Should I water cool dual GTX 660s or should I use fans?

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JOHONDAR

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Nov 11, 2013
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I am looking to water cool my system, it has 2 GTX 660s in SLI and a Core i5 3570k. I ran the cards on Unigine Heaven for about an hour and they hit and remained pretty steady at 80 degrees celsius. I want to get that number down and I want to use water cooling to do it.

My question is this, Should I just use something like a Corsair Hydro for the CPU and use the money from the water cooling on some really nice fans since I have six spots for them, or should I water cool the whole thing?

It seems that these cards simply don't put out enough heat to justify the money it would take to do this.

P.S. I want to overclock, not a whole bunch though, I'm not brave enough to go to far with that.
 
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clonazepam
Water cooling the cards could allow you to squeeze out higher clocks from the graphics cards. This could give you some additional performance. What will that additional performance translate into? Will it be adding more frames per second to an already smooth, enjoyable experience? Are you concerned about 80c? 80c is a great temp, imho.

Water cooling the entire system is extremely fun to plan, lay out, and put together. You'll spend quite a bit of money doing this, however. It's just like building a model, and then setting it on a shelf to glance at, and smile at your accomplishment.

I'm willing to bet most or all of your components will reach their maximum clocks in an air configuration, and water cooling will simply lower their...
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Danzas4321

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Jul 4, 2013
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i wouldnt worry if they are at 80 degrees. the Nvidia site says those cards are safe up to 97 degrees Celsius, although i wouldnt let them go over 90. always expect SLi cards to run hotter due to less cool air reaching them. 1 GOu will run cooler than 2 Gpu's as there is more heat being chucked out around the cards
 
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clonazepam

clonazepam

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Jul 10, 2010
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Water cooling the cards could allow you to squeeze out higher clocks from the graphics cards. This could give you some additional performance. What will that additional performance translate into? Will it be adding more frames per second to an already smooth, enjoyable experience? Are you concerned about 80c? 80c is a great temp, imho.

Water cooling the entire system is extremely fun to plan, lay out, and put together. You'll spend quite a bit of money doing this, however. It's just like building a model, and then setting it on a shelf to glance at, and smile at your accomplishment.

I'm willing to bet most or all of your components will reach their maximum clocks in an air configuration, and water cooling will simply lower their average operating temperatures, therefore, no additional performance. So, would you want to spend the additional money on aging hardware to run it cooler? I'm in this boat, sporting the i7-2600k and a couple GTX 580s. They are even older. I don't want to put any additional money (or time) into this hardware at this point.

At least $150 to put water blocks on the graphics cards, money for radiator(s), for pump, reservoir, etc, can be pocketed for a future graphics card(s) upgrades, which will be a much bigger punch to the system, when it becomes time to do so.

High quality fans can run up to $20 a pop. There might be a few critical spots where you can add some fans and make a difference. What case are you using? What kind of 660s do you have? What type of coolers are on them? What cooler is on the CPU?
 
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