Critique a planned WC setup please ?

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Demon_of_The_Fall

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 28, 2004
Messages
414
At the moment I'm planning a WC setup to buy once i get some cash in the summer. I'd like to keep under €500 including a new case. I want this to be a real keeper, not something that i'll be craving to replace any time soon due to increases in the heat put out by new processors and GPUs. At the moment my system isn't exactly a beast for heat output with the 3000+ winchester clocked up to about 2.35ghz and the 6800gt at 400/1000, but I want a nice amount of headroom available for a G70 or any other obscenely powerful power guzzler than I might get in the future. Quietness is also a big concern with this system. I want it *quiet* but with the ability to ramp up to more power if needs be. Running fans at 5v would be fine by me, as it would give me a fair bit of headroom.

I live in Ireland so local companies are almost non-existant as a source of parts. With the exception of www.hitide.ie and www.komplett.ie (which are not much good for WC at all really) there's nowhere to go other than europe or the states. I can have a friend bring anything I order from the UK over in the car then next time they're here so theres a pretty substantial saving in delivery to be made by getting from the UK as opposed to mainland Europe/ Usa.

Asetek Waterchill seems to be about the best value, when looking at the prices at www.kustompcs.co.uk . Can anyone give me a strong recommendation for or against waterchill ? Would dangerden really perform that much better or are we talking 1-2 degrees ? Theres a really high premium with dangerden aswell. The blocks for waterchill are £20-30 but any dangerden I've seen are more like £35-50, IMO too much to pay for 2 degrees. With all that said here's what I have in mind. It's all from this page (the cheapest I've found so far) : http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/Asetek.html

£20 *WaterChill VGA Cooler (does this still have mounting issues with the 6800gt?)
£20 *WaterChill Northbridge Cooler
£30 *Waterchill Antartica CPU Cooler CPU01/A
£58 *Waterchill RDT02 TRIPLE 120mm Black Ice Pro III
£25.50 WaterChill Hydor L30 Pump 220v (how quiet is this? is it powerful enough?)
Waterchill Tube Set
Reservoir - Not sure on this, but I don't want a T-line or a closed loop. Recommend please?
Fans - Recommend me something please ?

Case - CMStacker :D. Found it for £100 which sounds good to me. Plan on taking out the grill on the left panel and replacing with a window. Or i might pay the £15 extra for the side window panel. I want to mount the PSU at the bottom and hang the rad from the top. Anyone tried this before? Any issues with having the PSU at the bottom? Any issues with a triple rad on the top ? I'm not afraid of taking a dremel or holesaw to the case.

Thanks in advance for any help guys, much appreciated :cool:
 
given the rest of your system, a more powerfull pump might be a thought, since you rad is not going to be a bottleneck for a LONG time.

watercooling the north bridge is pretty pointless.

while that is not the best block, it is far from the worst. probably within a few degrees of the dangerden TDX/RBX.

res? any you feel like using?

for fans panaflo takes my top recomendation of things that i have tried. papst is apparently good for quiet opperation as well, but it would be hard and expensive for me to get them, so i have not tried them.

a few people in here have mounted a triple rad in the top of their stackers. it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=900037
 
Yeah, that pump does seema little underpowered, but for the price I think I'll stick with it. Id have to spend £30 to £40 more to get something much better as far as I can see. The MCP-350 was one I had in mind but that doesn't seem to perform particularly well unless you do the 1/2" mod to it, which im not keen on doing.

The NB block is there purely because it'll be one less fan in my system and the chipset gets quite toasty in the epox 9nda3+. At the moment it has the smallest most pathetic HSF imaginable on it, and is partially covered by my NV silencer which doesnt help.

I have been looking at papst too, but nowhere has a good range of their fans and anywhere that does have them seems to be extortionately priced... How about Nexus Orange fans ? I image I'd be better off with something more powerful running at 5-7v. Maybe medium panaflos.

I'm trying to see if I can find a TDX block somewhere, but I would need fittings for it for 10mm tubing rather than 1/2" or 3/8".

