Water Cooling Guide For Beginners

Water Cooling Guide For Beginners



Welcome to the latest in our highly popular series of beginners guides, this time we will be taking a look at the often misunderstood world of water cooling.

I should point out that this is not a buying guide as such, it is simply an article to get you up and running, and keep you up and running with minimal fuss.

There are many water cooling guides dotted around the tinterweb, but I want to try and simplify things even further and address as many of the frequently asked questions as possible.

If you take your time, and follow the basic steps in this guide, you will find that building your first water cooling loop can be a very rewarding and trouble free exercise.

Why water cooling?

Well, there are three main reasons that you may want to go with water cooling:
•High performance cooling - Generally much better temps than with air cooling which usually equates to better overclocking potential too.
•Silence - Most people don't want a hair dryer on their desk, water cooling can transform your noisy air cooled computer into a much more palatable, near silent machine.
•The bling factor/Aesthetics - Done correctly, a water cooled rig can be a real talking point, you needn't spend a fortune to get a great looking rig (although you can do!), some people like the understated look, others like the whole UV look, more on this later.
Of course, you may want to combine all three aspects and go for a super high end system, we'll get to the pros and cons of that later.

What We Are Not Going To Do In This Guide.

As in most areas of computing, there are purists, water cooling is no exception, and many people love nothing more than to spend hours and lots of money trying to shave off that extra 0.5C here and 0.5C there in their quest for perfection. We've all been there, buying the most expensive water block, a couple of pumps, special fluid that promises lower temps.....bah! Will these extra fractions of a degree here and there do anything for your overclocks, well, no, not really. There are small benefits to be had, but once you get yourself a moderately good water cooled set up, you enter the land of diminishing returns and the more you spend, the less extra performance you get for your money with each step up.

What We Are Going To Do In This Guide.

In this guide, we will take you step by step through a basic CPU/GPU water cooling loop set up from start to finish. There are many different methods that people use for the various different aspects of water cooling, however, this guide will feature my own preferred methods and while some people may prefer other ways of doing things, everything mentioned here has worked well for me over the years and will no doubt work well for you. Try it and see! To sum up, we are going to look at building you a great water cooled system, if you want to tweak it to within an inch of its life later on, that's up to you!

Let's get to it then...

Index.

1. Intro And Index.

2. Selecting And Buying The Parts:
•CPU Water Blocks
•Standard / Universal GPU Water Blocks
•Full Cover GPU Water Blocks

•Other Water Blocks - Motherboard Water Blocks /Chipset / Northbridge / Southbridge / Mosfet / VRM Water Blocks
•Reservoirs And T-Lines
•Radiators And Shrouds
•Pumps And Isolating Materials

•Tubing And Tube Sizes / Coloured Tubing / Hose Clamps

•Water, Additives, Biocides And Kill Coils
•Barbs And Compression Fittings / Elbows, QDCs And Other Miscellaneous Fittings / SLI And Crossfire Fittings

•Radiator Fans And Fan Controllers

3. The Right Tools For The Job

4. Choose Your Case:
•Plan Your Loop
•Do The Lengths Of The Tubing matter?

•Does The Loop Need To Go In A Certain Order?
•Orientation Of Flow
5. Putting It All Together:
•Parts List & Photos
• Fitting The Radiator
•Fitting The Pump And Reservoir
•Fitting The Blocks
•Tubing Up The Loop! / Adding The Compression Fittings
6. Filling, Leak testing And Bleeding The Loop:
•The PSU Trick
•Filling The Loop
•Leaks!
•Final Build
•Final Leak Test
•Wiring Things Up
•Other Fans
7. Periodic Maintenance And Draining:
•Preparation And Draining
•Cleaning out The Blocks
•Reassembling The Blocks
•TLC For The Radiator
•TLC For The Pump

•Topping Up The Reservoir
•Cleaning Dust From The Radiator Fins
8. Summary And Conclusion.

Next, selecting and buying the parts...