. I just added up all my cost out of pure curiosity.........I spent over $900 bucks on my custom loop.......wow. Was it worth it? Hell no. I coulda bought a lot of **** with that. Now my GPU runs at like 30c and so does my CPU lol, neither even think about breaking 40c ever even while gaming/rendering. But it's not worth it. I'm not stretched for cash (obviously or I wouldn't have been able to spend that much on an "optional" feature) but looking back I would have liked to spend that money elsewhere, cause I'm not bathing in cash either. Like I could have bought a Surface 3 with that cash or something which would have been sick. Unless you are an Ub3r 0v3Rc1Oc3r don't waste your time/money. It was a bit frustrating to me to setup as well. Like I said it is sick and I love the end result, but next time I will almost 100% be going with air cooling. You can look at my specs in my sig. Although for my uses (this is my gaming PC) I don't need x99, DDR4, or anything like that, it would have been a better use of my money. Shit, I could have bought a freaking Titan X. My 980 was $550 something. Add that cost to my loop cost and it's around $1500 bucks. I could have bought an OD ridiculous card like a titan X, air cooled, and still SAVED $500 bucks. This is why it's not worth it. Spend your money on hardware and just get a beast as air cooler. A top of the line air cooler will be like $100 tops (ie: Noctua NH-D15 or comparable). For some odd reason I was really concerned with how my PC looked when I built my most recent one. I'm honestly the only one who really sees it besides a few of my friends lol. But all the cash is not worth it. With all the money I poured into this PC, I won't be upgrading for a while, at least a year. I won't really need to anyways, my 980 should last me a while & I don't upgrade every generation like most people. But next time I build my PC (already excited to do so lol) I will focus much more on hardware. Like I might do a RAID setup with some SSDs, go with top of the line mobos/CPUs like x99, spend that extra "water cooling cash" on a beast ass GPU like the next gen titan or something. To me that is much more worth. My logic while building this PC was "well I don't NEED x99, Titan, DDR4, etc, so I'll spend that cash on water cooling stuff since upgrading hardware won't benefit me for my uses much", but still. As I mentioned previously I could have spend that on even non-pc related things like a surface, or even just saved the money. 

 

Hopefully you read this and think about it. AIO route (that I avoided) is obviously easy to setup and not very expensive (around same price as top air coolers) but if you go custom loop (& want to do a GOOD job and not cheap out) a loop for CPU/GPU is gonna set you back. Like it's like $500 minimum if you buy like a CPU kit and a GPU block separate. You add little things here & there & pretty soon you add a couple hundred bucks. I just don't think it's worth it. Buy a good air cooler and spend your money on hardware. Your PC may not be as "1337" as others but you'll have a lot more dough either in your pocket or invested into your hardware. This is the route I will take when building my next PC (unless I'm just reallly bored, or have an excess amount of cash growing on the tree in my back yard).

[X_Rated_Box]

Diminishing returns when it comes to water cooling

But it is worth it for the experience and sense of achievement 

+1 yep thats pretty much how it it but if you dont want to go with a good Aio and baller parts ;D

[ker2015]

It depends really. If you are just getting it because you can then that's pretty much wasting money. However, if you have a CPU or GPU that gets too hot/is known for it like a 9370 or a 9590 then water cooling is worth it. If you are overclocking you kinda have to in most cases. I mean my Raspberry Pi Model B is oced, but that doesn't even have a cooler then again it is an ARM processor which rarely heat up at all aka why AMD has been working with them. If you want it for the look by all means, but the type of watercooling is up to you. If you are too lazy to take care of an open loop system/custom then I'd go with something like an AIO closed loop by thermaltake, corsair, nzxt, or any with high reviews/known not to leak...thermaltake wins with sturdiness in my opnion. If you don't really need it though, and you want to focus your budget on power than you could just get a 212 evo. http://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master-Hyper-212-RR-212E-20PK-R2/dp/B005O65JXI These go for like 30 bucks, and they are really good air coolers.

Would the i5-4690k OC'd require a CPU AIO?

It depends really. If you are just getting it because you can then that's pretty much wasting money. However, if you have a CPU or GPU that gets too hot/is known for it like a 9370 or a 9590 then water cooling is worth it. If you are overclocking you kinda have to in most cases. I mean my Raspberry Pi Model B is oced, but that doesn't even have a cooler then again it is an ARM processor which rarely heat up at all aka why AMD has been working with them. If you want it for the look by all means, but the type of watercooling is up to you. If you are too lazy to take care of an open loop system/custom then I'd go with something like an AIO closed loop by thermaltake, corsair, nzxt, or any with high reviews/known not to leak...thermaltake wins with sturdiness in my opnion. If you don't really need it though, and you want to focus your budget on power than you could just get a 212 evo. http://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master-Hyper-212-RR-212E-20PK-R2/dp/B005O65JXI These go for like 30 bucks, and they are really good air coolers.