For the res..... Not sure. Can't bring myself to spend £20 - 30 on a block of plastic!
 
have you tried looking at what fish/aquarium stores have in terms of pumps? hydor L40 would probably be big enough that you would bottleneck elsewhere before the pump started holding you back.

regarding the chipset: i guess that one of the perks of the NF3 is that it is not always sandwitched against the graphics slot. you can fit a block on the bridge, but few NF4s can. i think that you would be better off with a good aftermarket heatsink all the same.

with a triple rad like yours, panaflo low fans are powerfull enough, and you could still dial them down somewhat. you could go for mediums, and dial them down even further, if they are the same price, but they would be overkill on a BIP3. it's unlikely that you'll find them, but snap up any panaflo fans that are made in japan. they haven't been made there for a while, but if you are dealing with stores that only do small volume, then they might still have some kicking around.

if you don't want to shell out on the res, T-lines really do work. i know that you said that you don't really want to use one, but they are cheap and effective.
 
i am planning on getting a res at danger den that is only $17.95 USD. It is a CD bay res. That would only be like 10 pounds.
 
Russ said:
i am planning on getting a res at danger den that is only $17.95 USD. It is a CD bay res. That would only be like 10 pounds.
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shipping, taxes, handling fees and duties.......they can be unfriendly for those of us outisde of the US.
 
Well I thought about that, but it seems hard for everything to total more than 200% of the unit's initial price. Mostly I was just saying that for reference. The dual 3 1/2" bay res. seem to be more expensive, so make sure you don't re one of those. Have you looked at all the res. the Waterchill site has? If their prices are cheaper/same as Danger Den, they would probably have a res. for about the same price.

And if the cost is prohibitive to get just the res. from DD and you can't find one for a similar price somewhere else, why don't you look at the pricing of your other components at DD? the pound to dollar conversion is about 1 : 1.5, isn't it? So your cpu block, for example, is about $45 USD equivilent from Waterchill. That is within a few dollars of DD's price of TDX/RBX/etc waterblocks I think. If you made a larger order (larger than just buying a reservoir) from DD the duties/shipping costs wouldn't be prohibitive I think. Buying a lot of parts from one store means one big shipment instead of a smaller shipment so less per unit shipping costs. Course, I don't live in the UK so maybe it still is.

Since you already have everything planned from Waterchill though, just look around their site for a reservoir. It wouldn't make sense for them not to have a cheap one.

Also, good deal on that case. The sites that I have seen it on have it for like 165 dollars. And if my memory of the money conversion ratio is correct, that's 15 dollars cheaper.
 
Russ said:
Well I thought about that, but it seems hard for everything to total more than 200% of the unit's initial price. Mostly I was just saying that for reference. The dual 3 1/2" bay res. seem to be more expensive, so make sure you don't re one of those. Have you looked at all the res. the Waterchill site has? If their prices are cheaper/same as Danger Den, they would probably have a res. for about the same price.
Click to expand...
duties are charged as a percentage. it doesn't matter how big or small the order is as far as duties are concerned. it DOES save on shipping to do medium sized orders, but you usually don't come out ahead.

with the pound/US dollar exchange rate, he might not get dinged as badly as i do. he has to pay more in shipping, which may or may not soak up the difference in your two exchange rates, but who knows? just as a reference, by the time that i can get something to my door with all the fees taken care of, it usually runs me double US list price. that is why i often note that i cannot get a given fan or other product: the cost is just prohibitive.
 
Yeah, shipping+duties make anything at all ordered from the US prohibitively expensive. Just not a road I want to go down because I wont know how much itll cost untill it hits my doorstep :mad:

I think I'll pick up one of the crappy cylindrical waterchill reservoirs. Can just keep it out of sight in my system.

Anyone have any idea how much better a thermochill 120.3 is than a BIPro 120.3 ? I've seen people say theyre better, just dont know by how much.

Thanks for help so far guys
 
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