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General Liquid/Water Cooling Discussion For discussion about Full Cooling System kits, or general cooling topics. Keep specific cooling items like pumps, radiators, etc... in their specific forums.

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Unread 09-04-2006, 10:39 PM   #1
derraa
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Default watercooling lost its magic

does anyone else feel that watercooling lost its magic? i have had a watercooled pc for the last 8 years, but now, for the first time i am posting on a completely air cooled pc. I have all the parts i need to water cool it, with a pelt, except at pump, but i just have a hard time getting motivated. im overclocked, 2.2-2.7 amd 64 at ~250ddr ram, why should i bother with my pelt cooling when the stock air is almost silent? are we now lost? it almost feels like the few megahertz i can squeeze are moot. is watercooling now just a hobby that i follow for fun, or do we still have a good reason?
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Unread 09-04-2006, 10:57 PM   #2
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

I have been air cooled for a couple years now just waiting for the reason to go water again. My system is also quiet yet overclocked 300mhz and runs anything I can throw at it. I also have some nice water cooling parts to throw into it including a 50Z pump and some nice blocks to choose from AquaXtreme. Also have a Swissflow sitting in a bag and a modded chevett heater core waiting use.

The two main reasons a don't set it up is this is my main rig and can't stand not to have it up and the 50Z pump is louder by itself than my entire system is now and it is a quiet pump.

Last edited by jaydee; 09-05-2006 at 06:48 PM.
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Unread 09-05-2006, 09:39 AM   #3
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

I am going to post a lil editorial about this... ive had some theories on this It was going to be a reply to the thread, but it sort of evolved
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Unread 09-05-2006, 12:05 PM   #4
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

Well ... beauty and magic are usually in the eye of the beholder and I guess that some of us are still finding them this way or another

Anyhow, I upgraded to WC purely because of the noise, not enough airflow in my case for any type of air cooling and much more importantly - FUN. Yes, fun is important to me and strangely enough it's there even when I just refill system with the new coolant and watch all that water rushing in. There is also fun in hand-picking the components, coolants, plumbing job, looking at your stunned wife/girlfriend when she observe the geekish water pouring action into your "aquarium" and, of course, greatest fun of all is when you flick that power ON switch Now, I have much better temperatures, silence and FUN - something I can't say for the air cooling.

It's complex & interesting topic and Joe is right. It could quite easily evolve into the editorial.
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Unread 09-05-2006, 01:23 PM   #5
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

I have my editorial all wrote up, just waiting for pH to take a gander at it before I post it live on the site.
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Unread 09-05-2006, 04:15 PM   #6
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

OK I Posted the editorial Enjoy!

http://www.procooling.com/index.php?...icles&disp=148
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Unread 09-05-2006, 04:55 PM   #7
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

Interesting. So the commercialization of water cooling took some of the interest out of it?

Maybe it just put things into perspective, in terms of cost (my take); It's never been cost efficient, and wasn't ever anywhere near it i.e. a decent water cooling solution is still ~$200, versus any air cooled solution, most under $50.

I think also that we've exhausted water block designs, and that we're past any new innovation.

Plenty more room to work, in phase change ...
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Unread 09-05-2006, 05:09 PM   #8
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

we've far from exhausted water cooling. For one it still costs $200 when it could be made for alot less. The old apogee was the first block made from a cost effective stand point, similar things would be easily done. Should be easy to design cheap user made blocks as well.

Liquid cooling won at any rate as heat pipes are liquid
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Unread 09-05-2006, 05:52 PM   #9
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

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Originally Posted by bigben2k
Interesting. So the commercialization of water cooling took some of the interest out of it?

Maybe it just put things into perspective, in terms of cost (my take); It's never been cost efficient, and wasn't ever anywhere near it i.e. a decent water cooling solution is still ~$200, versus any air cooled solution, most under $50.

I think also that we've exhausted water block designs, and that we're past any new innovation.

Plenty more room to work, in phase change ...


No Ben you missed the point. its not that commercialization has taken the interest out if it, its just that few can or are able to improve on today’s designs beyond the companies who make them now. The bar was low before, so it was easy to innovate, and it was fun. Now its expensive, time consuming, and the end result is a product that works realistically no different than another already existing design. Also watercooling was effective cost wise... you seem to forget the time where you could take a $100 CPU and clock it to the level of a $500.00 CPU just by throwing $100 - $150 worth of water cooling at it. And as I said in the editorial... its also been practical because air cooling could never offer what water was offering a couple years ago and you paid extra for that extra cooling. that has changed.

