Watercooling & Overclocking

b3mmredm wrote:

If i were to have my system watercooled so it never went hot with an Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme Processor and 8800 GTX watercoolded grahic card, would overclocking my system with help from www.scan.co.uk not have the computer restart, jump or overheat and safe to do so?

Anything you can do to help your machine is good but remember overclocking puts undo pressure on the component parts.
If it were meant to run faster safely the company would have done it to boost sales.
It may catch up with you and get burned out.
That's the chance you take for better performance.

So i could overclock it a little bit but not to much and it would be O.K aslong as its watercooled?

b3mmredm wrote:

So i could overclock it a little bit but not to much and it would be O.K aslong as its watercooled?

I may be wrong but I seriously doubt it and I'll repeat this sentence.

If it were meant to run faster safely the company would have done it to boost sales.

Yes water cooling would help but...

Ask at http://www.overclockers.com/

b3mmredm wrote:

So i could overclock it a little bit but not to much and it would be O.K aslong as its watercooled?

You can, but you will not notice much of a difference....it it said that if you decide to OC, you must do so in small increments up till when your computer begans locking up or restarting. then, you back it down about 2 settings. The bad thing is, like I said before, that you might not notice a thing, other than your programs load a little faster.

[quote="RadarMan"]

b3mmredm wrote:

If it were meant to run faster safely the company would have done it to boost sales.

I'll have to disagree with you on this point, Radarman:

CPUs are commodities sold to meet a certain price point in a competitive market. They are rated to perform reliably (read: meet the warranty) with cheap standard coolers. If you improve the cooling, you usually can overclock safely. BUT, not every aftermarket cooler is an improvement over the standard hardware. It's a matter of design AND implementation. You have to know what you are doing, and how to do it.

which point gets me to this:

b3mmredm,

I'm not sure how you'll receive this, but take it in the good nature in which it is offered: From some of your posts, it sounds like you're fairly new to the "enthusiast realm" of computers. Overclocking and watercooling are fairly ambitious things to undertake, if you're doing them yourself. I'd sit back and study some more before laying out big dollars for high-end enthusiast add-ons. Now if you have a reliable builder do it for you....

Another thing is that watercooling is not cheap to implement (some systems to watercool CPU, GPU and the motherboard chipset exceed $300) and sometimes the performance gains are small. Sometimes you can get better bang for the buck by putting the extra money into a faster CPU and/or video card which are conventionally cooled.

If you are just starting to get into system building, you can start by buying stock, and then buy some aftermarket CPU coolers that work "conventionally" (add-on heatsinks and fans). They cost a lot less than a turnkey watercooling system.

So, unless you're buying the fastest of the fast of everything and still need to be faster yet, I'd suggest faster, convetionally-cooled hardware might get you more performance for your money, and be less of a risk.

mdaskalos - Very well put.

I have over 23yrs experience with computer and computer hardware, however, it was not until the past year that I was able to work up the nerve to push my systems faster and faster... yes, I do run watercooling, but what people who are new to this experience must understand is that Watercooling is STILL ambient reliant. It will NOT cool your system down below room temperature, even at a 100% efficiency level.

Watercooling is still a heat transfer system, and not all the heat will be removed from the coolant. I use a very efficient single 120mm Radiator and am able to operate at just over 2 or 3*c above room temerature. I will most likely upgrade to a pelter system in the future so that I can achieve below room temps. A properly setup pelter or chiller can reach near 0*c temps, and I have seen extreme cooling systems achieve -75*c.

I have been able to successfully overclock every component on my system. CPU, GPU, Memory, Northbridge and Southbridge have been overclocked for quite some time now with NO adverse effects since stabalizing and benchmarking (1.86 Core2Duo @ 3.2ghz, up from 2.94) That is damn near 100% increase in performance... Temps range from 28*c Mainboard / 34*c CPU to 34* mainboard / 40*cpu under loaad. I was also able to push a Pentium D 805 Smithfield from 2.66ghz to 4ghz!! This however is currently being blown away by my Core2Duo..

Bottomline, overclocking is a precision science. You are dealing with timings, frequiencies, voltages, and chips. If you set something incorrectly and do not have the proper Fail-Safes in place, you will fry your system... Once you get the mainboard to post under a certain freq, you then have to benchmark and do a stability test up to 24hrs long.

Its serious business!

This is now my 3rd computer that is watercooled and i do it mostly because of the noise of multiple fans.I got all components in my watercircuit and just one 30 by 30 cm radiator with a big slow fan behind.Like that i keep everything at 30 to 35 deg C.CPU and GPU run at 20% above normal and
that for 3 years permanently on (exept 2 powerfailiures)

I will change the pump now after 3 years because that is the only part that wears out and if the pump goes bust the rest goes with it.

If you like fiddeling around and know what you\r doing go ahead