I am starting to look at parts for my new pc case, and need to decide on either pure forced air cooling, using a filter, intake air box, and a 250 cfm ac fan with 120mm blowhole exhaust fans, or a similar air intake system with watercooling. If I go with watercooling i can redirect the filtered air through a radiaor and out the top of the case, if i go with forced air i have to have air ducts running to each major component.

The case design is going to be an older, non tower desktop design. Keyboard/mouse tray will be part of the base, and I am debating simply mounting legs on it and making it a stand alone desk with built in pc. Air intake, regardless of other functions, will be a 12X18 or larger filter directly above the keybaord/mosue tray that feeds a 2 inch tall airbox before the intake fan. I am allowing the bottom 6-8 inches of case for fan, intake hood, filters, pump and radiaotrs for watercooling if needed, and the powersupply. I also need recomendations for a decent HS to use, as I i doubt my current SLK-800A will handle anything faster than the 2600 it is on now. At this point I am NOT planning on major upgrades to the system that will go in this case, this is mreo of a build the case, drop my current system into it, and be able to upgrade the guts for years, while having a very efective case to house it in.

9/26/2005 12:01:04 AM

air

9/26/2005 12:21:42 AM

air

unless you plan to do something really insane with overclocking and want to waste some money on the cool/quiet factor of watercooling

9/26/2005 12:41:18 AM

anyone have advice on a good cooling station for a laptop?

9/26/2005 12:56:53 AM

AIR.

ONLY USE LIQUID IF YOU HAVE A NEED TO USE LIQUID

Going to a liquid system introduces a lot of additional complexity and room for failure. I know people who lost their motherboard because of a leak. When I asked them "why the hell did you use liquid anyway?!" their reply was "it seemed like a cool thing to do."

9/26/2005 9:40:48 AM

^^Set in on a hard, flat, non-heated surface so it can properly breath. Most of the laptop coolers you see on the market don't really have much of an effect.

9/26/2005 1:17:01 PM

nobody "needs" to go water cooling... with integrated phase change and TEC systems available, "obscene" overclocking starts well below ambient, don't even joke about that

that said, increasing the flow of your air cooling solution can get you to ambient as functionally as water cooling. it boils down to aesthetics-- air coolers become monstrously large and loud past a certain point, and the point where it is too large or loud is a matter of preference.

complete integrated water cooling systems that cool as well as a cheap HSF but dead silent start around 150$ last I checked... so you may look at it like this: is a quiet system that you can't really overclock worth 100$ more to you than some of the best air cooling on the market? if you really couldn't give a flying fuck less about overclocking, then you might just want to go water. otherwise, a water system that is comparable to the high end air coolers will run you 2-300$, component or integrated. if you are going to sink that much into it, you might as well hit 400$ and get an integrated phase change system.

[Edited on September 26, 2005 at 2:22 PM. Reason : *]

9/26/2005 2:18:47 PM