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

I find this annoying

[phoxix]

I seriously think slashdot needs an "over-clocking and related" topic. IMHO stuff like this shouldn't be in hardware but rather in its own topic. I say this because I'm 100% sure there are many of us who don't care for water cooling or overclocking. However we do care for other hardware topics and whatnot, so blocking the hardware topic isn't an option for us.

just my two cents

Sunny Dubey

Re:I find this annoying

[mchappee]

>IMHO stuff like this shouldn't be in hardware but >rather in its own topic.

I agree. Oh, and I don't use a mouse, so mice should have their own topic! I don't use fancy-schmancy graphics cards either, so let's topic those off also. I have no SCSI anything, so SCSI needs it's own topic.

What Taco needs to do is actually LOOK at my PC, and make everything that ISN'T there it's own topic. After all, it's so damn difficult to scroll down a little further, and I just cannot resist the urge to read and post to stories the do not interest me in the least...

Crap

[llamalicious]

and I'm stuck with these sub-par 5 1/4" drive bays.
Alas, no watercooling for me. ;)

*dons flame-retardant suit*

Install an AMD processor lately?

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't touched an Intel processor in ages, so I can't say how they are.

Up here in the Great Amish Stronghold of Pennsylvania, it gets hot during the spring and summer. Around where I live, not everyone has an air conditioner. Actually, most people don't have 'em.

People ask me for advice on getting new computers. It's sad, but I have to tell them to stay the hell away from AMD unless they're going to buy an air conditioner to keep in the same room. I then tell them that if they're having someone build a box for them, don't skimp on fans. If they're buying a store-bought computer, buy the damned warranty, and extend! Extend! Extend!

Before I put my air conditioner in my window last spring, my Athlon 600 started having heat issues. As in, Linux started having weird errors, and Win 98 started BSoD'ing like mad. (*sigh* No, that wasn't normal for Win 98.)

I put the air conditioner in, boom, problems solved.

Now that I've upgraded to a nice AMD XP 1800, I intend to put my air conditioner in this year while there's still frost on the ground. ;)

I'm not a cheap arse, aside from picking AMD over Intel for both cost and performance reasons. My fans cost quite a pretty penny. The processor still runs hot, and the box is still loud.

It doesn't matter if you have supposedly silent fans when you need a huge arse one for the processor, one on the chipset, one on the video card, and a case fan to help vent out hot air. The noise adds up. (Oops, did I forget the power
supply fan? They're always noisy. ;))

And again, as for heat - not everyone has air conditioning. (I think people who don't at least have a few units stuck in windows are freakin' nuts, but hey. ;))

Water cooling is the future. The current number of fans in boxes is getting ridiculous. The noise is climbing to outrageous levels, and they're slowly becoming inefficient when dealing with heat. Many people can't fit a full tower case
into their decorum, and most people wisely don't
wish to leave the sides off of their case for
better ventilation.

Most of us who deal with high-end computers have to deal with the severe heat issues that come with them. Processors are hardware. Video cards are hardware. Power supplies are hardware. Heat sinks and fans are hardware.

You know what? Water cooling systems are hardware. And they're shortly going to become important pieces of hardware, even for those who don't overclock.

Noise noise noise

[Featureless]

I used to think worry about noise was something only Mac-having aesthetes did. I'd never had a "noise problem," and I could only see it being an issue for those using the gear in some kind of rarefied experimental or engineering setting (or making music, etc).

Then I got a new AMD PC. It's not outrageous by current standards; XP2100+, GF4 ti4400. I suppose a better (read: more expensive) vendor might have spent time tuning the case, fans, and airflow to get it quieter... had I known, I might have considered spending the money on more expensive brand. But I did what I always do; buy the almost-cheapest hardware for the almost-best specs. And, basically, this approach has always served me well, except for this time, and only because of the noise.

Oh wow, it is loud.

I've seen the firey-flash thermal death movies of what happens when you remove the heatsink from a current AMD that were circulating a while ago; actually, I got my motherboard just as they started really getting into temperature monitoring and safety features for AMD CPUs. I can read in the hardware monitor, not to mention feel in the air, how hot this computer gets. Actually, I can hear the power involved; this is also the first PC I've had which, when the CPU is fully loaded, I can actually hear the power draw slowing down the fans. This still astounds me.

My computer sounds like a running vacuum cleaner. Well, I exaggerate, but it is loud. Loud enough to be a serious nuisance. Loud enough that you turn up the volume of music. Loud enough that you don't want to watch movies or hang out in the room while it's on. And it blows me away. This is a PC for god's sake. I've never had to worry about noise on a PC before.

I've since invested in "quiet" fans and "smart" fans. These help a little, but not much. I realize that the services of the professionals Dell/Gateway/Apple/etc employs for designing cases to cope with this are worth some of the money they charge on the other end. Although I never ever expected noise would be the thing that drove me back to the big vendors.

So I find myself reading this article and actually seriously contemplating the purchase of this watercooler, despite the fact that I am not, and have no intention of becoming, an overclocker, and at ~$275, this gear is almost 1/3d what I paid for the entire rest of the computer - not to mention the risk of giving my gear a bath.

And I find harkening back to all of those science fiction books I read which incidentally noted water-cooled PCs in the world of the future. How silly that seemed in 1989. And yet now, at the rate power consumption and heat are growing, I start to wonder... might we see factory-installed water cooling coming from the major retailers in few years?

Just to cope with the noise? Or even because they have no choice, noise or not?

Crazy.

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.