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Chipset/Mosfet etc worth watercooling?

JordanMac
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Basically im planning a build thats watercooled and my question is; What should I watercool?

CPU and GPU is a given but is it worth cooling the chipset, Mosfet, North/South Bridge etc

What do you think is worth watercooling?

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Pretty much tested to death and no, makes ZERO difference to performance. It is very expensive "bling" and just makes your loop more complicated and expensive...

Water cool the CPU and GPU's. Ensure some decent airflow still exists in the case to cool everything else...

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well i have to disagree. some motherboards have faster a heat failure in the vrm's on air when the cpu is on water and you want to overclock. VRM's can get really hot, though it doesn't make any performance improvements. it is purely if you have heat problems. else, don't do it.

On the amd FX platform, it is recommended that you also watercool your NB. this is my threshold now...

but after all, watercooling your vrm's is a better idea than watercooling your ram.

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but if there is a fan on the chipset (compare: asus rampage IV extreme) i would definitely buy a waterblock for it. Because you do the watercooling to have a quiet system :)

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There is no performance gain from water cooling the NB mosfets and chipset/SB but if you have temp problems and are either currently water cooling or going to then you can. For most people its just like water cooling ram its entirely for show and there is no benefit from it.

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If you're overclocking then you might want to look into some vrm watercooling or alternative air channeling for the following reasons.

Those VRM heatsinks have been designed for an airflow situation of straight down onto the motherboard, meaning that they'll get some air cooling from the cpu cooler. Which you just removed by fitting a waterblock.The reason you've bought a waterblock is to overclock, otherwise you could have spent a lot less money on a cooler/quieter situation at stock speeds.

The components that are going to have to deal with your overclock are the VRM's as it down to them to proved stable power upto and beyond the maximum power draw of the packaged (CPU&Socket)

What it comes down to is the chassis you decide to run this all in, does it have roof fans, side fans and can you get enough airflow across the VRM's to ensure they continue to cool sufficiently. Can you choose or configure your radiators and fans such that you get decent airflow across them.

If you can get reasonable airflow across them then watercooling does become an appearance thing and more of a headache to tube up.

Choose your chassis/case wisely and none of this should be a problem.

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Depends on what you're doing. Extreme overclocking, yes to a point. You won't see much benefit from chipset waterblocks except on older setups that tend to run warmer. I know we had to WC the northbridge on some 775/1336 motherboards to be able to up the OC. On most modern setups the chipset is pointless to OC except for looks. You will certainly notice a difference on some boards when cooling the VRMs as once they hit a point they will start to throttle the OC.

That being said though, you can't always effectively WC everything. The RIVE for example, has some on the back of the motherboard, so your best best there is to throw some VRAM heatsinks on the back plate and have some airflow back there to help stop throttling on high overclocks (4.8GHz and up generally).

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There is no difference unless you want a really high overclock, where it is important to keep the VRMs cool.

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From what I've heard, if you have decent airflow in your case, the passive heatsinks on the VRMs are fine on 1155, but on 2011, you probably will need some additional cooling for 2011 at very high overclocks. I have no idea about AMD.

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I watercool my R4E, but only to eliminate the fan noise. It doesn't make that much of a diference, unless your doing some extreme overclocking. By extreme, I mean >5ghz.

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  • 1 year later...
Posted

Only if you're smart enough to use the appropriate spacers, angle fittings and SLI connectors / acrylic tubing to create hard joins between components.

 

Otherwise 'woop de doo' your mosfets are cooler, but your system looks like the flying spaghetti monster made love to an IBM Thinkpad on steroids

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I'm actually going to watercool my chipset. I have the R4E and all I can hear is my Chipsset fan. When I stop it with my finger then all I can still hear is my CPU Fan. (Dark Rock 2 @ the moment)

I'm looking for a quiet system and actually not planning to overclock the chipset....

 

appreciate your addition to this more than a year old thread.

but, in the future, it is best to create a thread of your own and use a link to source this thread.

 

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