building vs buying a water cooler...

[dottedquad]

What are the differences between building vs buying a complete water cooler? The only differences I see is with building a water cooler is the labor put into building it and gathering all the parts. Could anyone add their 2cents?

-Thanks

 

[chuckshissle]

It depends on what kind of system do you have and most importantly what components are needed to be cooled. Building is pretty much the best thing of the two since it gives you more options. Like for example, before I decided to water cool my pc and the components involved are the cpu, north bridge and two 7800GTX. All these can add up to a lot of heat. So I went to Newegg and decided to get a water cooling kit that can cover this components and keep then chilled. So I got Swiftech on my plan but adding up all the cost would make me end up spending over $500! So instead I built me a low end water cooling kit buy getting 2 Aquastar for $100 each and extra rad for $30. So I got my "costum kit" for about $230, very big difference to the $500 kit.

So now I got 2 coolers and in case in fails the other would still be running for "backup". So I got what I needed to cool my pc and for less than the price of other complete kits.

With it I got 35c idle and 45c full load on my cpu (overclocked from 3.2Ghz to 3.840Ghz @ 1.4 volts), 40c idle and 50c full load on my north bridge, 42c idle and 46c full load on my 1st 7800GTX and 45c idle and 48c full load on my second 7800GTX (both cards overclocked from 460 to 490Mhz) and this is on a 30c room temperature by the way.

So Im pretty satisfied for my build and it's results.

But if you don't mind spending good amount of money then you can buy the complete kits for better results.

If I get the money I would buy this.

Pump, reservoir, cpu block, tubes and rad. $259

http://www.frozencpu.com/ex-wat-76.html

North bridge block. $30

http://www.frozencpu.com/ex-blc-268.html

two of this: GPU water block $ 64x2 = $ 128

http://www.frozencpu.com/ex-blc-270.html

Extra rad for the 7800GTX: $97

http://www.frozencpu.com/ex-rad-46.html

This all can up to over $500 and is more effecient than my current cooling but for a price.

So if you're in a budget then a build would be good since you can buy individual components and save money or if you got the guts to spend lots of cash then get kits from Swiftech and other great cooling kit for maximum cooling performance.

 

[chuckshissle]

Yes that what I got 1 for the cpu and n/b and anther for two 7800GTX.

Why do you mean, chipset waterblock a noob mistake? I suppose the heatsink is better than the water cooling?

 

[chuckshissle]

Well, my north bridge HSF is small but this was the loudest thing inside the case! Honestly. Besides I checked the temps and it's reaching over 70c! while playing BF2 and sometimes makes my system unstable because I overclocked my cpu from 3.2 to 3.840Ghz. I got a heat sink for quite and cool solution for it from newegg.com but still it's reaching high so I got the chipset water block for it. And eversince it's not giving me unstable results with the cpu overclocked. I know it's giving more heat for the loop and I would get some better results without including the north bridge on the water cooling but Im satisfied with it.

Before: CPU 33c idle 38c full load



After: CPU 35c idle 45c full load