A Beginner's Guide For WaterCooling Your PC

Features
By Don Woligroski
published

Planning & Installation, Continued

Now you can carefully mount the water blocks to the CPU and chipset cooler with the supplied mounting hardware. Remember, you don't have to make it press down with a lot of force: as long as the cooling block is well connected to the CPU and chipset, that's enough pressure. Applying too much pressure is a good way to destroy your equipment.

The CPU and chipset water blocks are installed on the motherboard

With the CPU and chipset water blocks installed, we turn our attention to our video card. We remove the existing GPU heat sink and replace it with the water block. In this case, we also remove the voltage regulator heat sink and apply the second water block to the card. After the water blocks are installed on the card, the coolant hoses can be attached. When everything's together, the card can be installed in the PCI express slot.

Both the GPU/memory and voltage regulator water blocks are installed on the video card.

With all of the water blocks installed in the PC, we can attach all of the remaining fittings and hoses. The final hoses you attach should be the ones that connect into the external liquid cooling unit. Make sure that you know the direction in which the liquid coolant travels and that it is set up to output its cooled water into the CPU block.

All of the cooling blocks and hoses have been installed.

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