Gadgetory

now I've sort of been put into this perspective of being the go-to guy on YouTube for water cooling and although that was never actually intentional I'll go ahead and brace that and we will start at the beginning here with the very important question of should you even water cool your computer a lot of folks especially on forums think it's very cut and dry the answer is yes or the answer is no but I don't think it's quite that simple so today we're going to talk about it we're gonna let you know hopefully by the end of this video if you think water cooling is going to be for you guys it's 2016 it's a brand new year so why not learn something new don't just learn what I'm teaching you head on over to Linda comm / J that's J a why and choose from thousands of online tutorials where you guys can learn at your own pace about pretty much any subject you want from leading industry experts where else can you possibly go on the Internet where you can learn from the best of the best about subject matter that pertains and interests you that's the big thing about Linda comm is that you can check it out and learn at your own pace and that's what's going to help you learn things so head over there right now and get your free trial at lynda.com / J and check out anything that you want from their thousands of online videos and tutorials lynda.com /jj a wide link is in the description head over there right now or at the end of this video or open a new tab whatever watch them at the same time I mean it's like multitasking now that business has been taken care of let's get down to the subject matter for today and that being probably one that I am asked so much I see it on twitter facebook Instagram YouTube messages it doesn't matter emails especially emails been in flux with emails lately of people asking me pretty much the basic question of J should i water cool my PC now I think that's kind of a loaded question I don't think the answer is really all that easy I think the questions should be more rewarded in J do I need to water cool should is always a subjective question and that's going to be the answer is going to vary obviously on the perspective of both the person asking and the person answering now do I think you should water call your PC uh I can't answer that I can't say yes I can't say no the answer of do I need to walk cool my PC is going to be on the perspective of what do you want your PC to do are you going to leave your clocks at stock are you going to overclock are you going to be including your graphics cards in your loop how many graphics cards 1 2 3 4 are you going to be doing 7 like Linus did with his gaming server that he built you know it really comes down to that question what are you doing with your PC now even then it's not as cut and dry as are you gonna be overclocking even overclocking isn't going to be the definitive answer when it comes to whether or not you should water cool because there's a lot of benefits to water cooling other than just overclocking there's a longevity of keeping your components nice and cool heat is the number one killer of electronic components there's also the factor of noise do you want to keep it as quiet as possible if you're going to leave your stock clocks and your stock voltages then you can get away with water cooling at very low rpm speeds and have a very silent system Arta cooling isn't just about getting better temperatures on increased voltages and clock speeds it's also about noise if you're going to be leaving things that moderate to low voltage and you're not gonna be pushing things to too far you can get away with running your fans on your radiators at a very low speed and it's going to be able to maintain a very low speed as things ramp up with the usage of the CPU so things like rendering and gaming don't need the fans to ramp up to move as much hot air as it can out of the system which is what air cooling is going to do because air cooling is capacity is increased by adding more air through that heatsink so to add more air more rpms or higher CFM fans which mean more noise same thing with the GPU the fans will ramp up to move more air more quickly to increase the efficiency in the cooling effectiveness of a heatsink now radiators aren't really any different where the fan speed does affect the efficiency of the radiator but that curve is a lot less steep air cooled heat sinks are a lot more steep where you have to push an exponential amount of air through them to increase their effectiveness when it comes to cooling now radiators and water cooling is much more efficient which means you can get away with lot less speed when it comes to the effectiveness of the radiator now skunkworks for example I've got this thing overclocked 24/7 the GPUs and the CPU are overclocked at all times I don't even have them ramping down when they're not doing anything right now while showing the desktop this thing is still running a max four point six gigahertz right now with 1.3 5 volts being pushed to it or 1.3 to 5 volts being pushed to it at all times now you guys obviously can't hear it one because I've got a lab mic on but - it's very very quiet because the fans never ramp up I don't have the fan sent to ramp up I have them set at a pretty minimum speed at all times but that's because I've got so many fans and so much radiator space I get away with overclocking them all of them the GPUs and the CPU all the time without actually having to speed up the fans because if I had to speed up these fans it would be very noisy I've got one two three four fans in the bottom red that you can see right there I've got one two three intake fans that you guys can see out there in the front I've got another two radiator fans on the back of the seat of the the case right there that's on the GPU loop I've got one two three four fans on the top four the eggs are the technically their exhaust fans on the CPU loop and then one radiator fan in the back are not radiator fan but case fan in the back bringing a little bit air out the back of the case that's 14 fans 14 fans in this kit system so if they had to ramp up man there would be no noise or decibel benefit at all to doing water cooling so by doing big radiators I could slow them down they don't have to ramp up so there is a not only a overclocking benefit but an acoustic benefit to that as well now another way to twist that question a little bit like a pretzel because as you can see here there's a theme of twisting pretzels apparently is do I need to water cool my graphics card to overclock it and you know a few years back right around the 580 the GTX 580 and older I would have said absolutely because there weren't a lot of custom cooler applications being applied back then I mean you have things like twin frozer and stuff that existed but the the beefier coolers that you're seeing on graphics cards today like the one I have here on the EVGA kingpin the 980ti kingpin I mean with its solid copper heat sinks and solid copper