A Beginner's Guide For WaterCooling Your PC

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Luscious

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Koolance has been making some nice water cooling gear for a while, I really like the water-cooled PSU, but I have tended to avoid using Koolance because they don't use 1/2" connections in their systems. Wider diameter tubing will let you push more water over a given distance, carry more heat away and helps both the radiator and pump work better.

It's one reason why I think Swiftech and DangerDen are a better choice. Although their products may seem less "turnkey" than the Koolance Exos, they build some top-notch equipment, including peltier systems, and scale all the way up to extreme multi-block/multi-radiator cooling set-ups.

While I understand the nature of the article was a beginners guide, it may be nice to do an "advanced" guide that can showcase the full potential of water cooling, and I don't mean extreme overclocking. With the complete line of products that these manufacturers offer, its now possible to build a system in which pretty much every heat-generating part is now water cooled!!!

Done properly, such a setup would demonstrate nicely the noise, thermal and performance advantages that the best water cooling equipment can give.
 

Ninjatsu

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Water cooling looks nice and all but I would probably have trouble with it.

Is it viable to have watercooling in a lanning machine that gets carted around about once a week(in the passenger seat of a bakkie/ute)?
And I like sticking my fingers in the pc alot.... I have lots of old equipment that I throw in every now and then, of course i wouldn't need to touch the cpu/nb, but the graphics card will be pulled out every now and then. Will it be much more of a hassle...can I even take the gfx card out?
 

SuperFly03

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Is it viable to have watercooling in a lanning machine that gets carted around about once a week(in the passenger seat of a bakkie/ute)?

No. It is highly recommended that you drain the system if you intend to move it. It is possible to move it without damaging the cooling system, however it isn't a good idea and I say don't do it. Every time you would have to drain it before moving it, then transport it, then refill/bleed it, then game, then drain it, then transport it, then refill/bleed it again. 8O

And I like sticking my fingers in the pc alot.... I have lots of old equipment that I throw in every now and then, of course i wouldn't need to touch the cpu/nb, but the graphics card will be pulled out every now and then. Will it be much more of a hassle...can I even take the gfx card out?

Yes. You would just detach the cooler from the graphics card before you take it out. I don't know what you are doing that requires removing the graphics card, but yes it is possible. You will have to reseat the cooler every time, though.
 

Ninjatsu

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well i had to keep removing my last card (6800gt) cause it was over the motherboard jumper that resets the bios, so i had to take it out like once a day during the time my pc was doing random crap and not srating properly. And also cause the card was slowly dieing(dead now, viva la fx5500)....

probably wont need to move the 8800 once i get it. obviously wont be going for water then if i have to keep draining it. maybe when im rich enough for 2 pcs my home one will get watercooled.

thanks for the reply
 

SuperFly03

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You're welcome.

The real risk is springing a leak during transport and then trying to start up and frying it, which is why you shouldn't transport it with water. You could check it before and after transport, but I just don't feel comfortable recommending that to

1) someone new to water cooling
2) who transports it that often.

Glad to help. :D
 

aigomorla

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hi i surfed on this site from anand after a member brought up this review. I also have a nobies guide to h2o cooling over at anandtech. So just wanted to help a fellow guide writter out at another reputable forum.

I like to say the organization and content was great. However the choice in products was very poor.

Koolance is concidered at best a TOY to most watercooling people. The tubes are highly restrictive at 1/4th ID. And aluminum parts without zinc in the loop with copper can lead to TONS of nightmare with corrosion.

Also someone recomended fluidXP. I cant warn you guys how badly you should stay away from this fluid. Its a joke.

1. IT WILL STAIN YOUR BLOCKS WITH WAX
2. IT WILL STAIN YOUR TUBES WITH WAX
3. IT WILL BE A PITA TO CLEAN ON FLUSHES.

Promochill is a better alternative.

And for those of you in the UK, there are stores that carry reputable parts for h2o cooling. The koolance block also isnt ment to suport a cpu running at higher voltage. The flow and distrubtion of heat to rad is absolutely horrible. Dual pass, copper radiators, made by thermochill, or swiftech radiators are far superior to koolance in cooling and capacity.

Last thing to show my experience:

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p73/aigomorla/IMG_0406.jpg
This is how a uber quiet setup should look like.

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p73/aigomorla/IMG_0397.jpg
This is how performance setup looks like.

