Watercooling Question(s)

[Aj]

I'm thinking about getting into watercooling and first off, how upgradable is it? For example if I watercool my current socket A athlon how hard would it be to move the system over to a socket 478 etc?

And is it hard to add a gpu water block to a watercooling system?

[Doorbasher]

When you upgrade the CPU, you could just swap out the waterblock. That would, however require you to retest the whole wate loop, get air bubbles out, and check for leaks. As for adding a GPU block, it would be advisable to have it in a seperate loop with a seperate radiator, because GPUs radiate almost as much heat as CPUs.

[Haysoos]

I dont know alot but i'll try to give advice. Not knowing what i'm talking about has never stopped me before. ;)

As far as upgrading, usually you just need to get a new water block that fits the socket type. A lot of the water cooling kits now come with a water block that fits both pentiums and athlon XPs. As far as adding a GPU block AND another radiator, that depends on your pump i'm sure. I'd google that, or research it somehow, just seems to me that it would need a better pump if it had a second radiator. The ones I've seen just have the GPU block lined up after the CPU block.

[OtterPop Junkie]

First off from my experience with water cooling is it can be great choice but if you do it half asked or sloppy, it can be a really big disaster.

For the most part there are seperate water blocks for the different sockets. So to change from a socket A to a socket 478 would require you to buy a new water block. Also make sure that there is enough clearance around the socket for the water block to fit. Also make suer you have the right connectors for it, some water blocks have 4 screw/bolt and nut tension system that screw into the motherboard while others use the tabs on the socket for the connection. Lastly make sure you tighten it even and not too tight otherwise you risk cracking the die on top.

As far as water cooling the GPU depends on how well you want to cool it. If you are looking high overclocking and are going to be dealing with extreme temps then you probably want to set it up in a seperate loop. But if you will be doing small little to no overclocking you could get away just fine with putting it in the same loop as your CPU.

Lastly here are just a bunch of misc. tips and ideas for water cooling:

1.) Make sure you keep all your tube dimension the same, i.e. 5/16 O/D is not the same as 5/16 I/D.
2.) Decide if you want to use a pre made kit or from parts you buy seperatly.
3.) Decide what type of a cooling system you want/have room for. Bong, fan and radiator, or evaporative.
4.) If you use Water Wetter, dont follow the mixture directions on the bottle that will be too much Water Wetter if will cause your water to be all foamy and negate its cooling effects/ability.
5.) Use distilled water, this is the best and use some sort of rust prohibitor and algae killer.
6.) Take your time setting it up other wise you will run in problems that are unnecessary headaches.
7.) Make sure to plan it all out, see above for reasoning.
8.) I strongly recommend you use metal hose clamps, to make sure your joints dont leak.

I think that is most of it. I have a bunch of parts I am thinking about selling give a PM if you are interested. If you have anymore questions go ahead and ask Ill try to answer them.