Pro/Forums - View Single Post - "Mass-market budget water-cooling" - Is it driving users away from water-cooling?

HAL-9000 · 07-12-2004, 02:57 PM

Noise and price are what I would say is the barrier to mass-acceptance of water-cooling. If I buy a nice Swiftech or Thermalright sink, with appropriate low-noise fan, I'm out about seventy bucks. I cannot put together a water-cooling system for that price that will beat the air solution in either performance or noise. So there really is no point.

Even with a nice setup, you don't see a big improvement in temps until you compare temps when the computer is working hard. A good aircooler can maintain virtually identical idle temps as a nice watercooler. Factor in the reliability, simplicity, and aesthetics of a good aircooler (the new ones are quite pretty) there is no reason to go water until you hit $150 and up in your cooling budget. So that precludes about %70 of the enthusiast market right there, forget about Grandma.

But, aircooling is getting quite extreme in design and application just to be a competent cooler on today's procs. Watching CPU's go from no sink to all copper 80mm x 80mm HSF for stock Dell cooling is a testament to this. Video cards are going through that right now. Video card aircooling is going to get very problematic in the next 24 months for two reasons:

1.There are actual market forces and applications that push vidcards year after year...and that market is willing to pay big premiums for performance. MS Excel in Office 97 is pretty much MS Excel in Office 2K3 horsepower-wise. Doom 1 is nothing like Doom 3, so the vidcard makers are going to continually push harder on performance, even if CPU's slow down in development.

2. Peripheral card form-factors are not very accomodating to continued aircooler growth. You will not see a Swiftech 6400-V with monster fan bolted onto a Hercules Prophet unless user of such a setup is willing to forego having any other peripheral card in his rig.

I think the PC industry is watching what happens with Apple's watercooling "experiment." If user-feedback does not reveal big problems, I think you will see some other OEM's take the dip.

07-12-2004, 02:57 PM	#101
HAL-9000 Cooling Savant Join Date: May 2004 Location: San Diego, CA Posts: 202	Fan noise is an issue, so is price Noise and price are what I would say is the barrier to mass-acceptance of water-cooling. If I buy a nice Swiftech or Thermalright sink, with appropriate low-noise fan, I'm out about seventy bucks. I cannot put together a water-cooling system for that price that will beat the air solution in either performance or noise. So there really is no point. Even with a nice setup, you don't see a big improvement in temps until you compare temps when the computer is working hard. A good aircooler can maintain virtually identical idle temps as a nice watercooler. Factor in the reliability, simplicity, and aesthetics of a good aircooler (the new ones are quite pretty) there is no reason to go water until you hit $150 and up in your cooling budget. So that precludes about %70 of the enthusiast market right there, forget about Grandma. But, aircooling is getting quite extreme in design and application just to be a competent cooler on today's procs. Watching CPU's go from no sink to all copper 80mm x 80mm HSF for stock Dell cooling is a testament to this. Video cards are going through that right now. Video card aircooling is going to get very problematic in the next 24 months for two reasons: 1.There are actual market forces and applications that push vidcards year after year...and that market is willing to pay big premiums for performance. MS Excel in Office 97 is pretty much MS Excel in Office 2K3 horsepower-wise. Doom 1 is nothing like Doom 3, so the vidcard makers are going to continually push harder on performance, even if CPU's slow down in development. 2. Peripheral card form-factors are not very accomodating to continued aircooler growth. You will not see a Swiftech 6400-V with monster fan bolted onto a Hercules Prophet unless user of such a setup is willing to forego having any other peripheral card in his rig. I think the PC industry is watching what happens with Apple's watercooling "experiment." If user-feedback does not reveal big problems, I think you will see some other OEM's take the dip.