Thread: Looking to Buy a Water Cooling system

For the past 3 weeks my system has been lagging bad when playing CS:GO, usually after about 30 minutes or so of playing so I am guessing that my system is over heating. my FPS drop to the teens and this is with the video settings set to all low settings. i even don't play BF3 on High settings due to this issue also.

So I want to add water Cooling.

My System:
ASUS Sabertooth 990FX AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
AMD Phenom II X4 970 Black Edition
Cooler Master Hyper 212 plus CPU Heatsink/Fan
Radeon HD 6950 2GB
8GB of memory.
Windows 7 Ultimate.
Cooler Master HAF 932 Case.
Antec 850 Watt PSU.

What all will I need to cool my CPU and GPU?

Will I need to worry about cooling my memory?

I know NOTHING about water Cooling so just going off of reviews I found this one.
CORSAIR Hydro Series H100i Water Cooler - Newegg.com


What are your thoughts and are there any different ones that I should look at?

Thanks,

Just so you know, the Corsair Hydro series is only for CPUs, it won't do much for your GPU. You may want to first do a good cleaning of everything.

Next maybe download http://www.almico.com/speedfan449.exe and write down your idle temps, your temps when you first start CSGO, and then alt-tab when the issues occur and write those temps down. Then post them here.

Besides that, I use this CPU cooler for my system. CORSAIR Hydro Series H60 (CW-9060007-WW) Water Cooler - Newegg.com

It is amazing. My temps for my CPU are 18C idling.

I have the H100i and it's great. The software is a little wonky, but it works. You can set the fans to ramp up as temps go up, so at idle, they are off.

Your computer would likely shutdown if temps were getting too high.

If you want to water cool both your CPU and GPU, you would need to look into a custom water cooling loop. For this, you would need all of the following:

CPU Water Block
GPU Water Block
Water Pump
Water Reservoir
Radiator (possibly 2 - 1 for CPU, 1 for GPU)
Barbs or Compression Fittings
Tubing

Based on my past experiences, getting into a custom water cooling loop will cost you about $500 when it is all said and done. That being said, it may not be worth spending that kind of cash on an aging AMD Phenom II X4 Black Edition. For $500, you could buy a whole new CPU/Board/Memory that would wipe the floor of that Phenom.

Now, as others have mentioned... If your CPU temps are the main concern, the Corsair H100i is a great cooler. For your GPU, you could clean it with some compressed air, or even take off the CPU heat sink and apply some new thermal compound to the GPU and reseat the heat sink.

Originally Posted by HeavyG

For your GPU, you could clean it with some compressed air, or even take off the CPU heat sink and apply some new thermal compound to the GPU and reseat the heat sink.

I did this with my Radeon 5870 and it helped temperatures immensely. I saw a drop of 25% in peak temps while gaming.

Originally Posted by WileECyte

I did this with my Radeon 5870 and it helped temperatures immensely. I saw a drop of 25% in peak temps while gaming.

Cleaned out my system but there wasn't much dirt, I had just cleaned it a less than couple months ago.
I added one more fan to the front of my case but am still having the same issues......after a few rounds of play my FPS drop to the teens.


As some of you know I play on 3 different systems, Home, Work and a Laptop. It is now doing the same on all three so I am thinking it is a file/software issues. I am currently deleting all CSGO files and reinstalling them.

Originally Posted by Gunny

Cleaned out my system but there wasn't much dirt, I had just cleaned it a less than couple months ago.
I added one more fan to the front of my case but am still having the same issues......after a few rounds of play my FPS drop to the teens.


As some of you know I play on 3 different systems, Home, Work and a Laptop. It is now doing the same on all three so I am thinking it is a file/software issues. I am currently deleting all CSGO files and reinstalling them.

I think he means putting fresh thermal compound on it

Sent from my SGH-I337 using Tapatalk 4

Yes. I completely disassembled my video card heatsink & fan. Cleaned out all the dirt/dust from the fins and applied fresh thermal compound and put it all back together.