Is Water Cooling worth getting

Clarifications

It's worth it if you are having overheating issues but other wise it can be more trouble that what it is worth.

With any decent Water Cooling System you need to cool the CPU/s and the Video Card so this means more than the 1 heat Transfer device inside the case. You at the very least need one for the CPU and one for the GPU. Naturally if you have more than 1 CPU you need one per CPU.
Then you need to make sure that the Water isn't getting hot enough to stop removing heat from the next Heat Exchanger in line so a Overly Hot CPU which heats the water sufficiently may not provide enough cooling for the GPU.

You also need to make sure that the connections are very secure on the Heat Exchangers so that there are no leaks and you need to use something other than straight Water in these devices. Water will eventually corrode the copper fittings and start leaks. It also will start to grow crap and junk in it which not only adversely affects the cooling but can block the water flow and cause the pump to burn out or worse still pop off a Cooling Line and pump the coolant into the inside of the case. You also need to have clear and easy access to the Radiator to refill as required and if you start needing to refill often you need to check for leaks.

Overall in a high powered rig it can be worthwhile but you need to understand the draw backs and very importantly do not skimp on the water cooling system to start off with. If you buy a decent one first up it will give you a long trouble free service but some of the cheap ones will be nothing but problems.

You'll also need a case that suits Water Cooling so most of the current generation Antec's will need to be on your shopping list as well as the colling system. ;)

Zalman used to make a Fan less case where the actual case was the heat sink for all the internal devices. So you have heat Transfer devices running from the CPU/s, Power Supply and GPU to the side of the case and then the entire case acted as the heat transfer device. They worked very well in dusty conditions for servers that I used to build and where considerably quieter not to mention cheaper to run than the more conventional Fan Cases.

Col

Water cooled, aside from the basic "wow" factor, will on average be much quieter at the same processing threshold and allows you to overclock without fan's sounding like they are about to take off. But it does come with added risks of leaks, and pump failures etc.

But if you just want a high end system, and don't plan on any over clocking or dealing with the extra challenges water cooling can entail. Then there are plenty of air cooled options that will keep you cool and do it quietly for a much cheaper and fewer headaches.

Outfit mine, first, and I'll report on my results for you.

Seems I'm having problems with my liquid nitrogen setup.

going to be overclocking the PC, or it is overheating with a regular cooling system, Water Cooling (or liquid cooling) is not really worth it, apart from the wow factor that is.

try looking at a high-end CPU cooler. You can find some pretty good quality one, and although they might be expensive for what they are, they require little to no maintenance, unlike a liquid cooling system.

That does explain a lot...

So unless you actually KNOW what your current operating temperatures are, no matter how much money you've got, you'll just be throwing it away.

[i]I can provide a Postal Address if you wish.[/i] ;)

but is only necessary if you are generating serious amounts of heat (like you are able to heat your place with just your rig). The biggest piece of advice you need (that hasn't already been mentioned) is, if you use Liquid Cooling, use a non-conductive liquid (not water).

Just as a side note, 99.999999999% of the time, modifying the heat sync on a piece of hardware will void the manufacturers warranty, especially with GPUs.

If you are really worried about cooling, build your own case out of 1 by 2's and some chip board. Cut a bunch of holes for fans, and rig up a bunch of fans to blow across all your hardware. This method not only guarantees that you will look cool, but that everyone will know you are still a virgin and forever will be :)

I wanted to overclock my XPS 720. When doing so the fans were so loud I simply could not deal with it. Solution? Water-Cooling!? Several hundred dollars and countless hours later (Dells Proprietary Motherboard didnt like my idea much) I proceeded to experience what all the hoopla about OCing is. Results: First, overclocking is OVER-rated. The performance increase was negligible at best. Core temperature on each processor was nominally better. Noise factor was only nominally better. One should note here that water-cooling does not free you from fans. Your radiator will still need one. After about 2 months of using this setup and topping off the water levels at least once, I experience instant shutdown when trying to power up my pc. Turns out the pump had failed on my system. Still under warranty, it sets along with the rest of the cooling kit in a cardboard box in my "junk" section. And all in all, I am much more comfortable with my user experience. Just something about water and electronic circuitry that I can not get out of my head.

http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php

Though a caveat here I would remove all of the fans as submerging them in Oil isn't good and probably more importantly is counterproductive to good cooling.

Any Heat sinks that you use need to be free of air pockets so make sure that the Cooling Fins are straight up with no possibility of air getting trapped in them.

Otherwise it's a different cooling method and looks completely different. ;)

Col

I'd rather take my wife out to Ruby Tuesdays every week instead of once a month.
I haven't read all of the replies, which I may regret, but having a water-cooled computer would be pretty decent. I've thought of getting one but where does a person stop? How many graphics cards, CPUs, memory sticks and whatnot does a person have to spend/waste money on only to have something that's going to be outdated next week so they have to start over again.
If performance is the name of the game look into a well-built, yet fairly inexpensive rig that will run 64-bit Windows or, heresy, 64-bit Linux. My old Dell was smoking hot fast with Linux x64 on it.
To me, anymore, a computer is simply an appliance. It's what someone does on it that counts.
I generally wait about 4-5 years between upgrades. Computers may be 4-5 times 'faster' in that interval. I specify 'faster' like that because there's always going to be a bottleneck to 'speed.'

if it leaks it will not fry anything