[ker2015]

Thank you for taking your time to share your recommendations! You have been very helpful and have given me something to think about. The message I have taken is that; as long as I don't have a tree that grows money as leaves, I shouldn't go all out in a water-cooling loop. The money going into that loop could be used somewhere else. Also, I thank you for sharing your experience with the water-cooling solution. Have a nice night! *kindly tips fedora*

I love my water cooled PC. I didn't go the AIO path because I don't trust them in my PC, so I went custom loop. Everytime I look/think about it I feel accomplished. I worked really hard on putting together/picking out parts for my custom CPU/GPU loop, spent a couple months selecting my parts. But whenever I see something that I wanna spend money on (ie: hey look at the Surface 3! Oh cool Apple Watch, etc, etc) I always think back to my loop. I just added up all my cost out of pure curiosity.........I spent over $900 bucks on my custom loop.......wow. Was it worth it? Hell no. I coulda bought a lot of **** with that. Now my GPU runs at like 30c and so does my CPU lol, neither even think about breaking 40c ever even while gaming/rendering. But it's not worth it. I'm not stretched for cash (obviously or I wouldn't have been able to spend that much on an "optional" feature) but looking back I would have liked to spend that money elsewhere, cause I'm not bathing in cash either. Like I could have bought a Surface 3 with that cash or something which would have been sick. Unless you are an Ub3r 0v3Rc1Oc3r don't waste your time/money. It was a bit frustrating to me to setup as well. Like I said it is sick and I love the end result, but next time I will almost 100% be going with air cooling. You can look at my specs in my sig. Although for my uses (this is my gaming PC) I don't need x99, DDR4, or anything like that, it would have been a better use of my money. Shit, I could have bought a freaking Titan X. My 980 was $550 something. Add that cost to my loop cost and it's around $1500 bucks. I could have bought an OD ridiculous card like a titan X, air cooled, and still SAVED $500 bucks. This is why it's not worth it. Spend your money on hardware and just get a beast as air cooler. A top of the line air cooler will be like $100 tops (ie: Noctua NH-D15 or comparable). For some odd reason I was really concerned with how my PC looked when I built my most recent one. I'm honestly the only one who really sees it besides a few of my friends lol. But all the cash is not worth it. With all the money I poured into this PC, I won't be upgrading for a while, at least a year. I won't really need to anyways, my 980 should last me a while & I don't upgrade every generation like most people. But next time I build my PC (already excited to do so lol) I will focus much more on hardware. Like I might do a RAID setup with some SSDs, go with top of the line mobos/CPUs like x99, spend that extra "water cooling cash" on a beast ass GPU like the next gen titan or something. To me that is much more worth. My logic while building this PC was "well I don't NEED x99, Titan, DDR4, etc, so I'll spend that cash on water cooling stuff since upgrading hardware won't benefit me for my uses much", but still. As I mentioned previously I could have spend that on even non-pc related things like a surface, or even just saved the money.

Hopefully you read this and think about it. AIO route (that I avoided) is obviously easy to setup and not very expensive (around same price as top air coolers) but if you go custom loop (& want to do a GOOD job and not cheap out) a loop for CPU/GPU is gonna set you back. Like it's like $500 minimum if you buy like a CPU kit and a GPU block separate. You add little things here & there & pretty soon you add a couple hundred bucks. I just don't think it's worth it. Buy a good air cooler and spend your money on hardware. Your PC may not be as "1337" as others but you'll have a lot more dough either in your pocket or invested into your hardware. This is the route I will take when building my next PC (unless I'm just reallly bored, or have an excess amount of cash growing on the tree in my back yard).

[Maxwit44]

I'm planning on building a PC with a $2.5k budget, but I have one question. Is water-cooling worth it? Water-cooling adds more time to building a PC and adds another $100 or so to the price. But it also improves performance and of course, cooling. 

 

Current plan: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/gvHdWZ

 

Short answer : No. You can easily double your build cost pending on what  and how your water cooling, and how many fittings you need.

                      : Yes. It can look really nice, if done right, and careful time and planing is put into it.

 

Long answer: TLDR

[0ld_Chicken]

Overclocking the cpu will only damage it if your temps are reaching dangerous levels (90-100+) you can still get a moderate overclock on a quality air cooler. I went with an aio and ended up switching back because the temp drop was not worth having water circulating around my computer. The aio dropped my cpu temps about 10c under load

[ker2015]

The i5 would only require it if you plan to overclock it, but otherwise a 212 evo is fine. You will get lower temps though with the AIO, but the 212 evo can still do the job just fine and keep it alive the same if not oced. Neither will give extra life unless you plan to overclock it. Because ocing increases heat dramatically, so I'd go with something like these...http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=thermaltake+3.0 or http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_11?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=corsair+all+in+one+liquid+cooler&sprefix=corsair+all+in+one+liquid+cooler%2Caps%2C156&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Acorsair+all+in+one+liquid+cooler or http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_10?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=kraken+water+cooler&sprefix=kraken+water+cooler%2Caps%2C128&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Akraken+water+cooler current i5s and i7s that capable of ocing can reach higher temps than a lot of AMDs, but both heat up way past safe temps on air. So, ya watercooling is required. The thermaltakes are the least likely to OC. But, you still need thermalpaste between the latch and the the processor. I'd suggest arctic silver 5 for that.

Thanks for the suggestions! I will add the AIO and thermal paste to the price calculation.

[ker2015]

Overclocking the cpu will only damage it if your temps are reaching dangerous levels (90-100+) you can still get a moderate overclock on a quality air cooler. I went with an aio and ended up switching back because the temp drop was not worth having water circulating around my computer. The aio dropped my cpu temps about 10c under load

10c!? That's great! What AIO did you use?

[0ld_Chicken]

10c!? That's great! What AIO did you use?

Raijintek triton. neat looking unit but I'm just to nervous a person for watercooling I suppose.

[ker2015]

Raijintek triton. neat looking unit but I'm just to nervous a person for watercooling I suppose.

That's fine, it is not for everyone. But thanks for the recommendation! Every bit helps.