Help Out a (Watercooling) n00b: I Want to watercool my i7.

I am going to be in the states in about a month-and-a-half, and I want to watercool my Core i7 920. Since watercooling here is rare, expensive, and next-to-impossible to find, I plan on buying parts over there.

I have never built a watercooled system from scratch before, although I did toy with a couple of them in the past. This means I don't even the slightest idea where to start, nor even what the brand-names are (The only two I even know of are Thermaltake and Danger Den, and I know Thermaltake watercooling sucks).

My case is the Nzxt Tempest and I really want my i7 to run at its current settings (3.76Ghz/1.18v) around 55-56c at load (That's approximately 10c drop from the Mugen 2 with two 120mm Slipstreams I am running at the moment). I have no idea whether this is a reasonable wish or not, because like I said, I am a total watercooling n00b. I did pick up some of the jargon along the way, so here goes:

I can reasonably spend up to 400-500$ on the cooling setup (I think it should be enough and then some), and I have the room to make and use an external rad-rack. Otherwise, I believe that three 120mm rads (Or one and another dual one) would fit in the Tempest (One on the rear, the two on the top), but I would rather unclutter the inside of the case, so if building an external rack is a reasonable move, I'd rather do that (I've plenty of experience working with wood, so I can make something nice easily enough). Only the CPU and chipset will go under watercooling (The motherboard is the DFI LP DK X58-T3eH6) for the meanwhile (My HD4870X2 has the Accelero Extreme 4870X2 on it, and it is quiet and cool).

I would prefer the setup to be slightly on the overkill side as far as cooling capability goes because I plan to OC higher and I'd like to keep temps as low as I can (The local climate is quite hot, so I can't go over 4Ghz with air cooling for 24/7 operation).

Links/Screenies of shopping carts with the stuff would be really appreciated, but any help is more than welcome.

Thanks !

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Halo 5 Forge PC

Other option watercool the core system, mb,gpu,cpu and a case with lots of big fans.

Put price things out because the $$$$ overhead and what from performance may not be worth it,

Amazon had some flash deal yesterday for a 8350 for 1$135

 

Windows 10 continues to throw errors at me.

Hi Allan,

The cooling system is a H80I Costair watercooler, and yes the Intel Processor was overclocked.

However i have found the solution now.

The bios of the motherboard was old and as such did not support the CPU. i've bought an old CPU and will update the bios once i get it installed etc.

Thanks for your help guys.

Have a nice night

Kind Regards

Alexander The Steriotypical Welshman

 

Well 2 things I will just mention:

Take ambient temperatures into account and instead of watercooling the board look into cooling your video card. Oh also you could cut that budget in half and still have one of the higher end water loops. *Smile

One more friendly tip, Lowe's/Home depot tubing works very very well for a first timer.

EDIT!:

Important: ALWAYS KEEP YOUR RES ABOVE THE PUMP!!!

 

Honestly man I don't see any temps that you need to water cool for. Unless you just "want" too.

 

Well, temps are quite fine. But I want to OC for higher 24/7 settings and I do "want" to get a WC setup. I am kinda taking advantage of my trip abroad here.

 

56c under load is fine for 24/7 use. Voltage I can't comment on. Don't know much about Intel. WC is over rated for most purposes. But damn fun to build *Big Grin

 

You didn't read it right. 55-56c is what I want to achieve with WC, what I have now is around 10c higher, which doesn't leave me with a whole lot more OC room which is what I am after. Besides, I want to try something new.

 

Your going to want to look into an MCP655 and a triple 120 radiator. Like I had stated before, what's your ambient temperatures and current load temperatures like?

 

Load temps are around 66c with the aircon on and around 70c with it off and a not-too-hot day, idle temps are around 42c or so. The ambient is between 24c (aircon) and 35c (no aircon + hot day) in the summer.

 

Well you definitely have the ambients to do it. MCP655 + HW Labs Stealth GT + Apogee GTZ + "pick a res". But that's your pretty much "standard" Core i7 loop.

Oh and you may want to look into 1/2" tubing.