Watercooling vs Air - Power Consumption

[stephen]

Hey, so im currently getting into bitcoin mining and would like to save every dollar when comes to electricty and thought of the power consumption of watercooling as compared to air.

I just bought two 5970's with blocks on them so no added money there so either way going water cooling but id like to know.

so if anyone is about to do a new system of water cooling, could you take power readings of the system first running on air idle and load.

then put together your loop and get the readings again.


Id assume watercooling would use slightly more power, but when comes to cooling the cards the transistors and such should use less power from being colder, so i wonder if it balances out in the end.

any one up for the task?

thanks

[Izerous]

Considering the amperage of typical pumps I don't think even liquid cooling could offset the cost unless it was passively cooled on the radiator. Actually mentioning that there are passive CPU coolers that do actually work... but are huge.

[Hooded]

Huge but also can look very cool.
Some cool gpu passive heatsinks as well.

[MRDcanadian]

I'd say unless you have all the parts already, just the fact buying new parts for a water cooling loop should be equal to an offset for a couple of months or maybe years depending how much is missing for the loop. really it's hard to calculate without some kind of an monitor like a ups system or a corsair link with a power supply from them in the ax-i series. can't help you there sorry

[stephen]

i bought one of these and works rather well

http://www.canadiantire.ca/AST/brows....jsp?locale=en


i do have all the parts for a loop, no cpu block but have a brand new unused cm hyper 212+

[Father Fuzzy]

i bought one of these and works rather well

http://www.canadiantire.ca/AST/brows....jsp?locale=en


i do have all the parts for a loop, no cpu block but have a brand new unused cm hyper 212+

stephen does that unit display real time wattage?

[stephen]

yes it does

[bungwirez]

is bitcoin mining as CPU/GP-GPU intensive as folding at home? IDK.

If it were me, on a 24-7 system, I'd strip it down to the bone and use that CM 212+

gotta get me one of those Hampton meters.

[stephen]

you can only mine efficent on a gpu, and most gpus arent very good at it

basically only ati cards from 5000 series up do well.

but yeah just as intensive as folding.

ill be underclocking the cpu as low as i can to save power.

also the gpus have blocks on them i wont have stock air heatsink for them.

i just wanted some power usage numbers just to know.

[DazMode]

I would be quite interested to see results.

My estimation, that without overclocking power consumption will go up if Laing pumps are used, as they can take 37W for D5 and 18W for DDC plus all radiator fans, minus GPU turbine fans and CPU fan (possibly minus some case fans).

Dynamics get less clear with overcloking. Also, at certain point overclocking just won't cut it, so the question is if you get more coins because of higher performance and if electricity usage is worth it....

[MRDcanadian]

i bought one of these and works rather well

http://www.canadiantire.ca/AST/brows....jsp?locale=en


i do have all the parts for a loop, no cpu block but have a brand new unused cm hyper 212+

if that works well then it should do the job to find the total watt. like daz mention a few parts extra vs a few less could balance. water cooling is essentially taking the heat from multiple location and stacking them up in one spot where you get rid of it, that being said, since you may need 2 fans to do the job of 4 if the setup is well done i wouldn't see it being a-lot more if not equal in some scenario. if you would compare cooling performance per watt consumption I am sure water cooling will prove more efficient per watt vs air. if you test both, i would very much like to see the result.