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Phædrus2401 · 07-10-2009, 03:57 PM

For the record, always go for quality cooling kits, as a leak with water cooling can be disastrous. A friend of mine recently went with liquid cooling and used some $150 set he found on Ebay. Everything else was really good, a Q9550, GTX285, a nice Gigabyte board, 700 watt OCZ PSU... As soon as he got it set up he started overclocking, and after an hour with the CPU OCed to 3.2GHz his computer shut down, there were sparks, and he smelled smoke, opened it up and one of the rubber gaskets had burst and water sprayed all over, burn marks on the motherboard and graphics card... What a mess. And most of the parts are out of warranty as soon as you start making the changes necessary for water cooling, so he's in the hole several hundred bucks. He's trying to see what he can get out of the kit manufacturer, I'll have to ask him what brand it was.

Water cooling is perfectly safe if you get a good kit, but try not to go less than $250 or so. Paying more can save in the long run.

07-10-2009, 03:57 PM	#6 (permalink)
Phædrus2401 Hardware Tech Team Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: New Orleans Posts: 3,810 OS: Vista Ultimate x64 SP1 + Ubuntu 9.04 My System	Re: Water/Liquid Cooling Questions For the record, always go for quality cooling kits, as a leak with water cooling can be disastrous. A friend of mine recently went with liquid cooling and used some $150 set he found on Ebay. Everything else was really good, a Q9550, GTX285, a nice Gigabyte board, 700 watt OCZ PSU... As soon as he got it set up he started overclocking, and after an hour with the CPU OCed to 3.2GHz his computer shut down, there were sparks, and he smelled smoke, opened it up and one of the rubber gaskets had burst and water sprayed all over, burn marks on the motherboard and graphics card... What a mess. And most of the parts are out of warranty as soon as you start making the changes necessary for water cooling, so he's in the hole several hundred bucks. He's trying to see what he can get out of the kit manufacturer, I'll have to ask him what brand it was. Water cooling is perfectly safe if you get a good kit, but try not to go less than $250 or so. Paying more can save in the long run. __________________ Good PSU brands: Corsair, SeaSonic, CWT, PC Power and Cooling, Thermaltake Toughpower, CoolerMaster Real Power Pro On 80+ Certification - PSU Information and Selection - Power Supply Myths You don't get what you don't pay for.