To water cool or not to water cool??

[noobclocker777]

Hi Everyone,

I am putting together a computer and am not sure if i should go air cooling, water or both. I am not looking to go too crazy at overclocking and may experiment little jumps at a time and may upgrade in the future if need be with 2 more GBs of ram and an addtional video card.

Antec P182
E6850 Conroe processer - end of July
Asus P5K3 motherboard
1 x Asus En8800 Ultra 768M GDDR3
BFG Tech PCI Physics Card
2 x WD Raptor 150g 10k Rpm
Consair 2GB DDR3 1333
Silverstone 750W Power Supply
etc, etc.

I was thinking about using Themalake p120 and fans but i read somewhere that the video card will be a bit hot even without overclocking it - should I just go with the heatsink and fans only or a combo heatsink and watercool the video card or watercool the whole thing?? Sorry for the rookie question and thanks kindly in advance.

[Yellowhello]

Welcome to HL!! The answer to your question is I don't think that you should go with water cooling. Although I haven't done water cooling myself, I seems pretty complicated. Is this the first build your doing by yourself? It's a great setup. Also, I wouldn't go with the 8800 Ultra because it's a lot of extra money for not very much benefit. I'd go with the 8800GTX, maybe an OC edition.

EDIT: Damn, you gonna get some expensive RAM, man!! Again, VERY NICE BUILD!! And again WELCOME TO HL!!

Hey you guys,

No one's gonna help the new guy except me?!

[noobclocker777]

Thanks much for your input - I really appreciate it - Im not that intiminated by watercooling especially with alot of great blogs on this forum. Sounds like I should be okay then with air cooling. Thanks again

[Yellowhello]

Do you need some suggestions for an air cooler?

[RA1D]

welcome to HL noobclocker777! that is an amazing system you've got planned. to address your question, i do not think you need to water cool that system. if you take a look at my specs, my system is similar to what you are planning to put together and i haven't had any heat related issues. nvidia monitor shows my gpu in the 70's and it might reach the low 80's under load but i've run numerous benchies on it and never had my system crash.

now if you want to watercool that system, there is never any harm in having more cooling then you need. you're obviously not on any strict budget so going with watercooling now will give you the option of pushing your rig a bit more when you decide to oc.

ddr3 capable boards and ram just came out and will need some time to mature, just as ddr2 when it was released. i would not recommend taking the dive on it so soon but if you want cutting edge then you are on track.

i haven't read anything good about the physics card. are there any games that can make use of it? i'm not sure.

if you were going to spend $400 on 2 raptors, i would suggest going with the 1TB hitachi instead. i actually came across the same situation and was about to throw down on a couple of raptors but have decided against it in favor of a larger drive (whenever seagate releases a 1TB drive). from a heat standpoint, the 1 hitachi drive would be better than having 2 raptors. the hitachi obviously has a ton more storage and you wouldn't have a need for another storage drive like you probably would running a couple of raptors.

good luck in whatever path you decide to take and definitely keep us updated your system. it looks like it'll be a beast