A Beginner's Guide to Water Cooling Your Computer

The Joker

The Joker

Thread Killer MKII

Why Water Cooling?

Water has a high thermal conductivity, meaning it absorbs heat very easily—even moreso than air. As such, it's a great candidate for cooling your system. Water cooling works by running water over each of your components, transferring heat from each part to a radiator that dissipates the heat and keeps the water cool—almost exactly like your car's radiator does. This lets you cool your processor, graphics card, and other hardware more effectively.

We've talked a bit about water cooling before, but prebuilt systems like the Corsair Hyrdo Series can only take you so far. They're certainly quieter than most air coolers, and they'll definitely give you lower temperatures than your PC's stock fan, but if you really want silence and low temperatures, a homebrew water loop is the best way to do it.

Water cooling is particularly useful for those that perform resource-intensive tasks like video editing and gaming. Not only will it keep your hardware cooler during heavy loads (my temperatures went down by nearly 10 degrees), but it gives you a ton of headroom if you decide to overclock your system, giving you the most power possible out of your components.

Water cooling isn't without downsides, however. Water cooling has long been an enthusiast-only endeavor, mostly because of its high cost and complexity. However, you can buy all-in-one kits that cut your cost in half, and eliminate the hours of research you'd otherwise have to do finding compatible parts. Below, we'll show you all the parts you need for a water cooling setup as well as how to put it all together. Check out the video above if you want to see it in action, then head to the how-to below for more detailed instructions.
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http://lifehacker.com/5940236

For the rest of the guide click the link.

If anyone has ever been interested in doing a water cooling loop in their pc this is def a guide you'd want to read.
 
Or you can do this :D

Aquarius-PC-Case4640x426.jpg


Mineral_Oil_Submerged_Computer_1.jpg
 
^ ^

Although that is epic its a mess as well xD I thought of trying it but omg...lol
Also I don't know anyone that is willing to try that with a 20k machine :D
 
I don't think anything looks more aesthetically pleasing that a nice watercooled rig. But yeah, always been afraid of mixing water and electricity. Maybe one day.
 
Intel already given the thumbs up for mineral oil cooling..so waiting to a couple years to break out my old fishtank :D
 
Thanks for the info! Baha, I've been considering this since forever, but then I think to myself - a wet motherboard can't be good, and then I realise I suffer from Irrational Wet Motherboard Syndrome. Such is life.
 
Right, this has certainly perked my interest in water cooling again. I remember a few years back when TideMedia consisted of NAG, SACM, Custom PC SA & Drive 2.0, CPCSA did a review on a Swiftech Ultra Apex - or something similar - and it was a complete kit, aka pump, radiator, cpu block and gpu block; so I'm wondering are there any decent complete kits around? I've checked Landmark PC and I do not know that brand, Prophecy has some kits, but they're typically only CPU blocks with a small radiator and pump. Brands I typically go for with aftermarket cooling are Zalman and CoolerMaster.

The kits should fit an LGA1366 - think thats the socket number, i7 920 - and a GTX580. Thank you in advance for any assistance.
 
if you are wanting performance then rather dont look at kits.importing pumps with highest flow rate etc are your best bet..if you are looking for a kit then you might as well get an H80 or H100 and call it a day because you wont see much of a temperature drop considering the effort and risk you are putting yourself through
 
Alien said:
if you are wanting performance then rather dont look at kits.importing pumps with highest flow rate etc are your best bet..if you are looking for a kit then you might as well get an H80 or H100 and call it a day because you wont see much of a temperature drop considering the effort and risk you are putting yourself through
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Well at this point in time my 580 runs @ 80°C under load, which is the average from what I have read. I think the value is far too high, and I can only imagine what temperatures it is going to be hitting during the summer months. My stock cooler for my 920 does a decent job, it usually hits 60°C - 65°C under load in a game like Battlefield 3 which is notorious for overheating PC's.

From my limited experience in thermodynamics (1st year physics), I'm not sure you can make the blanket statement of: "... Pumps with highest flow rate are your best bet," considering the fact that your heat exchanger is what does the work of dissipating the heat, your pump merely gets the fluid moving.
 
The more cold water you shift the cooler you're chip will run.
This also depends on you're ambient room temp and the size of you're rad and the length of the loop.

I've never liked water cooling gpu's as you void warranty instantly as soon as the stock cooler gets removed.
If you plan on doing any form of watercooling I would stick to the CPU, and if you're a novice I would advise you to get help from someone that has set up watercooling before.
 
Marley said:
Well at this point in time my 580 runs @ 80°C under load, which is the average from what I have read. I think the value is far too high, and I can only imagine what temperatures it is going to be hitting during the summer months. My stock cooler for my 920 does a decent job, it usually hits 60°C - 65°C under load in a game like Battlefield 3 which is notorious for overheating PC's.

From my limited experience in thermodynamics (1st year physics), I'm not sure you can make the blanket statement of: "... Pumps with highest flow rate are your best bet," considering the fact that your heat exchanger is what does the work of dissipating the heat, your pump merely gets the fluid moving.
Click to expand...

Alien said:
if you are wanting performance then rather dont look at kits.importing pumps with highest flow rate etc are your best bet..if you are looking for a kit then you might as well get an H80 or H100 and call it a day because you wont see much of a temperature drop considering the effort and risk you are putting yourself through
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please note the underlined part. of course the temps are not solely dependent on the flow rate. I assumed that since you were looking into water cooling, that you would have done some sort of research.guess its true what they say about assumptions
 
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