water cooling need answers

[austin1]

hey ppl, im looking into water cooling in the next 2 months im gonna get it what should i look into for a good cooling system, who makes good systems, how much of a difference will i see compared to my stock case fans? is water cooling hard 2 install, how do i prevent it from leaking in the future, would it hurt to put food coloring or dye in the water 2 change it color? could i change the fan that comes with my system in the radiator and put in my panaflo 120 mm instead? are there really advantages of having water cooling or is it just for looks mostly? how does it work, does it use a lot more electricity? how long should a reliable water cooling system work for.

[ror_b211]

would it hurt to put food coloring or dye in the water 2 change it color?

I doubt you'll be able to at all

Water cooling kits are generally more efficient than air cooling, however a top-of-the-range air cooling kit (eg Thermalright heatsink with Delta/Panaflo fan) would probably be better or just as good as a low-end water system and cheaper, so it's probably best to spend £100+

[Jaggannath]

No, it wouldn't hurt to put food dye into the water, it doesn't change the properties of the water.

[David M]

Yes you can put food coloring in the water but it must be distilled water and you also have to put in algecide and anti-corrosion chemicals and pH balancers. ..otherwise the free copper ions will react with the aluminum and you will have other problems as well.

In the long run..its better to use automotive anti-freeze which you can get in either blue or green. Anti-freeze already has all those necessary chemicals. You can reduce the concentration of ethelyne-glycol in standard anti-freeze from 50% to 30% by diluting it with distilled water since your computer won't be operating in sub-freezing temperatures.

I use blue anti-freeze which looks pretty cool. Maybe mix red food dye with the blue to make purple?

I have never placed an ammeter on the old fans versus the fewer new fans and the water pump..but I would imagine the watercooling uses a little less electricity since I went from 9 fans to four 120mm fans and one waterpump. The waterpump draws hardly anything compared to the 4 fans I eliminated.

The other major factor with watercooling is how much quieter the computer runs. Two 120mm Coolermaster ultra quiet fans running at half speed are almost silent. The noisiest fan now is for the PSU which is pretty quiet.