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Water cooling 101 - part 1

With the core hardware out of the way, the next step is to select which water-cooling components to use. However, before you do this, it makes sense to provide some background information on water cooling to help you decide which method is appropriate for your PC.

There are two general categories of water-cooling systems; high-flow and low-flow. There are pros and cons to both approaches, but a high-flow system should provide better cooling since, according to the laws of thermodynamics, the rate of heat transfer is directly proportional to the mass flow rate.

The issue with a high-flow system is that introducing anything into the loop that has the effect of reducing the flow rate will also reduce performance. This may seem like stating the bleedin' obvious but, if you consider that even adding a waterblock to the loop will cause a reduction in flow, you'll see how tricky it can be to create a good, high-flow system.

Generating high flow also requires a powerful pump with a high flow rate and head pressure. The pump's flow rate is simply a measure of the maximum amount of coolant that the pump can shift in a given time, while head pressure is a measure of the pump's ability to move coolant when faced with some resistance, such as the pressure drop in a waterblock, and is arguably more important for determining a pump's quality. If your pump doesn't have the grunt to move coolant around your loop, then performance will obviously suffer, although you can integrate multiple pumps and loops into your PC to get around this.

Also, as pumps are powered, mechanical components, they contribute to some of the heat in the loop, although the effect is minor. This is why some people advocate placing the radiator immediately after the pump in the loop, so that it removes the heat that the pump introduces into the coolant. However, it's debatable whether this makes any noticeable difference to the coolant temperature, so you don't need to worry about pumping coolant directly into a waterblock.

After discussing some of the issues associated with a high-flow system, it's easy to see the advantages of a low-flow system, which is principally that it allows you to have a single, multiblock loop powered by a relatively low-power (and therefore cheaper and quieter) pump. Low-flow systems tend to use thinner and more flexible tubing, and also push-fit or compression-fit connectors. These are simpler to use than barbs, which are typically required for high-flow systems. The flipside, however, is that the overall cooling performance level will be lower than that of a high-flow system.

However, since we like high performance at Custom PC, we're going to build a high-flow system, which means our choices of pump, radiators and waterblocks are important.

When selecting water-cooling components, it's essential to make sure that all the blocks are compatible with the same-sized fittings; for example, 0.5in ID (inner diameter). However, as many water-cooling components have the same thread size for their fixings (for example, 1/4in thread), you can easily change the fixings to make sure everything matches.

You should also avoid using blocks constructed from different metals in the same loop, such as aluminium and copper, as these have different electrochemical potentials. Using copper and aluminium in the same loop essentially creates a galvanic cell, more commonly known as a battery. The block with the higher potential acts as the anode and the block with the lower potential acts as the cathode, with the coolant acting as an electrolyte. Current flow from the anode to the cathode will erode the metal in the anode (galvanic corrosion), which could cause the block to leak over time. It's possible to counter this effect by adding a corrosion inhibiter to the coolant, although it's better to avoid using dissimilar metals in your loop to begin with.

Taking all these factors into account, this is the kit we chose, and why we selected it.

With the core hardware out of the way, the next step is to select which water-cooling components to use. However, before you do this, it makes sense to provide some background information on water cooling to help you decide which method is appropriate for your PC.

There are two general categories of water-cooling systems; high-flow and low-flow. There are pros and cons to both approaches, but a high-flow system should provide better cooling since, according to the laws of thermodynamics, the rate of heat transfer is directly proportional to the mass flow rate.

The issue with a high-flow system is that introducing anything into the loop that has the effect of reducing the flow rate will also reduce performance. This may seem like stating the bleedin' obvious but, if you consider that even adding a waterblock to the loop will cause a reduction in flow, you'll see how tricky it can be to create a good, high-flow system.

Generating high flow also requires a powerful pump with a high flow rate and head pressure. The pump's flow rate is simply a measure of the maximum amount of coolant that the pump can shift in a given time, while head pressure is a measure of the pump's ability to move coolant when faced with some resistance, such as the pressure drop in a waterblock, and is arguably more important for determining a pump's quality. If your pump doesn't have the grunt to move coolant around your loop, then performance will obviously suffer, although you can integrate multiple pumps and loops into your PC to get around this.

Also, as pumps are powered, mechanical components, they contribute to some of the heat in the loop, although the effect is minor. This is why some people advocate placing the radiator immediately after the pump in the loop, so that it removes the heat that the pump introduces into the coolant. However, it's debatable whether this makes any noticeable difference to the coolant temperature, so you don't need to worry about pumping coolant directly into a waterblock.

After discussing some of the issues associated with a high-flow system, it's easy to see the advantages of a low-flow system, which is principally that it allows you to have a single, multiblock loop powered by a relatively low-power (and therefore cheaper and quieter) pump. Low-flow systems tend to use thinner and more flexible tubing, and also push-fit or compression-fit connectors. These are simpler to use than barbs, which are typically required for high-flow systems. The flipside, however, is that the overall cooling performance level will be lower than that of a high-flow system.

However, since we like high performance at Custom PC, we're going to build a high-flow system, which means our choices of pump, radiators and waterblocks are important.

When selecting water-cooling components, it's essential to make sure that all the blocks are compatible with the same-sized fittings; for example, 0.5in ID (inner diameter). However, as many water-cooling components have the same thread size for their fixings (for example, 1/4in thread), you can easily change the fixings to make sure everything matches.

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