Tag Archives: watercooling

Watercooling

Posted by mrsobok on

As an amateur pianist and audio engineer, I’m very sensitive to noise. In particular, PC fan noise. I’m not a PC guy, I wish my MacBook Pro was absolutely silent, but it isn’t, and neither is a high-end gaming PC of the kind I’d want to play Skyrim on. Unless you put 6 hours of work and 13 watercooling components into it:

Excerpt of a water molecule’s journey through the system:

Expelled from the USB controlled water pump, I was happy to find myself inside a large 10/13 tube, far away from the tube’s outlandish polypropylen molecules. The first stage was the graphics card, a stock watercooled GeForce GTX 590. It’s metal was hot, shaking like hell, but I passed by and held it at a constant temperature of 35°C (95°F). After exiting this stage, a few inches later came the CPU and it shook me up again, but salvation was near! Stage 3, the radiator made me go down a long way and up again, calming me down with its 3 silent fans and the giant heat sink. I completely lost track of time being pumped into the reservoir, where the bad air molecules suddenly flew upwards, making way for my fellow water buddies. Back into the pump and the cycle was complete, I reincarnated as another water molecule and all was well.

Mounting the radiator (the giant heat sink) outside and perpendicular to the tower increased the amount of air flowing through it. The result: even after hours of playing state-of-the-art games at full graphic settings and HD resolution, the temperature stayed below 35°C (95°F). That’s amazing compared to 70°C with loud fans in a non-watercooled system! Without the 3 fans on the radiator, temperatures are about 10°C higher. The 6 fans (3 on the radiator + 2 in the case + 1 in the ultra-silent PSU) run at such low speeds that they are barely noticable. The loudest part of the system is the water pump, which I buffered with a vibration dampening spongy orange sandwich beneath.

10 tips if you are planning to build a watercooled PC:

  1. Don’t buy a set. Afaik, sets don’t cool the graphics card so all your effort will be for nothing when the GPU fan starts spinning up.
  2. Get a big tower. No, not like that, even bigger. You will always run out of space. The pump and the reservoir would have had plenty of space next to the PSU, but with the tubes connected there wasn’t enough space anymore. For this reason, also…
  3. Get connectors and couplings of different angles (straigt, 45° and 90°) in order to be flexible and not run out of space like I did.
    Confession of the day: I had to brutally remove the hard disk cage in order to make space for the pump and the tubes, so I put the 2,5″ SSD in the upper story beneath the Bluray drive.
  4. Don’t forget to order adapters for your pump and reservoir. In my case, they were not included with the Aquastream XT.
  5. Don’t waste your money on a USB controlled pump. I never changed any of the settings, and although it’s nice to watch the water pressure, temperatures and voltages live, it’s not necessary.
  6. Spend your money on big, silent fans. The Noiseblocker NB-BlackSilent PRO -PK2 I used are way more silent than the ones that came with the case.
  7. When filling the system with a special low-electric-conductivity fluid, be quick. The pump processed the water faster than I could pour fluid into the reservoir.
  8. Hide your PC, aliens might come and steal it in order to assimilate the technology!
  9. Clean your ears thoroughly to check for any remaining noises.
  10. Stop reading this post and start browsing the web for watercooling components now!

This is the quantified result:

To conclude this geeky post, here’s a list of the components required for watercooling:

  • Pump (e.g. Aquastream XT) with some kind of vibration dampening buffer underneath.
  • Optional: a reservoir (in my case the Aquainlet) to reduce the number of air bubbles and make the filling process easier.
  • Radiator: the bigger, the better, with silent fans. Small radiators can be placed inside a big case, bigger ones can be mounted on top or on the side of the case.
  • CPU (and optional GPU) watercoolers
  • Fittings, couplings and hoses that fit together. I used 2 meters of 13/10mm hose, connected to every component with 8 couplings (G 1/4″ on one side and 13/10mm on the other).
    Important: in my case, the pump had special plugs and I needed to get an extra 1/4″ connector set for this particular pump model, on top of which I screwed the G1/4″ 10/13mm couplings.
  • Water additive or 1 liter of special fluid for watercooling.