Is Water Going The Way Of The Dodo Bird

[howpet]

I didn"t want to crap bvsbutthd101"s thread seaking advice on a cpu w/c setup so I started this:
Availability of quality W/C componentents
It"s been a couple years since this setup was built and I had @ the time multible options on blocks,rads and resorvoirs. Looking now locally as in Daz or NCIX these options seem a little limited.
Have air coolers advanced that much (if your case is big enough to accomadate the 140"s ) to put the run on a W/C setup "OR" is it just easier or diffinently cheaper to go air??..

[lowfat]

No. Watercooling is bigger than ever.

[Linus]

There aren't many guys out there who are willing to do it. It's expensive, it's a lot of work, and aside from full cover GPU blocks for the latest cards there's not a whole lot of innovation left.

CPU blocks are pretty much down to a couple of degrees and aesthetics. D-TEK FuZion was the last major paradigm shift imo.
Radiators haven't been really improved much since the oriignal PA series.
We're still using DDC and D5 derivatives for our pumping needs.
Tubing is tubins is tubing.
Reservoirs just hold water.
Fittings attach stuff to other stuff.

You see where I'm going with this. Whenever a market gets smaller, competition and selection go away because it's not as lucrative. I have at least 3 full water cooling loops worth of components in my house and short of buying a new bracket or two I wouldn't need to buy a single thing to get them up and running. Performance would be within a degree or two of the best stuff I can buy today, so why would I bother to buy all new stuff? Once I've already invested once in things like pump, block, tubing, all I need for a new system is a new full cover or two and some fresh tubing. Selection and innovation go away when there's less demand.

[Linus]

And in response to lowfat, no it's not.

[howpet]

Originally Posted by Linus

There aren't many guys out there who are willing to do it. It's expensive, it's a lot of work, and aside from full cover GPU blocks for the latest cards there's not a whole lot of innovation left.

CPU blocks are pretty much down to a couple of degrees and aesthetics. D-TEK FuZion was the last major paradigm shift imo.
Radiators haven't been really improved much since the oriignal PA series.
We're still using DDC and D5 derivatives for our pumping needs.
Tubing is tubins is tubing.
Reservoirs just hold water.
Fittings attach stuff to other stuff.

You see where I'm going with this. Whenever a market gets smaller, competition and selection go away because it's not as lucrative. I have at least 3 full water cooling loops worth of components in my house and short of buying a new bracket or two I wouldn't need to buy a single thing to get them up and running. Performance would be within a degree or two of the best stuff I can buy today, so why would I bother to buy all new stuff? Once I've already invested once in things like pump, block, tubing, all I need for a new system is a new full cover or two and some fresh tubing. Selection and innovation go away when there's less demand.

Oh yes agreed on all points especially reusability but and I think this is a big BUT (If you"re..Oupps don"t go there..Into big buts) Availability is quite limited on even the simplest things items like tubing, clamps, T"s or Y junctions.
I'm still running a 775 cpu which are warm but not anything compared to an i-7 and I"m really surpised more blocks, rads are not available.

[lowfat]

Originally Posted by Linus

And in response to lowfat, no it's not.

I have a hard time believing that. If you were to ask the members here I am sure there would be a lot more watercoolers now than a few years ago.

Originally Posted by howpet

Availability is quite limited on even the simplest things items like tubing, clamps, T"s or Y junctions.
I'm still running a 775 cpu which are warm but not anything compared to an i-7 and I"m really surpised more blocks, rads are not available.

In Canada, yes. You have to remember that watercooling is still a niche market, and Canada isn't all that big. A smaller shop like Dazmode can't stock every type of block out there. Although from what I see at his site he carries a lot wider range of manufacturers than he did even a year ago.

Linus is right in terms how things haven't really improved all that much in the past few years, but the exact same thing can be said for air cooling.

T's and Y's are a thing of the past for most parts. Aesthetics are more important now-a-days, and honestly T's and Y's are rather ugly for most parts.

[Dazmode]

Originally Posted by howpet

Availability is quite limited on even the simplest things items like tubing, clamps, T"s or Y junctions.

Current trend is serialized set up without parallel flow or splitters.

[Chilly]

Innovation wise, yea, I agree with Linus, its dead. Not much left to be to be frank.

Back in the Cather days, a lot of stuff was still home made, with a few "serious" small time shops such as DangerDen, and full of mostly hobbyists without much knowledge beyond the basic(surface area, flow rates, galvanic corrosion, etc). Then a few smart folk started to take a scientific approach to things and some real innovations came about(jet impingement, etc). Cather wasn't actually the first great innovator, but both him and his designs were some of more well known and among the best performing ones(The Storm G4, eventually bought and then sold(as well as more well known) by Swiftech).

After that, there was a small lull, and then the D-Tek Fusion came about. Since then we've had mostly evolutions on the D-Tek design, with a few more minor innovations(HK3.0 and EK Supreme) that came from that D-Tek and Storm design.

I see the number of WaterCooled systems growing, but the market for whole new systems shrinking none the less, because of that inherent lack of innovation leading to the allowance of a great deal of reuse.

To be honest, I think the lack of innovation is due to the fact that performance wise we are near the end of the road, there's very few gains left to be had. At the very least, all the low lying fruit(solutions) are gone and only small incremental increases in performance are left to be had.

[BMaverick]

It's at a mix right now. WCing is still holding on well, but like the other posters had mentioned, product offerings are slimming down some.

Lappy's are outright out selling desktop/gaming machines by a huge margin. Even a dell mobile workstation for under $1,400 can do wonders over a gaming machine. OpenGL graphics for mobile workstations has become very polished too. Multi-cores has given a boost as well. If you game online, the extra edge is getting slightly more narrow these days between desktop and mobile workstations that can pound the pavement just as hard. So, that leaves WCing out of the picture for the mobiles.

[chrisk]

My understanding is that Sandy Bridge chips don't benefit much from watercooling (except noise), as the OC limits can be met with air.

Is this true? if so, and the trend continues with LGA2011 chips, then you might see a decline in cpu water setups??