Is Liquid Cooling A Thing Of The Past

That I don't know...


Liquid cooling has always been a novelty, reserved for the ultra high-end computers. And even then it was alway more about doing it that the actual performance. I think it will always be that way.
 
I think exactly the opposite, honestly. I think air is a thing of the past, liquid should be the norm and phase change cooling is the new hotness. (Like what I did there? lol)

Here's why:

I was going to go air on my 2600K overclock project and try to hit over 5ghz on air. The cooler I was looking at was ~80 bucks. My buddy built a BEAST of a machine and got a Corsair H60 liquid cooler for 60 bucks and it worked GREAT for him.

I just had to do the same. With liquid cooling being so cheap and working so well, it was an easy decision. I hit 5.1GHz in the end and temp was never even close to a problem. It's kinda just a must as far as I'm concerned. I got my H60 at friggin Best Buy for 60 bucks plus tax. Hell...you can get the big, dual fan Corsair awesomeness off Best Buy for $120 right now. I mean...damn...that's about as mainstream as you get.

As far as I'm concerned, if you're just going to keep stock freqs, sure...keep the stock fan setup. If you're overclocking, liquid is a no brainer. If you're going extreme, the new "liquid cooling" is phase change cooling.
 
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I don't particularly like the idea of having coolant running beside my hardware.

And, really, it's not needed. I got an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro to chill my old i5-2500k and I had it on air. Temps never went above 55 degrees C and it was running at 4.5GHz.

I'm running a Phenom II the now, with an Arctic Cooler A30 that has 320Watts of cooling capacity - this thing is a beast and it's silent. My Phenom, which has a far higher TDP than the i5 is overclocked and over volted and never hits 50 degrees with this thing. Why would I need water to cool it?

It might be cool to have, and if you are putting your gear under extreme conditions then water cooling might be a relatively sensible option, but when you have heatsinks out there that can shift 320Watts of heat and hardly make a noise, I just couldn't justify it.

Too much hassle for me :p
 
Sorry but would somebody tell me how water cooling works simply. I'm guessing that it runs water through the heatsink, but still don't know how this could work.

The important thing with liquid cooling is that it transfers heat.

The liquid starts in a reservoir with a pump. The pump pushes the liquid into a "block" installed on top of the CPU. The heat is transferred from the CPU into the liquid. The hot liquid is then pushed into a radiator. The heat is transferred from the liquid into the radiator grills. The radiator has a fan that pulls the heat off the grills and into the air. The cooled liquid is then pushed back into the reservoir.

This site shows it in a pretty simple to understand diagram: Google Image Result for http://img.webme.com/pic/g/guide-pc-cooling/02.gif

thats a good start of an explaination
the biggest reason for going with a liquid cooling loop
is the fact that the liquid (distilled water, anti-freeze[controversial], mineral oil, etc.) will absorb the sudden shock of heat that is generated by your CPU when it goes from idle to 3 cores running at max when you start that game
where as a HS&F has a very hard time keeping up with the heat load that has been generated
which is why you can hear your fans kick in at times
i have seen several rigs that have massive radiators
there are even some rigs out there that can run passive
(as in no fans required) check out the attached pic

Do you have to replace the liquid ?? Or can you keep it the same

yes, you should replace the liquid on a custom built loop every once and a while
on a Corsair Hydro
no, they are closed and should stay that way
it would be a PITA to try and close after you open it
although i have seen it done
and i have also seen a Corsair Hydro used to cool off a GPU
 

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