I've got watercooling for my system, but what annoys me is that it actually ends up being
louder than some other systems in the office that we've set up with ultra-quiet 80mm fans, because of the quiet - but not ultra-quiet - fan.
I've had some very good luck with Panaflo FBA08A12L fans (make sure the last letter is "L", not "M" or "H"). They do a good enough cooling job, and are probably quieter than other things in the system (i.e. your hard drive). If you're overclocking, I'd recommend water cooling, but if what you're after is a good quiet system, these Panaflo's are the way to go.
In Reply To:
It's the external abient temperature. What good is a traditional air circulated pc case if the room it's in is 85*F?
The amount that watercooling helps is just as dependant on the ambient temperature. If the watercooling makes the CPU run 10C* over ambient, and the air cooling makes the CPU run 30C* over ambient, it doesn't matter whether your in a desert or a deepfreeze - the CPU will still run that much over the ambient temperature. Besides - most CPU's can run
hot - AMD's are certified up to 85*C, and Intel's CPUs starts throttling the CPU speed at about 70*C.
But, again, watercooling if you want to overclock and still run cool (witness my AMD 2100+ (1.73MHz) running at around 2.35MHz), or Panaflo's if you want to overclock a
little bit (or not at all) and still have a very quiet PC.
Jason Rhinelander
Gossamer Threads jason@gossamer-threads.com