There is room left for work in watercooling, it just isn’t going to be done by the average Joe anymore. Its going to be by people who work in the field already and have access to specialized equipment to design, mfg, and test their designs.

As far as phase change goes... there’s room there also... but the costs are so high to experiment, and its a technology that requires some specialization to work on (like maybe being a A/C repair man?) correctly... that its also up to others. There’s still big limitations on how practical phase change can be.
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Unread 09-05-2006, 07:06 PM   #10
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

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Originally Posted by Joe
Well said.

Lets also not forget the future of PC's. The way people seem to want them to go is tiny and out of the way. This means no hot running CPU's.The CPU industry is starting to work this way with adding less mhz and more ram and other refinements that lower heat output and increase performance.

That with better cooling technology makes some of us looking for new hobbies. I am now getting heaving in off road RC's. Makes that CNC mill I bought have a bigger purpose as well. That and I get outdoors more.
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Unread 09-05-2006, 07:15 PM   #11
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

Agree with many of your comments Joe and I think you've implicitly hit the nail on the head with the $100 to $500 CPU comment.

I do think that one very important point to highlight is the lack of a "killer app", in the sense of some application that everyone wants to use that taxes current systems to the absolute limit whereby there is actually something worthwhile to be gained by overclocking everything until it bleeds.

I remember as much as 3 years ago, the beginnings of grumblings of those in the overclocker crowd starting to question, "Why bother?". Sure, some people were still banging away at 3DMark and SuperPI (and still are), but aside from that crowd computers almost quite suddenly got "fast enough" for most people. Heck, even to this day I still have an old crusty Socket A system that forms the basis of my primary PC gaming platform, and I am fully aware that the reason why I still have it is because I haven't suddenly found any pressing need for it go any faster. Sure, I've updated the video card a couple of times to keep up with gaming advances, but the CPU at the heart of it is still more than adequate.

Recently I picked up a camera, and started encoding videos of my riding, and yeah, while some newer CPU might be 2 or even 4x faster at video encoding, it's not a pressing issue. I can move data around in the video editing window just fine, so the user-interface suffers from no noticable slowness. It's only when I click to start the encoding process does the CPU actually do anything, and even then I can just let it run while I go have a coffee, or have a meal, and come back and it's done.

So much for multimedia being the "killer app" to drive sales and need for faster CPU's.

I really believe that this is the root cause of the malaise. The need is gone. "Need is the mother of all invention" as the saying goes, but for a long time now there has been little real pressing need for the enthusiast crowd to spend the big dollars to make the CPU's go faster. As people often say, they can go buy a cheap, adequate, quiet air-based heatsink, run the CPU at 90% of the speed of what they could do on water-cooling, and not even once think that they are lacking for that extra 10% of CPU power.

The malaise came when the engineers, and even the enthusiasts, became fat and happy with the status quo. Sure, water-cooling is starting to push up against some pretty hard walls in terms of performance as well, but if there was a pressing need, people would be trying harder. There is no need though, and almost collectively the water-cooling world has thrown its hands up in the air and said "Why bother? It's too hard and I'm happy enough anyway".
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Unread 09-05-2006, 07:59 PM   #12
derraa
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

wow, i wasnt quite expecting such a response.

I agree with joe on most points. I definatly had much more fun, and was much more captivated when I could bang out a water block on a drill press with a different pattern of holes and see a performance change. the industry was changeing so rapidly, and even the poor high school student like I was could potentially change something. now the amount of machinery and skill required to make a block that is pushing the envelope effectivly take it out of the hands of all but a few. also, as we aproach the wall where the c/w of a system is pretty damn good, even a huge increase in performance yields minimal gains. as joe said, back then a trip to pepboys could get you 5C.

at cathar, perhaps multimedia, such as video encoding could become the killer app. processing can be more and more moved out of the press the button and go to breakfast and into realtime. effects and such can be shown realtime in the user interface with enough processing power. currently you use hige parrallel processing for this, but home pcs are getting better. although on the other hand, how many home users would actually care about this. my mother is still more than happy with the tbird 1000 i built her out of spare parts years ago.

basically my bottom line is that watercooling has become somthing that i do because its what ive enjoyed for years. and yes it is fun to see the looks on bewildered peoples faces when you say theres water in the computer. but theres just no more adventure like there was when everything was ghettoed togeather.
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Unread 09-05-2006, 08:11 PM   #13
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

Quote:
Originally Posted by derraa
at cathar, perhaps multimedia, such as video encoding could become the killer app. processing can be more and more moved out of the press the button and go to breakfast and into realtime. effects and such can be shown realtime in the user interface with enough processing power.
I can already do this now with my PC, even with 640x480x30fps. Can preview picture in picture, fade edits, overlays, etc, etc, all in realtime in the preview pane. Sometimes it may stutter, but overall you get a pretty good idea of the final video before clicking the encode button.

