How to Build a Custom Water Cooled Gaming PC

How to water-cool your PC

What is it that attracts people to water-cooling their PCs? Why is it so much better than traditional air cooling? Essentially, all forms of cooling work on the same basic principles.

You might have heard of them, theyre part of the laws of thermal and fluid dynamics. No matter whether you have an air cooler or a full custom-loop setup, youre transferring heat using water from one point to the other.

It then cools and circulates back around again to transfer that heat out of the system and to the outside environment again and again. All very fancy, right?

Air cooling technically isnt an accurate description of that cooling method, and neither is water cooling they both essentially require a fan and a radiator to exhaust that heat.

So, is water cooling for you? Should you dive into the murky depths of H2O nirvana? Maybe youll discover something about yourself along the way Read on to find out.

Why water cool your PC?

Lets cut straight to it. Primarily, water cooling is done to enhance the aesthetic beauty of a build. Dont get us wrong, the heat-reducing properties of multiple radiators and fans cooling your internal components is fantastic and highly efficient.

But if youre looking for the most effective price-to-performance ratios, a good AIO (all-in-one) cooler for your CPU and a triple fan-designed GPU would be more than enough to ensure you never hit any of the thermal limits dictated to us by our silicon-inducing overlords.

And in todays technological climate, youre far more likely to encounter hardware-based limits, rather than temperature-based ones, in your overclock attempts.

One of the biggest benefi ts of water cooling, besides looking better than Gabe Newells monthly bank statements, is the noise reduction. Simply put, noise control is all about effective fan control. Its not necessarily how many fans you have, but how fast theyre spinning.

Ultimately, the lower the RPM, the lower the noise output. For instance, if you make five 120mm fans and run them at 1,200rpm, and then take two separate 120mm fans and run them at 3,000rpm, we can guarantee the two fans will be creating more audible noise than the five.

Dispelling the myths about water cooling

Myth 1: If I use deionised water in my loop, then leaks wont matter or cause any damage.

Unfortunately, no. As soon as the water is introduced to the system, it will begin making contact with the various metals inside of the water blocks.

It will soon be picking up positive ions, meaning itll be conductive within a couple of hours, at the very least.

Myth 2: What If I blow it up when I switch it on? What if theres an instant leak?

Honestly, youre seriously not going to damage anything. The best way to fill and test a loop is to make sure everythings unpowered by using a PSU bridge.

By using this bridge, you can switch on just the pump and thats it. Leave this on for 2448 hours to see if you have any leaks.

Myth 3: If I water cool my PC and add more fans, its going to cool down my room right?

Definitely not. In fact, its more than likely that the opposite will occur. Your hardware may run cooler, but youll still be outputting the same amount of heat (or maybe even more if youre ramping up that overclock higher), out of the same radiators.

If anything, your room will become warmer as youll have more fans pushing more heat out of those radiators.

Aesthetics

Water cooling is primarily about enhancing the look of your build, ensuring your silicon shrapnel stands out from the crowd and looks as good as it possibly can.

There are multiple ways of doing this with water cooling. By all means, were not saying that air-cooled builds cant look good there are some seriously stunning rigs out there that run on simple old air coolers.

But water cooling sits at the centre of the modding community. Its responsible for most of the innovations weve seen in this area of the market. Whether thats braided cables, windowed-side panels or LED lighting, you can assume that the vast majority of these ideas originated from some modder out there putting an idea onto one of their builds, and then showing it off to the masses.

So, you have four options in total when it comes to liquefying your machine. First, you could simply just use an AIO cooler. This way, you avoid the hassle of setting up any kind of crazy system, youre covered by a warranty and still gain the benefits of having a water-cooled CPU.

Your second option is to go with a soft tubing loop, utilising flexible colored or clear tubing.

This is one of the most adaptable water-cooling methods as the tubing is flexible and easy to use.

The third and currently most popular option is to use acrylic tubing, most notably PETG tubing. This non-fragile, highly robust hard piping creates an entirely different look for a build, utilising straight lines and angles to really make your rig pop.

And then, finally, theres copper tubing. Its identical in almost every way to acrylic tubing, except its far easier to bend and a lot cheaper, too. Copper provides a good base to either nickel or chrome plate or even powder coat as well, though its opaque. Whichever way you choose, youll still benefit from the reduced noise and the far-superior cooling capacity that water cooling provides.

Water-cooling components

If you thought that building a custom PC was tricky enough, then weve got some bad news for you. Heres a quick rundown of what youll have to consider purchasing on top of your standard build.

