Water cooling is great

G

Gorilla

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Sep 14, 2007
Messages
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So I recently traded a gtx 960 that I won and a heat sink to a friend for his gtx 970. A decent upgrade over my gtx 680.

Anyway, yesterday I took the XSPC raystorm universal block off the 680 and installed it onto the 970. Load temps (using furmark) dropped from 75C at 33% fan or 55C at 100% fan (like a jet engine) to 31C.

So yeah, gotta love the universal block. I've used it on three different GPUs now, HD 7850, GTX 680, and GTX 970.

I stuck some copper heat sinks on the VRMs and VRAM, though the VRAM on the back of the card had no cooling at all from the factory, so I'm not thinking that cooling it is all that important.

Anyway, no breaking news here, I'm just pleased as always at the results you get from water cooling a gpu. The entry costs to a custom loop were high but realistically I should be able to use it indefinitely, at least until the pump dies someday.
 
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Yup, watercooling rocks! Initial investment can be a bit high, just like a quality case, but it also carries forward to new hardware, especially if you do a custom loop. I've gone through 3 generations of graphics cards and two generations of CPUs on the same pump/rads/reservoir/fans/fittings/tubing.
 
I don't get the point of it anymore. I switched to full air. D15S on a 6700K at 4.6 and MK-26 on 1070. Max CPU temp is 60 (Delidded) only with the GPU running is it that high and GPU max is 55 and the entire PC is dead silent
 
Pillars said:
I don't get the point of it anymore. I switched to full air. D15S on a 6700K at 4.6 and MK-26 on 1070. Max CPU temp is 60 (Delidded) only with the GPU running is it that high and GPU max is 55 and the entire PC is dead silent
Click to expand...

Really depends on ambient temperatures unfortunately. Most places air is just fine. Some you NEED water if you don't want to throttle. Other places you need to watercool if you want some sentiment of silence.
 
Watercooling is more of a hobby, imo, but even then try to quietly cool an overclocked x99 cpu and a high-end 250w tdp gpu and you will need to watercool or lose performance. On mid range stuff - probably air is fine, if you don't care about the noise that much.
 
Understandable, I am using a [email protected] (truly stable, 24+hr Realbench) so midrange indeed but I only game so that chip is ideal. The 980Ti did fine under the MK26, though the 1070 is unreal cool. My air coolers are dead silent. Low RPMs in an R5 case.
 
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