I have experience building computers but i've never made a water cooled PC yet. It's for my own use and my budget is pretty big.
Is it worth the trouble, even for enthusiasts?
>>53842666
In terms of thermals, not really.
In terms of quietness, depends. Get a good heatsink, slap some quiet fans on it and it can be okay.
In terms of space... depends on which you value; the space around the CPU & RAM or space in your case in general.
In terms of aesthetic, fuck yes.
Watercooling takes a lot of effort to set-up and maintain, and an all-in-one unit can make things fucking LOUD (I know, I've got a Kraken X61 and a Fury X - loudest AIO on the market for the X61, but does perform the best. Fury X can be fucking loud too when it goes 100%) but if you go for custom loop cooling and go for a D5, they can be really, stupidly quiet.
For a graphics card, watercooling can do wonders. For a CPU, its not as amazing but still worthwhile to some people.
I fell for the AIO meme and while it was nice being able to actually do things with my RAM without anything in the way, I am definitely going to be making it a custom loop as soon as I can afford to do it properly from the get go.
If you can afford to do it right from the get go like I should've, and WANT the aesthetic of it all; go for it.
Relevant video for you m8;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iogqnEJBKRQ
>>53842666
Unless you have the tip top SKU, ie 980 Ti / Titan X, it's not "worth" it.
The only reason it's "worth" it at the top SKU, is that it's the only way to get any more performance at all.
Example, and I'm using 980 Ti because Titan X's stock cooler is shit, these are average OC clocks with a samplesize of 17k users. Listing core boostclock
base: 1076mhz
air: 1391mhz
water: 1453mhz
So on average a 60mhz boost.
base to air -> 29.3%
base to water -> 35%
air to water -> 4%
So yeah if you want to pay $200-300 more for 4% more performance, go right ahead.
Watercooled GTX 980, never goes above 50ºC.
Unless you're doing a full loop CPU+GPU and have money to waste don't bother.
>>53842872
7.4% improvement for the 980
Look up jayztwocents on youtube, he has a lot of information and howto's on the subject of watercooling. Most of your question will be answered there.
But if you want an answer from my perspective; it depends on your hardware and your budget. If you can afford to watercool but your hardware isn't top of the line, that would be a no-go for me, because I'd like to switch out the less good parts for better ones. Watercooling is a bit more permanent as you'd have to break up your loop when you want to install a new piece of hardware.