The two builds are completely different. One uses dual radiators, while the other uses single. A watersetup is not simple where 1 is universal. This is the first myth everyone needs to get over. Water can give you either quiet, or Super cooling. The majority of the people find a sweet spot in the middle. But the two builds are completely different!

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p73/aigomorla/MyOpty.jpg
LAstly my load temps on performance for both GPU and CPU. There is absolutely NOWAY a koolance kit would come close to my setup

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p73/aigomorla/IMG_0399.jpg
Heres how they both look side by side.



Currently my setup has changed to a E6600. I am running 3.6ghz @ 1.45V. The idle and load temps are 28C idle on TAT and 36-41C Loaded. Water will reduce your LOAD deltas. My deltas as you can see is ~ 10-14C . This is a trait of a common h2o setup.


Also in comparision, a tuniq tower at my settings would idle ~ 44C and hit load at 65+C That is the power of water.

Ambients at around 62-64F. <-- forgot to list ambients :p


I should also list my parts out incase anyone is currious:

On the Performance:
D-tek Fusion CPU block
EK Reservoir
2 x EK 7900GT @ 1.5V OC'd i pushed them as high as 700mhz on SLI
2 x DDC-2 w/ Petrastechshop tops, there the radical tops, but cheaper!
1 x 120.2 PA120 thermochil
1 x 120.1 BlackICE GTS
1 x MCW30 chipset

On the NAS:
120x3 blackice GTS <-- i should get a thermochill
Swiftech 655 aka Laing D5
DangerDen Maze4 GPU block
Swiftech ApogeeGT CPU block
Swiftech Micro Res.


Enjoy :D and feel free to use any of my pictures if you want. If you also feel my post was a bit to excessive, please get a hold of though pms, and i'll delete this post. I dont have the intension of bad mouthing or bring down anyone's review. It is a well organized and greatly written reivew. I just felt the product should of been left out completely. In my Guide i carefully left out all mentions of products except in comparison with different style of blocks. Like the CPU has two forms, accelerator, and non accelerator, ie low restriction. These are big things ones needs to take into account when setting up a proper system.

Also, this was more of a review minus the first section then a guide. As i said, the choice in koolance is a very poor choice. Even when EVGA deicded to jump there new 680i on the xspc blocks, the whole water cooling comunity that are veterans went WHY?!?!?!!?!??!? xspc would be koolance's greatest competitor in the class of watercooling as a toy.



And to be actually honest, i dont think your system would do that much greater then a cheaper tuniq tower with a high powered fan. That is another thing you should care to mention.
 

azeari

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Specific heat capacity is the other important physical property, which refers to the amount of energy it takes to heat a substance by one degree. The specific heat capacity of liquid water is about four times that of air, which means it takes four times the amount of energy to heat water than it does to heat air. Once again, water's ability to soak up much more heat energy without increasing its own temperature is a great advantage over air-cooling.

I didn't dig out a reference to check the specific heat values, but I think it should be pointed out that the vast majority of water's specific-heat advantage is due to it's density rather than it's specific (by mass) heat capacity. Even if water had half the specific heat capacity of air, it's density is, what, about 1000 times greater, so it would still more readily absorb the heat. The conclusion is the same, though I think the emphasis should be that the cooling contribution of the conductivity of water (25x air's) is paltry in comparison to heat capacity (and then forced convection by the pump). It would be more interesting to see a specific heating capacity with respect to volume at standard pressure. My guess is this would put water at 4000x the heat capacity of a given volume of air.

well you could always do the calculations yourself. anyway, another point to note is heat transfer is proportional to temperature difference, so if your water temp is too high, expect to see reduced cooling performance
 

merc14

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Writing a beginners guide is a very difficult task. You have to keep things at a very basic level. Parts selection is not relevant as the whole point of a beginners guide is to answer the basic questions and then get the reader to move on to do his own research with knowledge of the basics so he can ask pertinent questions like tube diameter and head pressure. If you get into to much detail you lose the primary audience ( which ain't you guys questioning corrosion potential and equipment selection) who is looking for the basics and probably way overloaded with info already from just reading the article.

It is a fine line and having written a couple of these types of guides I can tell you that Cleeve did a great job. He reached his target and provided just enough info that they can go out and ask the more in-depth questions.
 

cutthroat

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I actually found this article helpful. I've been wanting to watercool for years, but I've always been afraid to, this made it look really easy.

