Questions about custom water cooling loops.

[Alec Bramlett]

I have no clue about custom cooling loops, and I have some questions about it. What is the maintenance involved? What are the benefits of Custom loops? Cost? I would also like to see some possible combinations for a Corsair carbide 300r windowed. Please fill me in on all of this, thanks alot.

 

[hunter315]

Custom loops give you a lot more flexibility than close loops, you can have just the CPU or the CPU and GPUs or the CPU and GPU and motherboard in the loop, you can pick a 120, 240, 360, 480 or even multiple radiators to get better cooling performance or just more radiator space so you can run all the fans slower.

Custom loops are generally a few hundred dollars, which is quite a lot more than an air cooled system, but if set up properly they can yield much greater cooling capacity than an air heatsink.

 

[Alec Bramlett]

Sounds a little pricy, the maintenance involved doesn't sound cheap either

 

[manofchalk]

Maintenance can be barely any or a lot based on your choices with the loop. So like many things in water-cooling (including the likelihood of a leak), it comes down to you.
Benefits of a custom loop is that its flexible, just about anything can be water-cooled, some sound cards even if you feel like throwing away cash. They also far outperform CLC or Air cooling solutions, especially as far as the GPU is concerned.

Cost, if your buying a 300R its probably too high. For an upgradable CPU only loop (that you can easily throw a GPU at later), I would be looking at spending ~$300.