If we're talking some advanced 3D effects, serious image manipulation in real-time, and so on, then sure, that'd demand something a little more beefy than what I have right now, but then you're starting to move out of the needs and wants of the average home movie maker, and into something more professional anyway.
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Unread 09-05-2006, 08:29 PM   #14
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

I do vid editing and DVD creation and encoding for side gigs and such... and Yeh I see what Cathar means... I went from a 2x 3200+ machine to a single 3200+ and it nearly doubled the encode times. That sucked but I could handle it. Now I have a 4600+ X2 machine and it encodes like its in a hurry

But it wasnt NEEDED, it was just nice to have. Not like I kick off encode work when I need it to get done in a few minutes hehe.

But there is no single unified killerapp as Cathar has pointed out. Back in the P3 days, early athlon, processor speed improvements yeilded drastic performance increases even just in windows doing stuff. Going from a single 3200+ to a 4600+ yielded me minimal at best UI performance changes, only changes I see are in brute force applications such as games, and video work. Because not everyone games, not everyone does video work... whats the need?
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Unread 09-05-2006, 08:33 PM   #15
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

Oh and I want to mention another person who brought the "magic" to this hobby. N8's Watercooled pelts! N8 is the man.

I was thinking back on who all helped me get into this either by their writings or chatting with them... and N8 and FrostyFox were the 2 that just blew my mind
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Unread 09-05-2006, 08:38 PM   #16
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

What got me in to overclocking and water cooling in 1999 was Disctributed Computing projects. At the time it was SETI then moved on to a few others and then Distributed Folding until they closed it. You can still see an increase in speed with those programs with overclocking. However the difference water cooling gains in OC on a modern comp is not all that much over good air cooling.

Back then though I had a Asus A7V and a Duron 600@1000mhz and was loving the increase. Air would only get me to 750mhz. Back then that was a HUGE OC. lol
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Unread 09-05-2006, 10:33 PM   #17
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

I actually just removed the DC forum from here less forums we have with a post date back in 2005 the better
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Unread 09-05-2006, 10:40 PM   #18
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

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I actually just removed the DC forum from here less forums we have with a post date back in 2005 the better
Yeah, no loss to me. Lost all intrest in DC for many reasons. Once I get my RC rigs built and run more I will post in that section more often. Mostly be slow rock crawling though.

More on topic I have some water block results I will get posted when I figure out a format for the results. I got 8 blocks in there now. 4 DIY and 4 commercial. Got a couple more blocks to run this weekend aswell.
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Unread 09-06-2006, 12:22 AM   #19
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

Yeah, I think you hit the main points pretty well Joe.

Ultimately it is the combination of converging factors that had led to the decline in WC:

The latest generation of CPU's are both higher performing and produce less heat than their predecessors, so the big driving force in cooling system development has dried up.

Add that to the diminishing returns of CPU upgrading. The whole industry is feeling that. My parents are using a Duron 800/ 8mb 3DFx system that I built for them years ago....and they probably will be until something in there dies.

Plus, as CPU's have gotten faster, there's less incentive for OC'ing. Besides the "my 3DMark score/penis is bigger than your's" crowd, there not much to be gained from making a 3.6Ghz CPU run at 3.8Ghz. The rise of AMD has actually hurt the OC'ing market...now that there's two viable competitors the CPU pricing structure is flatter: why would I buy a $200 WC'ing rig to get an extra 200Mhz out of my CPU, when I can pay $150 more for a CPU that's 500Mhz faster right out of the box?


For the non-enthusiast market, (ie, 95% of the market), PC's are transistioning from "technical devices" to "appliances". They're no different than a toaster: the average person doesn't care how they work, so long as the do what they are supposed to, and stay out of the way. That's part of what is driving the smaller/prettier/quieter movement.

The 5% of the market - the gamers and tweakers, have driven alot of the development and marketing for the past few years. (as evidenced by the 1000watt PSU's being sold for systems that draw 1/5th that). But even that market is showing signs of fade.


A semi off-topic aside: In between reading the parent thread of this, and reading Joe's editorial on the loss of the magic of WC'ing, UPS dropped off one of Zalman's fancy new Reserator II systems here for me to review. Funny part is, I'm not even exicted enough about it to take it out of the box...I guess the magic really is gone.
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Unread 09-06-2006, 03:25 PM   #20
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

I've had WCing on my CPU for almost 2 years now, but only recently added the GPU. Increasing my system's performance AND simultaneously making it quieter may not be magic, but I'm awfully happy with the combination.

