First build: Water Cooling?

Woody1999 · Jan 23, 2015

So yeah, I will be building a PC on a budget of £400 soon, and I need to get the most performance out of it for the longest amount of time possible, I won't be building again at least till I'm out of Uni (and I haven't even done my GCSEs yet).

I am splitting hairs between getting a simple air cooler like the Zalman CNPS10x Optima or the Hyper 212 Evo, or going for a cheap (but apparently decent) water cooler such as the Cooler Master Seidon 120V.

Here is my build so far:

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/ms9YhM

Most of my worries were linked to installation, i.e where to mount the radiator if all the front and back fan slots are filled and also reliability. I know the case I have chosen does have an extra, bottom mounted, fan slot, but I don't know if that would be any good for the cooler.

I hope to overclock to a decent amount, I've heard of people getting as high as 4.7GHz out of the FX-6300 with just air coolers, so I would like to get around that if not better. I also need for the CPU to last a long time, because I won't be building for a while and the upgrade path from the AM3 socket isn't that promising.

First time inexperienced builder here, so any tips or advice or even blatant insults to my incompetence is fine!

Woody

geofelt · Jan 23, 2015

My canned rant on liquid cooling:
------------------------start of rant-------------------
You buy a liquid cooler to be able to extract an extra multiplier or two out of your OC.
How much do you really need?
I do not much like all in one liquid coolers when a good air cooler like a Noctua NH-D15 or phanteks can do the job just as well.
A liquid cooler will be expensive, noisy, less reliable, and will not cool any better
in a well ventilated case.
Liquid cooling is really air cooling, it just puts the heat exchange in a different place.
The orientation of the radiator will cause a problem.
If you orient it to take in cool air from the outside, you will cool the cpu better, but the hot air then circulates inside the case heating up the graphics card and motherboard.
If you orient it to exhaust(which I think is better) , then your cpu cooling will be less effective because it uses pre heated case air.
And... I have read too many tales of woe when a liquid cooler leaks.
google "H100 leak"
-----------------------end of rant--------------------------

A cm hyper212 or equivalent would be my recommendation.

Your build will work, you are correct that a 8 core upgrade may not be all that useful for the gamer.

My suggestion would be to go cheap on the cpu with a £50 G3258 and a Z97 based motherboard for easy future upgradeability.
You can find a similar build here, except they used a more restrictive motherboard:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-budget-gaming-pc,3943.html

Woody1999 · Jan 24, 2015

Well. Wow.

I didn't realise there were so many disadvantages to it! Well, thanks for shedding some light on me, I think I'll just have a Zalman CNPS10X Optima until I feel comfortable enough to do some custom loop cooling.

Also, I've spent hours researching he processors, making numerous topics about it. Originally I went for a Pentium and Z87, then an i3 and Z97 until the i3 shot up in price from £60 to £85, at which point I fell back onto my original plan of FX-6300 and GA-970A-UD3P. I feel like this will be my best chance of getting a good long lasting gaming rig, and I don't feel any intentions to upgrade in the future because I've worked with a friend's FX-6300 and helped him set it up, I feel that it is awesome.

Thanks for the reply!

Woody

rubix_1011 · Jan 24, 2015

There are a lot of differences between boxed closed loop coolers and actual watercooling loops. The reason closed loop contained coolers are 'popular' is due to their decent performance vs. stock or decent air cooling. They are cheap because they are cheaply made and use cheap, weak pumps and aluminum radiators.

Full watercooling loops usually are planned with powerful, long lasting pumps and brass/copper radiators for better flow rates and cooling performance.

With watercooling, you get what you pay for.

Woody1999 · Jan 24, 2015

Thanks to both of you. I've decided to stick with air cooling, and with the popular Hyper 212 Evo. Anyone know if it is worth upgrading the stock cooler fan to a Noctua counterpart? If I did, would I be able to use the fan that came with the cooler as an extra case fan?

Here is the link: http://pcpartpicker.com/user/Woody1999/saved/BVk8TW

Thanks.

Woody

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