baseplate and solid copper heat pipes these we're not really existing back then heat pipes were just starting to make their way into graphics cards and the cooling benefit of heat pipes and copper and vapor chambers weren't being utilized then like they are today now back then I would have said yes to overclock your graphics card and get the max benefits of overclocking and the max over clocks would require water cooling but that's not the case today I have pretty much found and I think I'll you find anyone doing graphics card overclocking would agree but the max over clocks today are not being held back by thermals thermals are something that the graphics card manufacturers have definitely got under control and on stock bios's and stock voltages you are not going to get your max over clocks any better on water than you are currently on air but if you are going to start doing custom bios and really pushing the voltages on cards like this I mean this this card is begging for a custom bios and pushing the voltages as high as you can then you would start to see the limitations of air we're adding something like the waterblock for them this is actually the one that's prefilled for this card and I will be doing this review here to see how much farther we can push the king pin because remember I didn't get the best of overclock side of this card then water cooling has a benefit so again that's a kind of a loaded question of no you don't need to water call your graphics cards to get your max overclock if remember there's always an if like an if-then statement just like coding on computer if you want to push the voltage is higher than what is going to be warrantied and recommended by a graphics card manufacturer then overclocking gives you insurance and extra Headroom that would otherwise be held back by air cooling CPUs are often the same way where you are going to get benefits of extra cooling capacity of larger radiators and you would typically find in all-in-one units where you can push those overclocks farther and safer for 24/7 operation like I'm doing with Scud works behind now this is where I'm gonna drop a dose of truth on you guys and here it is so you guys ready I do not recommend water cooling if buying the water cooling components takes away from the level of hardware you're able to buy thus the skunkworks loops you see behind me here are over $1200 that's more than most people's entire computer budget now what do I mean by that well it's pretty simple it means if you have to get an i-5 instead of an i7 and that say a 960 or a 970 instead of a 980 or 90 DTI to afford the water cooling stuff then the amount of benefit you're getting out of that water cooling is extremely diminished by the level of components that you were stuck having to get in order to afford all of it so I would always recommend air cooling on say a 980ti and an i7 versus going with a water-cooled 970 in a water-cooled i-5 because the overclocking is barely going to match where this components you scrimped on would have been able to achieve on air cooling I hope that makes sense never ever ever sacrifice the level of hardware that you're going to buy if it means getting lower level hardware to afford the water cooling always get the highest level of hardware that you can possibly afford at the time of building and then water cool that later but you're never going to find water blocks for things like nine 50s and 1960s or three 70s or whatever when it kind Ries Evan to graphics cards you're never gonna find water blocks for those cards because it even the industry knows it makes no sense to take a hundred and fifty dollar graphics card and then make a hundred and fifty dollar $125 full cover water block of that it makes no sense to spend as much as the card is worth to water cooling that's the reality there so when I see emails from folks saying I can't find a water block for my 950 that's because they don't exist you would have to go with a universal block which is not going to cover the VRMs or the chips or any of that stuff not to mention that stuff is not getting hot enough gtx 950 s get what 58 degrees celsius is what all of my testing showed on all the 950 s i had in here i mean it's not even hitting 60 c there's no benefit to water cooling it period water cooling is also a niche thing where it looks cooler i mean that looks badass back that's one of the reasons why i do it not just because of the added benefit of of the lower temperatures and lower acoustics but it just looks cool and that's where you ultimately have to ask yourself is if you're willing to spend the money on the premium that it costs to do a niche thing like water cooling and you really don't care about Vizio sacrifice extra money and you have the the high-end hardware that really should be water-cooled and you want to look cool then there's your answer but hopefully today's video has helped you guys understand a little bit more when it comes to water cooling and the benefits of it but if you're going to be taking a graphics card like the 980ti kingpin or 90 ATI classified or the MSI gaming or the g1 gaming or whatever from gigabyte you're going to find that you're going to put your water blocks on and the temperatures came down but your overclocks didn't improve there's other things involved with custom bios flashing and stuff like that that's required but anyway hopefully today's videos helped you guys twist the perspective I wanted to take that question of J should I water cool and throw it out the window should is never the proper way of looking at it needing it and wanting it quite honestly are the two perspectives that make the most sense because asking me if you should I can't answer that for you you need to answer whether or not you should by answering the question of whether or not you need to can afford it and want the additional maintenance and it's going to take and the level of dedication water cooling takes it adds maintenance to your PC and you gotta be willing to deal with that anyway guys maybe I'll do another video in the future here about all the things involved with maintaining your water cooling loop because that's whether or not you should do it is one thing whether or not you can do it and are dedicated to it is another it's like a pet you've got to care for it you can't just set it up and let it go when it comes to custom water cooling loops all-in-one coolers yes you can that's what they're meant for but this guy back here you guys have seen the struggles of keeping this thing the way I want it anyway guys time to go hope today's videos helped you announced a little bit longer but I like these discussions and they tend to be a little bit more interesting plus you can listen to it while doing other things you don't need to see my ugly mug just sitting here on the screen I mean I could have done this to some gameplay stuff maybe yeah maybe I should have I don't know you guys are stuck looking at this alright see in the next one you