Beginner watercooling advice needed

[Mal]

Anyone got any experience with watercooling that could give me some pointers on good buys for a decent starter system? I'm in the process of buying the new bits and am comfortable with building the system, just need some advice on what I need for the watercooling. Aiming for a near silent system, but I don't have room for a passive radiator. New case is an Antec 900 Gaming Case with a Core 2 Quad Q6600 on a DFI Lanparty motherboard.

Cheers

Mal
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"In the end we're all just chalk lines on the concrete - drawn, only to be washed away."

[divuk83]

What graphics card have you got? Chances are if your going for a gaming PC the main source of noise will be the GPU fan. You can go for watercooling on the GPU but some of the waterblocks are damn expensive. If want a quiet PC its posible and probably cheaper to go air cooled. I would only go for water for fairly hardcore overclocking.

Plenty of companies sell complete water cooling kits to save having to work out what bits to buy.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=193&subid=1038

https://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/Kits.html

https://www.overclock.co.uk/dept/Watercooling-Kits_172.html

Dave

[chris-red]

I have a water cooling setup with a q6600, mine is running at 3.4 under water.

The loudest part of my PC is the HDD's, my 8800gts is plenty quite I have a water block for it but haven't been bothered to fit it yet.
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[Mal]

[Tarmacsurfer]

[divuk83]

I would save your money and go for a decent CPU air cooler with 120mm quiet fans such as Yate Loons or Papst. The last ATI card I had (2900XT) was much noisier than the stock Intel CPU Cooler though there are aftermarket coolers that will be quieter than the stock ati cooler. You can also get Hard drive enclosures that deaden noise, though depending on what HD you have it may not be that noisy to start off with. Then of course there is the noise from the PSU, you can get passive cooled ones but most decent ones these days are pretty quiet anyway. Then of couse there is noise from case fans, again these can be replaced with better ones. As you can see watercooling does not mean that there are not other things that make noise.

A silent PC is difficult and expensive to achieve. I have tried it myself and given up as its too much hassle. I was considering water cooling myself as my graphics card is fairly noisy and develops a fair bit of heat, even at stock speeds. The water block alone is 100 squid for the GPUs before even starting to buy a rad and pump and all the other bits on bobs needed.

Dave

[chris-red]

Mine get quite hot even with fans on them as they run fairly fats and there are four of them (raid5) anything to deaden noise would probably not be worth doing.
____________________
Well, you know what they say. If you want to save the world, you have to push a few old ladies down the stairs.
Skudd:- Perhaps she just thinks you are a window licker and is being nice just in case she becomes another Jill Dando.
WANTED:- Fujinon (Fuji) M42 (Screw on) lenses, let me know if you have anything.

[JonB]

It depends on the GPU. I got a stock overclocked Inno3D 8800GT and it is virtually silent, even when playing COD4.

My noisiest fans are actually my case fans, the CPU cooler generates just a little whine.
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