Youll need: A case, tubing, radiator(s), a CPU block, GPU block(s), GPU backplate(s), memory block(s), reservoir(s), pump(s), compression fittings, angled fittings, bulkhead fittings, stop valves, coolant and fans.

Once youve decided how you want to cool your rig and what chassis you want to cool your build in, then its a simple matter of pricing the lot up, throwing it all in the basket and breaking your wallet in two as you fork out for an expensive exercise in PC modding.

CPU block

By far the most obvious component to cool your rig. Youll need to make sure you buy a CPU block thats compatible with the chip youre trying to cool.

More often than not, this is just a simple difference between Intel and AMD, as the processors dont tend to vary greatly in size.

GPU block

Predictably, GPUs experience the greatest deal of variance. Both in the design of the PCB and in which graphics processor you choose as well.

Youll need to make sure you buy a compatible block for your card. Some manufacturers, such as EKWB, will often include specific water blocks designed to work with aftermarket cards such as Gigabytes Windforce, MSIs Lightning or the Asus STRIX series of cards.

This may extend as far as the backplate as well, so always double check.

Memory block

Whether or not you decide to cool the RAM with your custom loop is entirely up to you. They certainly do output heat.

But really, it just looks more awesome than anything else. Besides, nobody will penalise you if all youre looking for is to cool your CPU and GPU.

Youll also need compatible RAM modules that match up with your water blocks.

Fittings

The most important parts of your build are the fittings you choose to use. Depending on what tubing you decide upon, youll need either compression fittings or acrylic f ttings.

Although acrylic fittings are still technically compression fittings, theyre designed to work around hard tubing by not crushing the acrylic as much, unlike traditional compression fittings, which tend to have a greater pinch to them.

If youre looking for a basic build, you can usually get away with just the standard fittings.

However, if youre looking at designing a build with cleaner lines and a little more fl are, you may want to invest in some angled fittings as well, usually stipulated at 45 or 90 degrees. Additionally, a stop valve might come in handy for loop maintenance.

Pump and reservoirs

Technically, you dont need to buy a reservoir to successfully run a water-cooled loop. However, they do look rather impressive, and make it a lot easier to fill a water-cooled system than using other methods.

You will, however, always need a pump to ensure that the fluid within your system is fl owing, and pulling heat away from your core components and out to the radiators. Additionally, you should always have your pump gravity fed (meaning fluid should always be flowing down into it).

Radiators and static pressure

At this point, you need to be looking at how youre going to output that heat. The only option you have is to use radiators. You can do this however you like, either by utilising separate loops for your GPUs and CPUs or by combining the two together into one single loop.

But youll still need radiators to get rid of all of that heat, and accompanying fans to reduce this per loop. Once youve decided what space your case has for radiators and how many youre going to use, you need to take a closer look at the FPI and thickness of the radiators youll be using.

FPI stands for fins per inch. Essentially, the higher the FPI, the higher the static pressure youre going to need to effectively move cool air through that radiator.

For instance, if you have a radiator with an FPI of 38, youll probably want static pressure-optimised fans. However, if you have deeper radiators with a lower FPI of 16, you wont see any comparable difference between static pressure fans or airflow fans. In fact, in these cases, youre often better off equipping them with airflow fans instead.

How To Build A Water Cooled PC

How To Build A Water Cooled PC

If you are new to liquid cooling, or if you've never purchased Koolance products in particular, you may be wondering what is required to get started. A typical water cooling system consists of four main parts (see also: Liquid Cooling 101):

1. A Radiator (heat exchanger) with fans to move heat from liquid into air
2. Water Blocks to transfer heat into liquid
3. A Pump to move the liquid
4. A Reservoir for automatically filtering air from the liquid and storing excess coolant

There are many practical water cooling configurations depending on your application and preferences. You should begin your decision based on which components will be water cooled. Regardless of whether you're cooling a computer or something else, the expected heat output and desired temperature range of these areas will dictate many of your liquid cooling parts.

Determining Approximate Heat Output

Hardware is designed with a TDP, or "Thermal Design Power" in mind. This is the maximum amount of heat a cooling system is expected to handle for that component at normal clock speed and voltage. Here is a rough guide:

• CPU Processor: 60-150W
• Video Card
  • Single GPU (low-end): 100W
  • Single GPU (mid-range): 150-250W
  • Single GPU (high-end): 200-350W
  • Dual GPU (high-end): 300-450W
• Motherboard
  • Chipset: 10-30W
  • Voltage Regulators: 5-20W
• Memory: 2-5W per stick
• Hard Drive (regular or SSD): 10-30W

The two primary targets for water cooling in a PC computer are the CPU and video graphics card. These areas produce the highest amount of heat and benefit most from liquid cooling. We can consider these "high heat" sources (a dual-GPU video card should be considered as two high heat sources). The remaining areas on the motherboard, RAM, and hard drives are considered "low heat" sources. Low heat components can be considered in aggregate, but they don't usually contribute enough heat to significantly affect radiator selection.

