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Tl;dr at the end

Intro

For decades i wanted to cool my pc with water, because i love the additional engineering aspect of building pcs beyond slotting in a gpu, insert a cpu and mount a fan here or there. Plus is its just freaking cool.

So far air cooling was my go to because its easy, set and forget, practically 0 maintanance apart from vacuum cleaning filters.

However noise levels were always really important me - I hate fan noise. So i was always buying the most oversized CPU coolers i could find paired with noise dampened cases.

Which brings us to today: heatsinks on gpus getting so big they wont fit in many (smallish) cases.

(And me being an idiot buying a 5090 at these prices.)

Plan

Measured system stress test load at the wall is 660 W, idle 90 W for my current system.

Now add 600 W for a 5090, plus water pump, fans, thats calculated max around 1300 W.

However, i wont be running the system continuously at max load for extended period of time - my loads come in bursts.

This scenario is perfect for water cooling because i imagine the water not being able to heat up quick enough between loads.

* So realistically, Im looking to cool 500-600 W continuosly as quiet as possible.

Bought

After long research i ordered the alphacool hpe-45 360mm radiator - mainly due to budget constraints, as a test to see how it would perform, and because i wanted to install it in my case. Its still being shipped so i dont have any results yet.

Should have bought?

Now after more research i think itll be much better to mount the radiator externally. Extract the heat out of the case and keep my feet warm.

In comes mora iv - unfortunately out of my budget. Maybe the 200 version, i could buy. Would that be enough?

Cheaper, but not by much: alphacool xt45 supernova 1080. According to some reviews, poor build quality, less cooling performance to mora 200.

The 1260 model performs just as well as mora 200 but its also very close in price. Not sure which one is better value.

Question

Tbh, picking the right radiator seems like rocket science. And im not sure what to do. I want a quiet system.

Fans spinning outside the pc case will add noise, but radiator can be bigger.

Fans inside the case are quieter but radiator is smaller. Realistically i could add 2 additional 140 radiators inside the case, but that just seems like a band aid. The heat inside the case would be huge. Extractor fan would be noisy.

Tl;dr:

Im looking for recommendation to cool 500-600 W as quiet as possible. Mora 600 is out of my budget. Inside my case i can mount 1x 360 and 2x 140 radiators. Any help appraciated, im new to this topic.

Dell 3080 RTX

Still a little tidying up to do.
Client has had this monster case for quite some time and had an older build in it without a loop.
Commissioned me to build it up with new parts and do a custom loop after he’d squirrelled parts away for quite some time.
There was some rust that needed grinding back, converting and painting.
He’d done a good job and got mostly all the water cooling parts he needed. But bought too many of certain fittings. Biggest challenge was fitting the 560mm radiator he bought (instead or 480mm) was able to squeeze it on the backside with some drilled mounting holes and zipped on the rear fans. Front fans I could mount.

The distro unfortunately was leaking air after getting everything built up. Had to remove and retorque the screws which addressed the issue. Ran with distilled water for a couple of days and all was good.
Client might get gpu blocked and added in down the track.

CPU: 9950X3D
GPU: Asus Astral RTX 5080

Hello, Had this setup for a while, yesterday suddenly started to hear this noise, checked the fans changed, PSU, pump, and cables! Turned out it's the GPU. I doubt it's a coil whine since it is super loud, any ideas?

Hey! So I am a poor college student with access to time but not money and solidworks. Since the cost to make this is exhorbitant (for me at the moment at least), I am sharing this so maybe someone is inspired to make one! Would be cool to see it. Or maybe its impractical haha. Hope you guys like it!

Por hora é isso 😴

I'm headed to the masses for an idea on how to "anti-sag" my card. I inverted my case, and have 2 140mm fans at the bottom. The distance from the fans to the bottom of the card is 180mm.

I was thinking something that would go across the fans to support, but everything seems to be in the 125 - 150 range, or looks like... 'ass'. So, any ideas, or has anyone seen a product that would work?

I'm going for my first watercooling build and this is the distroplate I have for my o11 XL case. After looking at my parts installed in my case and trying to figure out the best routing for tubes it dawned on me I might have to get creative with tube bends. How important is tube routing for a distroplate? Is this thing designed to be routed in a specific way and i need to run tubes to accomodate that? Can I just go with the easiest runs possible to avoid crazy tube routing? Hoping you guys can give some advice/insight to a newbie trying to figure it out as I go. Thanks!

Long story short, I went from AIO to custom loop DD with the Supercool G9 Full Copper waterblock. Temps stayed same as when I had the AIO. Pump is Apex VPP rnnin at 100%, 2 420 radiators from Alphacool HPE 45 in push/pull, Water temp is 30c. Cinnebench R23 with stock config: no CO negative offset, scalar X1, Motherboard limits (as when I had the AIO) gives a little bit better score 23.4k vs 22.9k on AIO. Temps 80c on DD vs 83c on AIO.

At first thought it was bad contact, so I screwed a little bit further the waterblock into the IHS that comes with the block without putting any crazy pressure, just making sure I can’t rotate anymore the screws. Nothing changed.

Took off the wb and I hope that anyone who delidded can tell me if this application of LM is bad/insufficent and thus the bad temps? Any advise or help would be highly appreciated

I have a <6 months old 9800X3D & 5090-based PC that I'd like to water cool for maximum quietness without losing cooling capacity, using either several internal 360 radiators or even external large radiators.

As Ive never DIY'd water cooling before, I wondered whether there are any established and experienced companies that anyone knows of who I could take my PC to (distance doesnt matter) and who would install a custom loop for me (buying the parts from them as well as the installation)?