Swiftech 8500 Watercooling Kit Review

playafly187 writes "OCIA has posted their review of the Swiftech H20-8500 Watercooling Kit. The following is a direct quote from the review: 'This kit is aimed at those who want the low noise operation of watercooling, but are confined to a somewhat small case and/or those who don't want to fool with extensive modding of their case to accommodate a watercooling setup. The only requirement for your case is at least one 80mm rear exhaust fan opening and an empty 5 1/2" drive bay. I will take a look at each component provided in detail, then will walk you through our installation and testing.'"

Comments

What worked for me.

[GoofyBoy]

Never really found any tips on the Interweb and previous "ask slashdot" noice tips to really work for me except for;

1. Panflows or Vantec Stealth fans are great. Both are really quiet, but you do sacrifice a bit of air flow. Not really a problem for me because I didn't get the fastest cpu (therefore lots of heat and requires lots of cooling)

2. Distance and barrier. A great solution if you can get it to work. You can buy extension cables for USB or your monitor, mouse and keyboard. I got one which had them all in one. I then stuck the whole thing in a nearby closet and closed the door leaving space for the cable. Only have to access the computer to change cds, but its well worth the inconvence.

Using this, I got the noise down to where I can hear my CRT monitor.

3. (Never had to do this but I think I would have) You can buy noise cases. Wooden cases surrounded by sound adsorbing materials. I like this idea because its used by sound engineers. But it is expensive.

Not Dangerous

[xtal]

If you know what you're doing, there isn't really anything to worry about. One little hole in your car's cooling system could cause thousands of dollars damage too. I have run a watercooled system nonstop, 24/7, without incident for almost 18 months now. The hoses are still in great shape, and the pump works fine. The reduction in noise is signifigant, although the case still requires some ventilation.

My original installation is here: http://www.nyx.net/~smanley/watercool

I've since moved to a lian-li case to get some more room and haven't had a chance to post the pictures. The installation is similar, even easier with all the extra space. The watercooling setup allows me to run a AMD XP2100 at 2Ghz, a mild overclock of a few hundred mhz, but I can do so at a idle temperature of 42C in a 30C room.

This gets posted everytime one of these articles comes up here. Don't spread FUD, no, it isn't for newbies, but no, it isn't inherantly dangerous either. If you don't know what you are doing, don't go near the kit. The biggest additions I made were fuel injection hose clamps, pinch-free, and a GFCI outlet so that if the pump shorts, my gear shuts down in a nanosecond.

I'm currently working on another setup for home to help deal with the noise problem on the box here. It is very expensive to do properly, though.