Water Cooling Adventures

Yeah the heat in my desktop has been a bit too much lately so decided to throw out the serviceable Zalman in favor of a quieter and more efficient water cooling. I’m a bit lazy to do everything so I looked for a closed loop solution.

The Corsair H50 it is. It’s not a particularly expensive system but you do need to spend the better part of RM400 to get this baby. You still need to dis-assemble your PC because you’re definitely going to need to put the support plate behind so that the retention brackets can sit on it. It’s not a difficult thing to assemble but if you’re not sure just do a dry fit before committing anything during assembly.

Is it worth the time, effort and money?

In a word YES.

With the Zalman CPU temps hover around 60C-65C idling. They go as high as 75C under load. Add the GPU to the mix and you can reach 79C.  Core temps go up to about 40C when idling.

It’s day and night with the H50. Idles at 52C with the core at 26C. On 100% load it goes to 60C. Core goes up to a little over 40-45C. System temps remain pretty manageable.

Here’s the skinny of it installed:

Detailed notes are in the link

Close up shot

Strobist info: Canon 580EX II remote, triggered with PW, using my room door as a BIG soft box.