water cooling parts?
water cooling parts?
Looking to set up a 240mm radiator and cool your i5 6600k at the lowest cost. Here’s what you’ll need:
We often hear people saying they're sacrificing quality parts to get a liquid cooler, which actually defeats the purpose. If you're just buying liquid or water cooling mainly to show it, then it's time to move on and tell your friends you're watercooled without knowing much about it. This is likely what drives most liquid cooler sales.
If you truly want a specific goal, you should plan carefully if you have a budget limit.
As many have mentioned, spending over $250 on liquid cooling means you're wasting money. Instead, invest in a decent air cooler and use the rest for something better.
Water cooling tends to be costly, right? Would you like to know the reasons behind needing it? If budget matters, I could opt for an air cooler instead.
LiamTheTurtle is looking for a list of parts to install a 240mm radiator and cool his i5 6600k. He wants the best value, so he’s considering cheaper options. For just CPU cooling, he suggests a 280mm or 240mm AIO closed loop cooler like the NZXT Kraken X61 or Corsair H100iv2. He mentions that good air cooling is usually better for quieter operation and better temperatures. He also shares his experience with a Dark Rock Pro 3 running an i7 6700K, noting it stays cool during gaming but gets hotter under stress. He advises custom water cooling only if you have more demanding hardware like high-end GPUs or power-hungry CPUs.
I wouldn't suggest a standard AIO cooler. The components are low quality and the flow pumps aren't good.
I wouldn't suggest a standard AIO cooler. The components are inexpensive and the pumps don't flow well. If watercooling is an option, starting with the H220/H240 would be ideal since the pump's power allows for better expansion. In my view, AIO coolers should be more common on GPUs than CPUs to manage heat more efficiently.
there are only a few real-world benefits to liquid cooling.
there isn’t any affordable liquid cooling system that surpasses good air cooling. The cheapest option you’d find is around 250 dollars for a decent CPU cooler, and even then you’d likely need a used pump or a simple reliable one.
thus, begin with top-tier hardware—an i7 processor and a GTX 1080 GPU—ensuring the motherboard costs at least 150 dollars and the power supply is in the 80-100 dollar range. Once you add a 500GB to 1TB SSD storage, it becomes reasonable to consider liquid cooling.