Not everyone needs to go water cooled. The main benefits of water cooling are:
Thermal intertia
Good - Heats up slowly
Bad - Cools down slowly
Longer sessions don’t benefit as much
Possibly increasing cooling surface area
Only good if the new radiator is bigger than the one on the GPU (ie MAYBE an H100i or larger)
I knew I would end up mining and/or playing long sessions on my rig, so I didn’t bother with water cooling. I ended up going with the GIGABYTE AORUS 1080 Ti because of its large surface area and low noise. Fan noise isn’t an issue even with the case open.
And also watercooling has the downside if you want to upgrade like I would love to have two 2080ti in the place of those two 980ti. Not the easiest thing to do installing new waterblocks on the new cards and connecting the piping. In contrast to when I switched my 1070 air cooled to the 1080ti. unplug and plug and done.
Friend, I don’t fully agree, if i were fluent in English I’d dispute more, but:
-Cools down slowly.
How is that bad?
-Longer sessions don’t benefit as much.
Typical water cooling system has about 1 liter of water. After booting the PC and starting a 3D application (a game) the temps are stabilized within I’d say 5-10 minutes.
The copper waterblock sits directly on your cpu/gpu thus absorbs and (water) transfers the heat to the dissipating element a lot more efficiently than the heatpipes on air cooler.
Edit. And then theres the thing of aircoolers just rotating the hot air inside the case, you’d need a good (often noisy) airflow inside the case too. Radiators with the fans in watercooling are typically located on top and/or in the rear of the case where they blow the hot air directly outside.
After the water pulls the heat from your GPU it has to put the heat somewhere. It can either release it into the air (same limitations as regular air cooling) or it can hold onto it (water temperature rises). If you pump heat into the system faster than the radiator can remove it, then the water temperature will slowly rise.
Since water has a high thermal capacity it can help smooth out any short spikes in temperature and hold at a low temperature. However, if the GPU is under a continuous high load for an extended period of time, then the water will hold at that high temperature.
The reason it is bad is that after the water reaches a high temperature it will stay at that temperature even after the load is removed - until it manages to dissipate the heat to the air.
Longer sessions of SUSTAINED load don’t benefit as much. If you are going to spend your whole weekend playing games (especially GPU hungry games like Crysis) or mining, then your average temp will be fairly high. However, if your average use is low with occasional spikes, then that is the optimal use case for water cooling.
That is a good point but it also has some good counterarguments (I am not going into them right now because this comment is already massive). It isn’t an issue for me, though. Since my fans are super quiet I just leave my case open (I know… HERESY). With headphones on I can’t even hear it. Honestly, the loudest thing in my case is when my hard drive spins up.
Yes yes, respect to you bro.
Though it should be GPU die → heatpipes → cooler radiator.
In my understanding, why would the avg temp be higher on the long run, its the same thermal load after all?
Edit. got what you mean, but again, why is that bad?
Are you asking why it would be bad if the GPU is running at a higher temperature? From my understanding it causes degradation over time.
If the GPU reaches some high temperature (ie 84 C) while air cooled, then a water cooling solution with a similar sized radiator would expect to eventually reach the same temperature (84 C) under a sustained load.
I am not wrong but you may have gotten the wrong idea about my example. I have been referring to HEAVY (ie 90-100% utilization) SUSTAINED (hours) activity on the GPU.
You are correct about that and that is the case I was referring to (emphasis on SUSTAINED). A GPU can get quite toasty when someone is trying to get every last drop out of it (overclocking, overvolting, overpower, etc) to do some intensive task (ie rendering for 2x2K screens at 90 Hz).
Well, for me, main purpose of watercooling is precisely to allow for much bigger cooler. Then even on sustained full load temp won’t be able to rise as much as with aircooling as a big cooler will be able to throw that energy out from the water fast enough to prevent the water getting as hot as gpu would get with aircooling.
I got a new gpu just yesterday and I’ll test it thoroughly with water and air ONCE I receive the rest of the parts, that might take weeks.
Quickly tested The shadow of tomb raider benchmark and the gpu temps went immediately to ~75c with factory settings… With stock aircooler, that is.
Be advised, have a nice day!
I agree that increasing your cooling surface is one of the biggest advantages offered by water cooling. It allows you to either increase the maximum cooling or to keep the same cooling with lower fan speeds.
I am not sure if you are saying it is unfair to:
Make my comparison (same size radiator) because you would realistically go for a bigger radiator with water cooling
Make neelrocker’s comparison (different sized radiators) because it would distract from the main point… “what does water cooling actually do?”
Anyways, I would like to clarify my main point in case I haven’t been very clear. Water cooling is a useful technology with its own pros and cons, not the end-all-be-all of cooling. You should consider whether it is worth it to add water cooling or if you should just KISS (keep it simple, stupid - aka how to avoid problems).
Biggest Pros:
Ability to increase radiator size (increase cooling or reduce noise)
Biggest Cons:
Increased cost
Increased complexity (instillation, maintenance, chance of leaks, etc)
I may be forgetting some things but hopefully I have the gist of it.
EDIT: My GPU is the Gigabyte Aorus 1080 Ti. It has a fairly massive radiator and is quite quiet… so negligible gains for me. Your mileage may vary.
@TrevorVR Well, this discussion about water cooling has taken up about half of this thread and I think it might be a good idea to split it into its own water cooling thread.
What do you say @Heliosurge? I will give you the comment numbers after I hear back from Trevor.
This is the one I would be looking for if I was upgrading my current 980ti. That aorus seems to have one of the best aircooler design from indepth reviews comparing most 1080ti on the market.
This and the thing that you can relocate the heat dissipating element(radiator)
They used to locate the radiators outside the case before the case manufacturers started making better cases for watercooling purposes. The absent of 5,25" drives helped this a lot. Yeah @Heliosurge better split the topic.
You are forgetting a car uses a radiator & csn overheat. Once any cooling system is stressed to it’s limit it needs a cooling period to bring down the temps. Coolant does take more time to release it’s heat vs a simple heatsink.
However depending on the cooling profile a heatsink may hit a thermal limit sooner. Both systems cannot cool below ambient temperature.
There are some neat youtube vids using cpu coolers on gpu that are fantastic & if your using riser cables could give ypur rig a hot rod look.
Now add a tec block to your water outlet & you can increase the cooling profile. Now watercooling adds benefits of being able to increase cooling profile (change rad add rad add tec) & potenially being quieter but at a cost of realstate & of course moving heat outside of tge case.
Phase change is great but at the risk of moiture due to being able to cool below ambient tempture. But one could simply have the phase change controlled not to go below ambient temps.
