New computer

[kandrathe]

So, what I'm I missing?

I've looked at it for awhile, and have wanted to delve into it. Even stuff like Peltier, heat pumps, and so on, but have always been concerned about condensation (it gets very humid here). But, I feel that liquid cooling gets much more complicated (and expensive) in getting the flow right from block to block, and efficiently cooling multiple chips. The self contained liquid CPU coolers are getting cheap enough now, and outperform the overly huge metal heat sinks they strap onto CPU's these days. The only solutions I've looked at seriously are tower cases with all the water works already built in (e.g. http://www.xoxide.com/watcoolcas.html ). But, they are too expensive for what you get, and I like steel cases, not the easily dented aluminum ones.

And as you know... Unless you are willing to take your chips down well below zero Celsius, you won't see much improvement in performance either. So, if you merely want to keep the temps well within operating thresholds, then liquid cooling would be sufficient. The GPU's mostly come these days with highly tested air cooling solutions built on, which I suspect adds greatly to their price. Perhaps someday they'll have a cheaper liquid cooling version of their products with a water block pre-mounted, ready for hoses. Cases would come standard with a reservoir, radiator and pump with 4 or 5 input/output lines. It's just not mainstream enough. A perfect design in my estimation would figure out how to dissipate all the heat sources, including CPU's, GPU's, power supply, north bridge, memory, hard drives, etc.