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RE: My Gridcoin Journey
I dont think water cooling is needed, but I do live in the UK where it never really gets hot (if you are hot here, open a window!).
Overclocking GPUs doesnt work well for BOINC projects, though you can get away with a little bit, and CPU overclocking quickly consumes a lot of power so it isnt ideal to go too far either.
Yeah, I live in Germany. Even with window(s) open, it can get really hot in my room. That's why I thought about water cooling the GPU(s), so that my room doesn't heat up that much and not that fast.
I don't or won't OC the GPU(s) currently. Maybe some day, when I'm more into this theme.
Thank you for the answer :)
Your room will heat up at the same rate with, or without, water cooling. =)
Hot GPUs draw more electric power. Therefore, watercooled GPU will always draw less power than the same GPU cooled with air. Simply because watercooled GPU will always run about 30-35 °C cooler. And for every °C that the card runs hotter it needs approximately 1.2W more power to handle the exact same load.
More details here:
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Zotac/GeForce_GTX_480_Amp_Edition/27.html
Watercooling a PC doesn't make the room less hot, the water is only the (way better) heat transportation medium, the heat gets transported to the radiators and then it gets blown into the air.
Energieerhaltungssatz
So, as far as I didn't misundertand something:
Watercooled GPU(s) would make sense, if you want to consume less energy? For example: I live in Germany, power cost is 0.3$/kw. I don't mind about that. But less power consumption would be for sure good. Would you recommend to buy waterblocks, just for the fact, that the electrical bill wouldn't be that high? I know, "do what you want. If you can afford it, go for it" or something like that will most likely your answer. But, asking never hurts :D
Germany here too. Watercooling is more power consuming because for air cooling you use a bunch of fans and for water cooling you use the same amount or even more fans - and the pump. At least - for a good custom loop, not these all in one 120mm single radiator jokes.
The only upsides of a good custom watercooling loop are better gpu/cpu core temperatures and (if you can afford a lot of radiator capacity and high-end fans) a more silent computer - because the fans can run slower. And a way better inside look. ;)
I have an Thermaltake Core X9. I think, I have enough space for some radiators :D
I made these calculations: If I had 2x480 radiators and 8x120mm fans (Calculated with 15W per fan) it should consume 120W more, only the fans. I don't really know how much the pump would consume. I calculated about max. 50W. Maximum: under 200W more. If @vortac is right (or techpowerup) and a GPU is consuming about 1.2W more per °C and the water cooling might get 35°C less heat than an aircooled GPU (Sorry for sentence. Might be very confusing.), it would consume up to 42W less per GPU. Let's say I would have 6 HD7970's. It would be up to 252W less with an watercooling system. If the 2x480 radiators can handle the temperature, I don't really know.
I don't know if this makes sense. Might be not, but well, I tried xD
EK Vardar fans are recommended for radiators. They consume only 1.44 watts of electric power:
https://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-vardar-f3-120-1850rpm
2x480 radiators would be able to handle 6 HD7970s, even with overclocking.
Pumps require about 10-20W. One 20W pump is enough to power the loop with two radiators and 6 HD7970s.
All in all, watercooling is much more power-efficient than aircooling, especially for multi-GPU rigs. Only obstacle is the high initial cost of watercooling equipment.
Wow, a huge "Thanks" from me, for you :) I am really thankful for your help. Ofcourse I want to thank the other helperful people too. :)
13 years of watercooling experience here. Feel free to ask anything you want.
That's somewhere correct and somewhere a naïve fallacy (Milchmädchenrechnung) because we talk about using the Hardware with Boinc and that means a permanent 100% full load - exept you wan't to earn less GRC then you can. ;)
Rule of thumb for radiator space is 120mm radiator space per component + 1x 120mm + 120mm per overclocked component for a PC that has an average (max. 16h/day) usage.
Unfortunately there is no rule of thumb for a 24/7 100% usage.
Makes no difference if you run your rig 24/7 or only 8h per day. Two 480 radiators can dissipate 1500-2000 watts of heat without any trouble, through the whole year. Water will get heated up to approximately 15 °C over room temperature and that's it - the whole watercooling system enters into an equilibrium then.
Sorry but there is a difference between running 24/7 at 100% or sporadic with different loads because of the heat capacity of water.
is the formula for the heat capacity of water and after the water is satiated the cooling capacity will drop and the fans have to spin faster (use more energy/becoming louder) to dissipate this heat.
Btw. Vardar Fans are good for Radiators (good static pressure) but they are imho pretty loud under full load.
Water cooling your computer won't make your room cooler; if your computer uses 500 Watts then that's like having a 500 Watt heater in the room regardless of how you cool the CPU & GPU.