This is the area for WCing over the next year or two, as quietly cooling a vidcard is much harder than a CPU. Of course, average users don't need monster GPUs, and ATI and Nvidia eventually will focus on performance-per-watt.

But perhaps hot and noisy Xbox 360s and PS3s will bring some people back to PC gaming. I'm sure that lots of normal users would be impressed by near-silent PCs that can outgame consoles and replace Tivos.
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Unread 09-06-2006, 03:46 PM   #21
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

Well for me I like my hobbies to be, you know, FUN. Time sinks and hard work are fine, but there have to be some rewards at the end. The notion of a water cooling website for DIYers was pretty much was doomed when the Swiftech 6000 series wbs were released. Top rate performance for $30? No need to bother with building blocks any more. And at that point the whole hobbiest aspect of it becomes a lot less interesting.

It's kinda like having a website devoted to reviewing hammers or any other tool; you open up the box and assemble it and it goes. There are some good articles that could still be produced related to watercooling I think: Fill/bleed/res comparisons and actual experiences, proper mixing and matching of components if you still roll your own kit, and long-term maintenance and upkeep are I guess real issues surrounding water cooling tech.

It's hard for me to go back to doing a case review or something like that when I have picked up a lot of technical expertise. But then again the technical expertise and equipment I have is just enough to be dissatisfied with any results I produce, so whatever.

I guess to me the excitement about water cooling IS dead, but the original reasons we were pushing computers to their limits remain exciting. HTPC stuff, DV editing, quiet performance, home networks, file storage and networking, and of course gaming are all things we still actively do as hobbies on our water cooled or air cooled uber boxes. I doubt many of us are buying Dells yet, for example.

Is there a way to take the enthusiasm that we had for our cooling hobby and pour it into a more general technology fan-site? That might be a way to rekindle the community here while still keeping the hot bits all cool...
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Unread 09-06-2006, 05:15 PM   #22
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

There might still be an edge left to explore: water cooling a small htpc box, efficiently and economically. I'd challenge anyone to come up with an article on how to do that, even if it's just someone sharing their experience.
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Unread 09-06-2006, 08:47 PM   #23
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

Quote:
Originally Posted by bigben2k
There might still be an edge left to explore: water cooling a small htpc box, efficiently and economically. I'd challenge anyone to come up with an article on how to do that, even if it's just someone sharing their experience.
I just made an attempt in an LC17 from silverstone. Unfortunately, the pump was just too loud (DDC 18v version), even when enclosed in a metal box filled with foam and undervolted. A lot of compromises end up getting made, but it can be done. I just wasn't willing to put up with the noise.

For reference, it was a TDX, MAZE 4 GPU, Black Ice Pro II and DDC, all with tygon 3/8in. I'm pissed off that it failed, as now I've got all this WC gear and nothing to do with it.
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Unread 09-06-2006, 08:47 PM   #24
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

I think WCing for some people is like a hobby. Like any hobby you enjoy for several years and move on to some other hobby. You guys tweaked, looked how to improve it, test it, and now its so easy even a 12 year old could loop a system. So it is time to move on for some of you but I hope you guys feel proud of what you did instead of looking at WCing hitting downhill. WCing will still be around and mature further.

Maybe WCing is boring because the computer industry is getting dull. Maybe they find new material to use heatsinks and new designs need to be built. Maybe future changes in the industry like mobo layouts, devices geting smaller, and all computers shrinking down to SFF will cause changes in WCing.
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Unread 09-07-2006, 12:44 AM   #25
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

Quote:
Originally Posted by Azazel
I just made an attempt in an LC17 from silverstone. Unfortunately, the pump was just too loud (DDC 18v version), even when enclosed in a metal box filled with foam and undervolted. A lot of compromises end up getting made, but it can be done. I just wasn't willing to put up with the noise.

For reference, it was a TDX, MAZE 4 GPU, Black Ice Pro II and DDC, all with tygon 3/8in. I'm pissed off that it failed, as now I've got all this WC gear and nothing to do with it.
I think a pumpless/fanless system would be worth it for an htpc, but otherwise you may as well stick with fans... course, it would have to be extremely well designed, and when you get to that point, massive custom heatsinks would probably work better.

I was going to watercool my htpc, then i realised that theres no damn way i was going to get it quieter than with air, so why bother wasting time and money, and having to maintain it more, and worry about it more than air?
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