A Beginner's Guide For WaterCooling Your PC

Features
By Don Woligroski
published

Video Card Temperature Graph

We can see that the stock temperatures are atrocious: 89 degrees on the GPU and over 100 degrees on the voltage regulator! The Thermalright HR-03 does an incredible job cooling the GPU down to 65 degrees, but the voltage regulator is still incredibly high at 97 degrees!

The water block cools the GPU down to 59 degrees. This is a massive 30-degree improvement over the stock setup, but only a six-degree improvement over the HR-03, which looks even more impressive in this light.

However, the separate water block for the voltage regulator works wonders for that component. While the HR-03 has no means to cool the voltage regulator, the water block brings it down to 77 degrees, which is 25 degrees below the stock heat sink. This is a very positive result.

Conclusion

The results we recorded from liquid cooling our test rig are pretty clear: liquid cooling is vastly superior and more efficient than air-cooling.

Water-cooling is no longer just for a handful of hard-core PC engineers; it is becoming well within the grasp of the common enthusiast. In addition, today's water-cooling systems, like the EXOS-2, are very simple to set up and are essentially plug and play compared to the old-school methods of jury-rigging spare plumbing parts. And with illumination and stylized enclosures, modern water cooling kits can look great, to boot!

If you are an enthusiast and air-cooling has taken you as far as you can go, liquid cooling is the next logical step. Yes, there are risks, and the equipment will certainly cost you more than air-cooling equipment, but the benefits can't be ignored.

Editor's Opinion

Water-cooling is one of those things I've avoided for a long time because I had assumed it might be more trouble than it's worth. Well, I can now safely say that I'm converted: it's a really great way to go, much easier than I thought to set up and the results speak for themselves. I'd also like to express thanks to Koolance for supplying us with the EXOS-2 kit to use in our water-cooling guide, as it was a real pleasure to play with.

Join our discussion on this topic

Don Woligroski
16 Comments Comment from the forums
  • ComputerCustomizer
    What an absolutely useless article. Why any enthusiast would choose Koolance over a custom setup that would give twice the performance at the same cost is beyond me.
    Reply
  • tailgunner07
    I have to disagree with the above comment, as a novice to water-cooling I found the article useful and informative. While I would not choose the Koolance kit, due to cost, I now have a better idea of how to proceed.
    I would however recommend using a kit as a starting point and modify it as needed rather than ordering a collection of parts and finding that they do not meet your requirements.
    Reply
  • JDMH22
    I agree tailgunner07. I'd use a kit and then start adding more cooling blocks and accessories to meet my needs. I did learn more about water cooling in this article.
    Reply
  • to ComputerCustomizer look before speaking this article was written over a year a go when people were shit scarred of water cooling setups.
    There weren't too trusty names in the market either. They used the koolance system as it was the easiest for n00bs at the time.
    Reply
  • Koolance also the best water cooling system that are around, there's nothing wrong with this usefull review, don't use water cooling if don't have more buck for it.
    Reply
  • Invid
    I agree with Tailgunner, if one is a novice and feels they do not want to delve too deeply into the realm of water cooling then something like this is perfect and the article is helpful in that sense.

    For custom cooling and purchasing of individual items then this article will not help you but then again this isn't about picking and choosing individual components for custom cooling options.

    - Invid
    Reply
  • Bot Series
    What ever happened to the Cray idea of just dropping your PC into a fish tank full of Mazola?
    Reply
  • jeweel
    so what is the best water cooling system for money now?
    Reply
  • coolronz
    well looks like everyone agrees with tailgunner.. lol i was kind of concerned more about fittings and sizes.. i just got a HAF 932. theres enough room for an internal tri rad 120mmx3 on the top of the case, and a single 120mm rad on the back. i do like how they showed to T off after the CPU. i bought a TT pump, res and front temp gauge off eBay and am in the works of buying the rest of the parts. one thing that confused me is what the heck is a G1/4 fitting? now i get it, its just a common pipe thread size. and then you go to a 3/8" or 1/2" ID hose. would have been nice to get a little into that a little... but then again its a beginners article.. great job!!!
    Reply
  • This is very useful. I believe all who indead would love to ave better and faster cooling will go for a kit like this, despite the cost.
    Reply