Where would I look to find out more about watercooling? I'm trying to make my next rig WC'ed. Hoping to spend no more than $1000 to $12000.
The information is insanely scattered, and there's all sorts of tiny things to be aware of.
But just to give you an idea on budgeting, you'd be looking at around $400-600 for a full loop (CPU and GPU), case included, for watercooling parts. You could go as high as many thousands of dollars as well. But for a quick rundown:
Pump - Obvious, it moves the water. You want a D5 Vario.
Case - Generally want to have enough room for a 3x120 (360mm) and a 2x120 (240mm) radiator.
Tubing/Piping - I only recommend EK ZMT for tubing or hardline copper pipe. Everything else has all sorts of little issues. For copper pipe, 10 or 12mm OD (outside diameter), and the EK ZMT is only sold as 3/8"x5/8". Both are basically zero maintenance. They don't leach anything into the loop, and they prevent UV reactions in the coolant as they don't let any light through. You can go for clear tubing if you want some fancy colored liquid to be visible, but it is more work as you'll need to clean up your blocks every 6 months.
Blocks - EK, Aquacomputer, Heatkiller/Watercool, XSPC, and Bitspower are all good. It's almost entirely a choice of aesthetics between them.
Fittings - You get fittings to match the size of your tubing/piping. Bitspower makes the best fittings. These are the most complicated part of a loop because you generally want to order the right adapters (90 degree, 45 degree) to make clean lines from part to part.
Reservoir - Lots of options here, whether it's a bay reservoir or tube reservoir. The only thing you want to keep in mind is to have your pump physically below the reservoir, unless it's a reservoir/pump housing in one.
Radiators - Obviously the thicker the radiator is, the more heat it is able to dissipate. Additionally, an important spec on radiators is FPI (fins per inch). The higher the FPI, the faster fans need to spin in order to efficiently push air through them. With both of these in mind, you generally want thicker (45mm+) radiators with a low FPI so you can run your fans very low while still getting good performance. I like XSPC AX, Alphacool Nexxos, Aquacomputer, and EK Coolstream PE radiators.
Fans - You want fans with a high pressure rating, which is much more important than CFI. The general favorites are: Gentle Typhoons, Noiseblocker eloops, Coolermaster JetFlo, Corsair SP, Cougar Vortex, and Noctua NF-F12s.
done. fucking. university.
Grats!
But if you wanted to save ~£30 then the 270X would be okay, certainly not a poor choice. It's just that the 760 is kind of the go-to mid range 1080p card at the moment.
