I was wondering if the koolance kits are good for liquid cooling

I was looking at the Koolance Exos-2 LX

Any other suggestions?

"Any other suggestions?"...

Stay away from Liquid Cooling

If you're going for liquid cooling, spend your money on a good cooling kit, since cheap ones can ruin your components. That being said, some of the best companies for watercooling systems include Danger Den, Swiftech, Thermaltake, Asetek, Innovatek, Zalman, Koolance and Corsair.

Corsair makes good watercooling systems?

Well, they only have one, the Nautilus 500, but it's pretty good, and an excellent kit for anyone who's new to watercooling IMO.

Uh, why? They keep my entire system (CPU, Mobo, GPU, RAM) phenomally cool for overclocking.

They do have a huge hassle/risk. If it works well for you, well , thats good. I wouldn't casually recommend it to everyone, or anyone.

so would a koolance kit be good or would it better to buy all parts separately?

Liquid cooling problems:

Expensive
High Maintenance
Possible leaks, trashing expensive motherboard, video card and case
Noisy pump

I want to pick on a couple of those you have raised Tmagic if you don't mind?

Leaks aren't as comman as they used to be, a lot are coming with self contained units within the unit, so if there is a leak, nothing gets heavily damaged.

Noisy, it can be a bit louder than a fan no doubt about it, but I've seen a few set up and they're not really noisy enough to bother me in the long term.

I find both of these more as niggles than negatives.

The conventional 3rd party HSF's have become much more efficient in the last few years. Case fans have done the same. I just built a new system that is perfectly quiet with 1 120mm rear case fan and the Nervana HSF. It's fan speed is 900rpms. My Intel Q6600 is running at 3GHz from it's stock 2.4GHz. The temp is 53C. I know with liquid cooling, you could go much higher and much cooler

A kit will be easier to put together, but will not give you the freedom of choosing the parts you'd like, such as the waterblocks and the radiator. It's your choice. The Koolance Exos-2 LX is a good kit, so don't worry about that.

That Koollance Exos-2 is expensive ($350 msrp) but very neat!

Do you have to select special motherboards to use liquid cooling?

Expensive - I wouldn't say expensive, they cost more than typical heatsinks sure, but they are way of a standard price range. The 9800GX2, now that's an example of expensive.

High Maintenance - uhm, no, not even close to 'high' maintanence. You fill the liquid up every few weeks-months, that's hardly high maintanence. And with a lot of the kits/cases having easy filling access from the 5'25" drive bays, this makes it even less of a problem.

Possible leaks, trashing expensive motherboard, video card and case - Ludicrous. Leaks don't just spring up randomly, if you installed the kit properly the chance of a leak is as likely as a case fan exploding. I've never had a leak in any LCS i've used.

Noisy pump - I disagree again, most pumps are to the level of or quiter than standard case fans. if you look at Thermaltake's site they even compare the noise and the pump comes out quiter.

I'm behind LCS because I like to overclock and ensure my components are extra cooled for peace of mind.

Not really, the main thing to choose when purchasing a LCS system is the chassis - whether or not you have room to fit a pump/etc. How ever some motherboards, such as the ASUS Striker II NSE, have a built in system on the motherboard heatsinks to attach a LCS if you have one.

Yes fullmetalvegan you have convinced me. LCS have come so far from the first days of "water" cooling.

Leaky water blocks, noisy pumps and corrosion are a thing of the past

Just to add, most of the maintenance cost depends on the type of coolant and additives used. I've seen people who've used ordinary tap water, thinking it'd do, only to have algae cram up the whole system in a matter of weeks.
For liquid cooling, it really does pay to be knowledgeable.

I must say that these are very important things to consider, although you pointed out that they may be very "small" matters.

Okay, I won't argue about money. For some people, they may have too much money, and decide that spending $200 on cooling is not alot. (I'm also not saying that liquid cooling costs $200).

Fair enough, you'll only need to top up the water every few weeks or months. But compared to air cooling, where you don't really have to do anything to it, other than maybe dust it every couple of years, this is considered "high maintenance". You might also not realise that you should drain and fill the whole system every so often.

Failure to maintain a watercooling system causes huge problems. Unlike aircooling, where the failure to dust it will cause a slow, steady rise in temps, suddenly having air bubbles going through your system, or algae getting stuck somewhere, is pretty catastrophic. Temps will just suddenly spike, assuming that if there's a blockage, the extra water pressure in the system doesn't cause a leak, destroying the whole system.

Sure, leaks aren't a huge problem anymore these days. This is assuming you've got it installed properly. Given that people can't even install aircooling systems properly, I have good faith that when water is involved around electronics, everything will just work perfectly.

And I won't go into noise, since some people don't mind having a tornado around while computing. More a personal issue, or monetary issue, since with enough money, you can buy a quieter pump.


Just to note: I was actually very interested in putting in some serious money into the top end watercooling just a year or so back. After doing alot of reading into it, and realising that the temps involved aren't much better than a good aircooling system, some revision in physics, heat conduction and crap, the pros and cons just don't add up for me. In the end, I spent about $200 on what I believed was a top of the line cooling system, and I'm very happy with that decision. A huge factor was the maintenance, and I'm living a very happy, trouble free, non-water-topping-up computing life since then.

Nice post CMH,
water, or a coolant of any kind around electronics is a scary thought. Come to think of it, a CPU in a car engine compartment was scary too. If I had $200+ lying around, I would get a better video card

De-ionized water does not conduct electricity and can be used, provided you use this waterblock in your system.