A Beginner's Guide For WaterCooling Your PC

Features
By Don Woligroski
published

Cooling Multiple Components, Continued

In our case, we're definitely going to cool off our VGA card, which is a Radeon X1900 XTX. While the card isn't the newest or most powerful, it's still no slouch and produces an incredible amount of heat. In the case of this card in particular, Koolance offers not only a GPU/memory cooling block, but a separate voltage regulator cooling block as well.

Graphics processor water block and mounting accessories

While air-cooling solutions can bring the GPU temperature within acceptable levels, we know of no air-cooling solution out there to accommodate the X1900's extremely hot voltage regulators, which can easily reach 100 degrees Celsius under load. We are very interested to see how the voltage regulator's cooling block will affect our X1900.

Video card voltage regulator water block and mounting accessories

And those are the basics, folks. As we've mentioned, there are certainly other components that can be liquid cooled. An example is the Koolance 1200 watt liquid-cooled power supply. The electrical components in this monstrous beast are actually submerged in a non-conductive coolant, which is pumped through its own dedicated external radiator. This is an extreme example of alternative liquid cooling, but it gets the job done extremely well.

Koolance's 1200 watt liquid-cooled PSU

Nevertheless, now that we've decided on our cooling blocks, we can start to consider our installation.

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