Choosing a Radiator

Heat exchanger size and airflow are critical to a PC water cooling system's performance-- moreso than liquid flow rate. For this reason, it's recommended to use the largest radiator you can comfortably fit into your workspace, computer chassis, etc. Larger radiators are advantageous because they decrease liquid temperature and can allow for quieter fan speeds.

What is the minimum radiator size needed if you have space constraints? Our suggested minimum sizes are based on the number of "high heat" devices (CPU or GPU) you will liquid cool:

• 1 device = 1 fan radiator
• 2 devices = 2 fan radiator
• 3 devices = 3 fan radiator
• 4 devices = 4 fan radiator
• 5+ devices = larger than 4 fans, or use multiple radiators

These are only recommendations. The "correct" option is based on your desired temperature and noise range. Some customers find it acceptable to cool 4 video cards with a 3-fan radiator by accepting a somewhat higher temperature range, and/or by running the fans faster. Downsizing too much is something to avoid, though, since it's entirely possible to choose a radiator which is too small to handle a heat load.

Koolance lists "FPI" (fins per inch) for its heat exchangers, which is the fin density. This can be relevant for users deciding to do one of the following:

1. Emphasize cooling performance and opt for the largest, highest fin density radiator allowable. Pair it with high CFM/pressure fans. Generally, 120mm fans push more air than 140mm fans.
2. Emphasize lower noise levels by selecting a lower fin density radiator. Use medium-range fans and/or voltage-throttle them. Generally, 140mm fans are quieter than 120mm fans.

Low fin density radiators will still improve with more airflow, and high fin density radiators can be quieted by reducing fan speed, so there is a lot of room for tweaking. Either decision should result in significantly lower chip temperatures than air cooling (see recommended radiator sizes above).

Selecting Water Blocks

Koolance has a range of individual water blocks broken down by category. For PC cooling, a convenient Product Selection Tool is also offered. After supplying some basic hardware criteria, this page will generate a list of potential water blocks to use in your future cooling system. Also see our water block help pages under "Information->Product Help" above. If you require assistance, please let us know.

Finding a Pump

Koolance offers several pumps of various specifications. The more cooling components added to a cooling loop, the stronger the pump needed to counter flow restriction. For a typical computer cooling loop with a 3-fan radiator and a few water blocks, any pump offered by Koolance should provide enough flow.

Flow rate tends to be over-emphasized in PC cooling. For the majority of loops, effective flow rates higher than 1.5-2.0 LPM (0.4-0.5 GPM) won't contribute much, if anything, to thermal performance. A reliable pump is important, as is making sure it's strong enough to keep adequate flow through your selected components. But for users looking to improve thermal performance, increasing radiator size and airflow is almost always more effective.

Keep in mind that the maximum flow rate listed for pumps is at zero static head pressure, while the maximum static head is at zero flow rate. That means the actual flow rate in a cooling system will usually be quite a bit lower than the pump's maximum specification.

The Reservoir

The primary purpose of a reservoir is to bleed air from the loop and to store extra liquid to reduce maintenance. It won't assist with cooling aside from delaying the time required to reach maximum heat saturation. Reservoirs are also a good opportunity to show off your water cooling system. The size and type of reservoir is based solely on aesthetics and available space. A large, LED-lit reservoir with UV colored coolant mounted against a side window or front drive bay will be highly visible.

Hose Size and Fittings (6mm, 10mm, or 13mm?)

Tubing is based on allowable space and personal preference. 6mm (1/4in) internal diameter hose is a good option for compact areas like servers and media centers. For computers with more space, 10mm (3/8in) or 13mm (1/2in) ID is recommended. There are few situations where 13mm (1/2in) ID hose outperforms 10mm (3/8in) in temperature, so we encourage this choice based primarily on whichever looks best to you.

Your fittings will follow the hose size you choose. Be sure that both the ID (internal diameter) and OD (outer diameter) of your fittings match your selected hose size. Hose barbs, unlike compression fittings, will accept different outer diameters by changing the clamp (the ID must still match). Barbs require pliers to install the clamp, while compression fittings are secured by hand.

Barb Fittings

Compression Fittings