Question though, the ambient temp where my PC is can reach 40C in the summer. I'm looking for a way to not only cool the PC, but stop the PC from heating the house as well. Does water cooling have cooler exhaust than air cooling? What about fanless design ones? Should I just hook a dryer vent up to my PC?
 

p8ntslinger676

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Come on, this guide is a real letdown to those of us that know a thing or two about water cooling, you can do better than than and you are misinforming the younger group with these junky water cooling systems. It seems that these guides and threads keep getting worse and worse. Maybe if THG did some research to find out about actual decent custom water cooling systems then you might get somewhere, but with this integrated external crap you will get nowhere. Im disappointed in you THG :cry:
 

donque

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Great guide for a beginner to water cooling like me. Just remember to go back into this thread and tell us how high you were able to push that cpu overclock once you get the ram. Did you try to oc the GPU too?
 

HotFoot

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The total heat produced by your CPU is going to be the same, and since energy isn't destroyed by the water cooler, it's only transported, and the heat output to your room will be the same. If you take advantage of watercooling's ability to keep your CPU temps down to overclock, of course your heat output will even increase.

What you could do if you're up for a little work is to route the water lines so that the radiator is placed in an adjacent room. That would at least export the heat to a different place in the house. If you're up for building an exhaust vent, build it around a good radiator so that it fits to it and the fans on the radiator will drive the air to the outside.
 

Kurz

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Oh its a good guide.
But I am here to give the readers more depth in the subject.
And hopefully get more performance for their money.

I wished you put in a section of custom built rigs perform much better at the cost of a little bit more complexity.
 

donque

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Kurz, i dont agree really, for most people time is money the extra time to find what you need in your custom rig, the extra time to order all parts from different vendors and the extra time to assemble it would outweigh the benefits.
 

HotFoot

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I disagree with you here. I think enthusiasts do all of these things because they enjoy the tinkering. It's the time and effort that goes into the projects that makes it all fun. No effort projects mean that anyone can do it.
 

SuperFly03

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I disagree with you here. I think enthusiasts do all of these things because they enjoy the tinkering. It's the time and effort that goes into the projects that makes it all fun. No effort projects mean that anyone can do it.

Agreed, but this article wasn't for enthusiasts, it was for newbies and whose who may not know jack about water cooling (how to install, why, cost, etc). Yes you can get more for your money, but what would they know about deciding which block is better? Yes, they could ask in the forumz, but that is a different scenario from what was assumed in the article.
 

HotFoot

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Maybe the whole problem here is that water cooling is pretty much the exclusive territory of enthusiasts. Most of the people complaining abou the article know enough about water cooling that they shouldn't need to read a beginner's primer. Being a beginner's primer in the fist place makes arguments about the relative merits of picking and choosing components versus buying a ready-to-go kit kind of moot.

I'm of the opinion that people who don't want to spend the time and effort to pick out and install a good water cooling system probably shouldn't be recommended to use water cooling in the first place. If you're water cooling for silence, well, as I've said there are zero-noise solutions for air cooling a CPU too, which I've had a great experience with, even on an overclocked Pentium D. If you're water cooling for overclocking, then you're reading the wrong article.

I think the article, as it stands, is an adequate introduction to a larger field. I really think a more in-depth discussion of the topic would be worthwhile, and it would be great to see additions being made that delve into further detail for those who care to read it. How deep does the rabbit hole go?
 

aigomorla

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Your not uderstanding my concern.

In all guides, EVEN MY GUIDE, a CLEAR explaination of TUBE diameter is a MUST. A newbie reading this guide will think, OH it was done by a professional, hence Koolance is an awesome kit.

NO, KOOLANCE, THERMALCRAP, ZALMAN. These are ALL TOYS. I dont care how awesome your temps are, hands there THEIR TOYS. Nothing more to a watercooling hobbyist.

Now the problem with TOYS are, they can seriously damage your baby. ThermalCRAP for instance underwent 3 PUMP revisions last year. Did you guys know that?? 3!!! comon now, how bad is a pump on your system, that would require you to change your pump 3 times!?!??!!?

Zalman, dont get me started with the reserator. TONS of issues came up with these units. And now funny people will drop EK blocks on a reserator unit. BAM now thanks to the ALU, they got gavlanic corrosion starting.


BTW GALVANIC CORROSION IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT IN ANY NEWBIE GUIDE. THIS FAILED TO MENTION ANYTHING ABOUT MIXING ALU WITH COPPER. <-- I CANT STRESS HOW MUCH OF A NO NO THIS IS


Another thing i saved a few members on this fourm about fluid XP b4 they jumped to the product. Now so far i picked 4 NO NO's in less then 10 sec. Do you see how badly a newbie would fall in a hole if he followed this advice?


