Liquid Cooling- What do I need to know? (and other advice needed)

[mashakos]

@sharaleo

Now, just for shits and giggles, let’s look at your i7 render farm vs Xeon from a TCO perspective. I threw this together quickly just for fun and to double check my train of thought was more or less accurate. Let’s say you were a small business providing outsourced rendering services. This is based on a fully loaded HP c10000 blade chassis (16 x 2-way = 32 CPU). Considering the i7 renders 30% faster per CPU, there are 30% less of them (22 CPU). By end of year one, costs are parity. Beyond that, Xeon represents significant operational savings. Note the caveats, there are, um, more than a few, but they seem reasonable. I am sure you’ll point out something obvious I have missed.

Feel free to discuss. I can send you the spreadsheet if you feel like a tinker.

22 core i7 cases?? yeah this is beyond my scope :D
Wouldn’t the new Nvidia Grid server make more sense than a 32 xeon cpu blade chassis? Since that thing has like 4 titans, and with all the talk regarding how CUDA cores scale much better than cpu cores…

[Reldan]

@mashakos

could be the case, but a lot of the times? You should hang around more mature people maybe?

You are so far up your own ass you could make the next Bioshock game. I’m sure steering the conversation into overclocking and the price-to-performance comparisons of Xeons and i7s and render farms is highly relevant to a simple question on liquid cooling options. If all you want to do is show off how much you know about a topic nobody gives two shits about you could easily do so in any of a dozen threads that you’ve started for the express purpose of doing exactly that.

[mashakos]

@Reldan

You are so far up your own ass you could make the next Bioshock game. I’m sure steering the conversation into overclocking and the price-to-performance comparisons of Xeons and i7s and render farms is highly relevant to a simple question on liquid cooling options. If all you want to do is show off how much you know about a topic nobody gives two shits about you could easily do so in any of a dozen threads that you’ve started for the express purpose of doing exactly that.

Liquid cooling is pretty much a requirement if you want to put a core i5/i7 in a SFF case and keep the PC running at whisper quiet operation. I like the creativity in your response though, funny!

[Manresa]

@Malcolm Tucker

Okay, I guess I will get a closed loop system for my Prodigy.

I have one with a single fan radiator in an Ivy Bridge, and I hate it. The pump itself is noisy, and I don’t overclock, so I would have been better off getting a medium-sized heatsink with one or two 120mm fans, like the Corsair 212 Hyper Evo. One of these days when I feel like tinkering I’ll do the swap.

[mashakos]

@Manresa

I have one with a single fan radiator in an Ivy Bridge, and I hate it. The pump itself is noisy, and I don’t overclock, so I would have been better off getting a medium-sized heatsink with one or two 120mm fans, like the Corsair 212 Hyper Evo. One of these days when I feel like tinkering I’ll do the swap.

other than the swiftech h220, all closed loop kits are crap.

[Manresa]

@mashakos

other than the swiftech h220, all closed loop kits are crap.

You’ve tested them all, then?

[mashakos]

@Manresa

You’ve tested them all, then?

there are basically two companies that all the brands are sourcing from. Both companies used cheap components with terrible cooling performance that require high CFM fans.

[Manresa]

@mashakos

there are basically two companies that all the brands are sourcing from. Both companies used cheap components with terrible cooling performance that require high CFM fans.

“Terrible cooling performance” in what context? What effect do those “cheap” (source?) components have? Will it be quieter than a mid-sized tower cooler with a pair of good fans on a stock Ivy Bridge 3570?

[unbongwah]

@Malcolm Tucker

seven years later, is liquid cooling still a terrible idea? Every single build I’ve seen online lately has been using it. Is there a good guide anywhere?

FWIW, here’s a recent favorable review of the H220 mashakos mentioned, as well as two roundups featuring other water coolers. Bottom line: you get what you pay for; cheap watercoolers are cheap for a reason. I’ve got a Corsair H60, IIRC, which I picked up cheap-ish; works fine, but it doesn’t seem to run any cooler or quieter than the better air coolers I’ve had. At this point, my attitude is either settle for a basic air cooler (e.g., Hyper 212 Evo) or go hog-wild on a high-end cooler so you can OC the hell outta your CPU.