First of all, thanks for taking a look. I am building a new system and am trying to decide on the water cooling components. I am not new to watercooling and the concepts since I have had two water cooled systems in the past, but the last one I built was about four years ago and there are a lot more offerings out there these days.
Main considerations:
Cooling is important and noise is to some extent. My current intent is to purchase
THIS CASE from frozencpu.com because I like the idea of a "hidden" all-internal cooling system. The case is very large so I have room to play with cooling options.
The Components List:
I plan to equip the chassis with an Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe nForce4 SLI mobo, an AMD 64 FX-60 processor, (2) Asus 7800GTX GeForce 7800 GTX PCI Express 256MB DDR3 video cards, (2)Corsair TWINX2048-3500LLPRO 2GB Kit DDR433 XMS3500 ProSeries, and probably just an add-on sound card and TV Tuner card (if room permits). To supply the juice to this rig, I have opted for the Enermax ELT620AWT Liberty 620W.
The components I would like to water cool:
-(1) CPU, (2) GPUs and maybe the RAM (though I don't know if I really need to worry about that.
Decision Making:
The case that I plan to get comes with a Black Ice Xtreme Triple 120mm Fan Radiator but I am left with making some decisions about the blocks, diameter of the tubing, pump(s), and whether or not I will include a reservoir. I had always used reservoirs previously but have read the posts that encourage the use of a T line instead.
Pump
I was wondering what thoughts were on the Asetek WaterChill Xtreme Integrated Pump / Reservoir. I like the fact that it is software-controlled. I know that the newer Swiftech and DD pumps come with rehostats, but because of where my case will be located, I would rather have the option to control the speed of fan(s) and pump(s) by either software or exterior-mounted switch / knob configurations. If anyone has suggestions, I would really appreciate it.
My other thought was to run twin pumps for redundancy, suggestions please.
Blocks, CPU/VGU
I am comfortable with the DD and Swiftech offerings in this area.
Intended Use of System:
This system will be used for gaming and video editing / rendering applicaitons, as well as graphic design. I plan to overclock to some extent for gaming purposes, but most of the time the speeds and voltages will be running at MFG spec.
Diameter of Tubing:
I would love to use 1/2", but am also open to 3/8" since it requires less space (diameter) for curves.
Summary:
Though I may upgrade CPU / RAM at some point, the video cards will probably stay in place. I am looking to build a low-maintenance system that is reasonably quiet (no vacuum cleaner-level noise) and will last me for about 5 years. With respect to the cooling components, it is important to purchase quality products that offer reliability. Any thoughts that you experts could offer would be greatly appreaciated.
Thanks