Water cooling - noise level?

[Gareth Tuckwell]

How noisey is a water cooling setup?

The loudest thing in my PC at the moment is my Samsung Spinpoint hard disk -
which incidentally is pretty quiet. If I upgrade the processor and graphics
card, they won't be cooled sufficiently by the Zalman heatsinks and large,
slow fans that I have now, so I would have to look at water cooling. I know
the pump makes a noise, but how loud is it and what kind of noise - annoying
whine or quiet deep rumble?

 

[Apollo]

How noisey is a water cooling setup?

The loudest thing in my PC at the moment is my Samsung Spinpoint hard
disk - which incidentally is pretty quiet. If I upgrade the processor
and graphics card, they won't be cooled sufficiently by the Zalman
heatsinks and large, slow fans that I have now, so I would have to
look at water cooling. I know the pump makes a noise, but how loud is
it and what kind of noise - annoying whine or quiet deep rumble?

You could go for a Zalman resorator, you won't hear it, but then again
the amount of cooling from them is complete crap, even compared to good
air cooling.

If you're willing to spend a fair amount you can get a near silent water
cooled setup. Bear in mind that the pumps, rads and resevoirs are all
quite big for proper water cooling and you will need a BIG case to fit
it all inside.

Look here;
http://www.coolercases.co.uk/water_cooling_dangerden_kits.htm
for rough cost.

I chose the RBX Ultimate Plus, it performs very well but the pump (Laing
D4) is just about audible, I believe the Eheim pumps are virtually
silent though. If I had to do it again I'd choose TDX / Eheim, but my
setup does the job. I also changed the single 120mm (v.noisy) fan for a
pair of papst 120's running about 9 volts.

Some pics here;
http://www.ian-dunbar.co.uk/water-images/
You'll notice that there's two types of hose - the Dangerden hose
wouldn't do the curves I needed, the Tygon stuff is much more flexible
and I'd recommend using that throughout.

I have a big(ish) case and just got it all to fit, cpu, northbridge and
gpu all water cooled, it took a couple of days to fit it and get all of
the cables tidied away etc.

HTH

 

[terry smith]

How noisey is a water cooling setup?

The loudest thing in my PC at the moment is my Samsung Spinpoint hard disk -
which incidentally is pretty quiet. If I upgrade the processor and graphics
card, they won't be cooled sufficiently by the Zalman heatsinks and large,
slow fans that I have now, so I would have to look at water cooling. I know
the pump makes a noise, but how loud is it and what kind of noise - annoying
whine or quiet deep rumble?

I have a sumsung too and that is quiet. Can't help on the rest.