I am trying to save newbies from making hugh mistakes, and getting forever ban'd by water. I have helped TONS of newbies over at anandtech, and i have written my OWN guide which is a sticky over at case and cooling section. I am concidered a water expert at the forums, and i have ran into almost every nightmare situation you can think of when it comes with water.


From my firm and final believe, it is seriously much more deadly to give wrong advice in water then no advice at all. That is why i had to create a member account here, and try to fix some myths and rumors b4 they became a serious issue with the user later on.

Lastly, my favorate quote over at the forums:

Watercooling, if done right is like a black hole. Once u get inside, your stuck for life. :D I think i fiddle with my loop at least 4 times per year, adding blocks and tweeking my systems.

I currently own: a

TDX <-- craptastic... but it was only 25 dollars new!
Apogee <--- great block!!
ApogeeGT <---- even better
D-tek <--- awesome
Storm Rev.2 <--- strong pump?? Hands down best block. However not a newbie block, due to issues of it getting clogged with poor maintence.

I currently bought a apogeeGTX to test it out and write a little review over at anandtech as well.


*please dont take me as a newbie. I have been watercooling longer then most people on this fourm. Going on to be my third year this november to be exact. So i know WAY more info then the average h2o cooling person. In fact i even jumped to tec's for a while, but had issues with electricity. ITS UBER EXPENSIVE RUNNING A 226W TEC 24/7* :X

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=37&threadid=2005078&enterthread=y <--- my link to my guide over at anandtech.

So YES a guide can be written correctly. And all guides should be written correctly. Also, im consistantly editing that guide for new info, or new faq's my fellow peers have.

So yes im a bit disapointed at the product, yet the guide was written very well. However, all serious issues should of been clearly expressed.
 

HotFoot

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Again, this just emphasizes the split between the phrases "water cooling" and "beginner". The bottom line is you need to do your research and know reasonably well what you're doing.

I've always turned down water cooling because I'm not an extreme overclocker, so good air cooling does very well, and I know of air coolers that are whisper-quiet that are more than adequate for silence.

However, if I had the budget to play around, I'd love to make a pure performance machine and pull out all the stops. That would be a fun hobby, but then, it's not for beginners or those who don't enjoy the time they put into these projects.

If/when I manage to start a project like this, I'll look up your guide. Would you consider adding some figures? Even sketches can help a lot when you're trying to describe something to the uninformed.
 

aigomorla

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Again, this just emphasizes the split between the phrases "water cooling" and "beginner". The bottom line is you need to do your research and know reasonably well what you're doing.

I've always turned down water cooling because I'm not an extreme overclocker, so good air cooling does very well, and I know of air coolers that are whisper-quiet that are more than adequate for silence.

However, if I had the budget to play around, I'd love to make a pure performance machine and pull out all the stops. That would be a fun hobby, but then, it's not for beginners or those who don't enjoy the time they put into these projects.

If/when I manage to start a project like this, I'll look up your guide. Would you consider adding some figures? Even sketches can help a lot when you're trying to describe something to the uninformed.


If its relevant, and useful, im always up to amend, or remove stuff. I also give credit. :D So yes, if you have something very useful to share, pass it my way. If its important and needs adressing, i will amend it, and give ya credit :D

Im into more info for the general mass, then fame. To me, internet fame is very little, i prefer real life fame if any. :p
 

cleeve

Illustrious
I didnt know tom was a kool lance sales man??

As the writer, I guess you're of the opinion I'm a salesman of any model I chose to write a beginner's guide around.
If I had another brand to test with, that's who I'm pimping. Great logic.

What's the right way out? Custom build every piece? No wait... then I'm pimping the manufacturers of each individual component. Egads!

I guess I could have taken no pictures of anything, and kept the component information secret to make sure I wasn't giving the wrong impression to you.

Whatever. :roll:



Anyway, thanks for the vocal supporters, I sincerely hope the article has given some newbies enough of a basic framework to do more research.

To the dissatisfied hardcore: sorry I let you down. I do what I can, but I've never claimed to be perfect.

Some of you have good points, and I sincerely hope anybody who was interested in the article has a visit to this forum to get the extra info that some of the more constructive members have offered. :)

Later gents!
 

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