I'm going back and forth on the idea of water cooling vs. air cooling. I read the watercooling sticky v2, and a number of other articles/posts on water cooling. Depending on what the total cost of water cooling will be, I'd really like to go that route. I know it's not cheap, but when I'm selecting components, I'm ending up with something prohibitively expensive. I could use some guidance on what would be a good value and decent to high performance setup.
The rig I'm building will be the following:
Processor: Core i7 4790k
Motherboard: Undecided
Memory: G Skill Ripjaws X DDR3 2400 (PC3 19200) 2x8GB, possibly 2 sets (total 4x8GB)
SDD1 (for OS): Still undecided, but likely a Samsung EVO 850 512GB.
SSHD2: Seagate 2TB SSHD
VGA: SLI two Asus Strix GTX 970
PSU: EVGA 850w G2
Case: Enthoo Primo (most likely choice, if going custom water cooling route) or Enthoo Luxe (if air cooling, although haven't completely ruled this case out for water cooling).
I'd like to cool the CPU and both GPUs. I've gone to Frozencpu, and after just selecting an EK CPU block, and 2x EK VGA blocks, I'm at $340. That still leaves me to get fittings, tubing, reservoir(s), pump(s), and radiators. I didn't bother to continue pricing those out, since I estimated I'd probably be in the neighborhood of $800 by the time I had gotten everything. My budget is realistically $450. I *might* be willing to go a little north of that, but it depends on the answer to question 1 below.
I've never overclocked before, but would like to get into it with this build. I'm not going to be trying to set any records, but would like to get the 4790k to 4.7GHz, and maybe a bit more if this setup has the capacity for it. And I'd like to overclock the GPUs, but I haven't looked into or read as much about that.
I guess my questions are:
1. What parts of a water cooling setup are future proof/reusable? I tend to upgrade to an entirely new system every 4-5 years. Spending so much money upfront is much more palatable if I know that I'll be able to reuse much of it on my next setup. I'm thinking reusable parts include the CPU block (as long as the new chip just requires a new bracket), the Radiators, Reservoir, Pump (not sure what the useful life is on these though), and fittings. The VGA blocks are specific to the GTX 970s, so those won't carry forward. And I'd probably replace the tubing because it's not overly expensive.
2. Is there a "kit" that includes most of this stuff, so I could just add in the missing pieces and save some money this way?
3. Would this be a 1 loop or 2 loop setup? Would the VGA cards be setup in parallel or series?
4. I've read that all components should be the same compound. Is there a significant performance difference between options here (nickel vs. copper vs. acetal, etc)? This seems like the first place to save money, because the variation between the same block with different compounds can be quite substantial.
Thanks in advance for helping a water cooling newb out!
The rig I'm building will be the following:
Processor: Core i7 4790k
Motherboard: Undecided
Memory: G Skill Ripjaws X DDR3 2400 (PC3 19200) 2x8GB, possibly 2 sets (total 4x8GB)
SDD1 (for OS): Still undecided, but likely a Samsung EVO 850 512GB.
SSHD2: Seagate 2TB SSHD
VGA: SLI two Asus Strix GTX 970
PSU: EVGA 850w G2
Case: Enthoo Primo (most likely choice, if going custom water cooling route) or Enthoo Luxe (if air cooling, although haven't completely ruled this case out for water cooling).
I'd like to cool the CPU and both GPUs. I've gone to Frozencpu, and after just selecting an EK CPU block, and 2x EK VGA blocks, I'm at $340. That still leaves me to get fittings, tubing, reservoir(s), pump(s), and radiators. I didn't bother to continue pricing those out, since I estimated I'd probably be in the neighborhood of $800 by the time I had gotten everything. My budget is realistically $450. I *might* be willing to go a little north of that, but it depends on the answer to question 1 below.
I've never overclocked before, but would like to get into it with this build. I'm not going to be trying to set any records, but would like to get the 4790k to 4.7GHz, and maybe a bit more if this setup has the capacity for it. And I'd like to overclock the GPUs, but I haven't looked into or read as much about that.
I guess my questions are:
1. What parts of a water cooling setup are future proof/reusable? I tend to upgrade to an entirely new system every 4-5 years. Spending so much money upfront is much more palatable if I know that I'll be able to reuse much of it on my next setup. I'm thinking reusable parts include the CPU block (as long as the new chip just requires a new bracket), the Radiators, Reservoir, Pump (not sure what the useful life is on these though), and fittings. The VGA blocks are specific to the GTX 970s, so those won't carry forward. And I'd probably replace the tubing because it's not overly expensive.
2. Is there a "kit" that includes most of this stuff, so I could just add in the missing pieces and save some money this way?
3. Would this be a 1 loop or 2 loop setup? Would the VGA cards be setup in parallel or series?
4. I've read that all components should be the same compound. Is there a significant performance difference between options here (nickel vs. copper vs. acetal, etc)? This seems like the first place to save money, because the variation between the same block with different compounds can be quite substantial.
Thanks in advance for helping a water cooling newb out!
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