A Beginner's Guide For WaterCooling Your PC
Planning & Installation
Unlike air-cooling equipment, a liquid cooling setup really requires at least some basic planning before installation. Liquid cooling introduces some unique variables that the user has to consider.
Primarily, we have to remember that the installation must be designed with convenience in mind. There has to be a clear path for the coolant hoses to come into the case and travel between the components. In addition, we want to make sure that the cooling system allows some breathing room so the system is not difficult to work with in the future.
Secondary concerns are that the flow of liquid coolant should be as unrestricted as possible. We must remember also that the coolant will heat as it passes through each water block. If we designed the system to flow the coolant into each successive cooling block in a series-first the CPU, then the chipset, then the video card and finally the video card's voltage regulator - then the voltage regulator would always get coolant that was pre-heated by every other component in the system. This scenario is less than ideal for the last component in line.
To alleviate this problem, it is a good practice to split the liquid coolant into separate parallel paths. When done properly, the flow of coolant is less congested and there is no single component in line that receives coolant preheated by every other component.
The Koolance EXOS-2 kit we used for this article is designed to work primarily with 3/8" tubing, and their CPU cooling blocks are designed with 3/8" compression fit connectors. However, Koolance chipset and VGA coolers are designed to work with smaller ¼" tubing. This forces the user to use the single 3/8" to dual-1/4" splitter fitting, which works well when we split the coolant flow into two parallel paths. One of these ¼" tubes will cool the motherboard chipset block and the other will cool the VGA card blocks. After these components are cooled the tubes will be rejoined with a dual ¼" to single 3/8" fitting, and the single 3/8" tube will carry the heated coolant out of the PC case and back to the radiator to be cooled.
It sounds more complex than it looks, so here is the diagram that's worth a thousand words:
This is our planned water-cooling system configuration
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Drawing a simple diagram when designing your water-cooling system is a good idea and may help you to keep things straight during installation. With a good idea of what we want to accomplish on paper, we can now get our hands dirty with the actual installation.
You can start by laying out the cooling blocks on a table and pre-cutting the hose lengths you think you'll need. Leave yourself extra length; you can always trim it off later, and you will not be in trouble if you end up needing more
Current page: Planning & Installation
Prev Page Cooling Multiple Components, Continued Next Page Planning & Installation, ContinuedDon Woligroski was a former senior hardware editor for Tom's Hardware. He has covered a wide range of PC hardware topics, including CPUs, GPUs, system building, and emerging technologies.
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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.Reply
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. -
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.Reply
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. -
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
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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.Reply
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.
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Bot Series What ever happened to the Cray idea of just dropping your PC into a fish tank full of Mazola?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