Water cooling vs tec's vs coolit combo

[dragonsprayer]

After reading the THG "Scythe Ninja Plus takes on Three TEC Heavyweights" i like to point our that i have owned and used all 4 methods of cooling - air, water, tec and tec/water (coolit)


My first point: THG says:
"If the ultimate expression of cooling power is a complex water cooling system, then the development of TEC-enhanced air coolers could be considered the ultimate expression of over sized air cooling for similar markets. "

Water is not complex! It does have maintenance, you do have to add fluid every 6-12 months- you many need to replace a pump - its pretty easy. Skip tec's and all their headaches go full water or air.

Being a big fan of koolance systems and water cooling, i like to tell you water cooling is easy! Koolance, i own no stock in koolance nor do i know anyone that works there. They make water cooling supper easy and their water kooling systems work!

The coolit system is far harder to install then a koolance case system. Many high end mobo's like EVGa even recommend removing the heat piper cooling and replacing the stock thermal paste - well while your at it - it only takes about 15 mins to replace those parts with water cooling blocks.

High end GPU's run hot - if your hard core and you have an 8800 or 2900xt water cooling is the only way too go!

NB- if your overclocker or want to get the most from your cpu raising the fsb is the only way to go - today's mobo's are made to do it but again temps go way up - water cooling is the only way to go!


Quad core chips from intel - these babies run hot! Hotter then P4's when over clocking - my last koolance 1000 system with a QX6700 runs 3.55ghz at 45c - flawless runs othos all day long!

I think if THG compared TEC's and the hybrid Coolit systems to koolance there is no comparison. You can get the same results with good zalman or thermalright as the article says.


Lastly for you hard core water coolers - i know there are better blocks, better pumps etc - but for a no brain-er easy water cooling if your even thinking about a tec/air cooler or tec block or tec/water (coolit) forget it and go all water cooling!

If you go danger den make sure you get compatible fluid and blocks - mixing aluminum and copper can be fatal to the system. Most of the lower end systems just do not cool well or there pumps fail too much. The only reason i recommend koolance is that i have used them for 2 years will good success.

you should cool a water cooled system memory with fans - you should never cool a hdd - google study hotter is better!

TEC's are inefficient and only cool the cpu, a total water system or air is really the only choice in my opinion -thx!

 

[BigCharb]

yah, true. BUT if you combine water and tec youve got a cpu idleing at -5! and GPUs at max overclock at around..oh..25! tec is awsome but danerous because of the condensation the can occur. if a true overclocker wanted they can Vmod the tec coolers reviewed and use the full power of tec, with proper insulation.

i plan to water cool my next build with a tec cpu and gpu block. i plan to make my own block for the noth bridge

 

[dragonsprayer]

my coolit system hit 90c - 75c average

under the same conditions my koolance system was 55c constant

extreme conditions hot room 90-95f ambient room - confined air space - multi programs and orthos


the chip was quad qx6700 running 3.55ghz

 

[dragonsprayer]

the above data provided by anandtech


if you extrapolate data above compared to the referenced THG article you see that the thermalright 120 will cool as well as the tec coolers - as THG noted all tec cooler are basically the same.

My point is that tec coolers are high maintenance, inefficient, can be matched by a good air cooler and only cool the cpu.

Conclusion go all air with a cool cooler or water - tec's are not perfected yet.

Not to mention condensation issues!

 

[Gh0stDrag0n]

A Coolit system and a watercooled TEC are two differant setups.
The Coolit system uses TEC to remove heat from the water loop instead of a radiator.
A watercooled TEC setup uses a water loop to cool the TEC which is actually cooling the CPU/GPU. With this setup you can reach sub zero temps, lets see an air cooler do that.

 

[dragonsprayer]

i am really not sure how the coolit works - but it does not work

it looks like the air cooled fins cool one side of the tec and the water is the hot side?

 

[Gh0stDrag0n]

Here is a review explaining how it works. http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-327-1.htm
The radiator is used to stablize the water loop to prevent condensation, meaning it is kept within ambaint temps. Totally a waste of a good TEC if you ask me.

 

[dragonsprayer]

condensation is such an issue you really do not want sub zero cooling for practical applications there is very little benefit - the risk is very large with condensation.

I will admit I used to think water cooling was dumb - since water and electricity do not mix - risk of leaks and such.

Well i was wrong, water cooling is the way to go with hot north bridges, gpu's and cpu's - it also allows a much more compact system with a higher thermal profile for large storage in home servers. By moving some heat by water it leaves air flow free to cool ram, optical drives and massive hard drive systems.


The one direction the pc is going for us is the home server, figure that hd movies are taking up 25GB+.... the pc's we are building at least, specs are quad core(stream multi video, encode etc) , high end gpu to game and get a great hd picture (880gtx oc), raid 0 os drive (2 raptors) on the south bridge and 8-12 hard drives for storage with raid card. Including 4 optical drives - plex burner, blue-ray, x-box hd drive, work horse dvd drive.

Interesting application is using the "fox" program to rip and store hi-def - along with a gaming system then using an xbox as a media extender. You can beem 1080p all over your house! Watch a movie, listen to you music collection and fire up halo3 on the big screen from a single PC!

Ramble on - led zep....

 

[dragonsprayer]

stablizing is why it does not work

 

[Gh0stDrag0n]

stablizing is why it does not work

Stablizing is why there is no condensation with the Coolit system. It is made as idoit proof as it can possably be considering it is using TEC and liquid.