Liquid Cooling for your Computer
Liquid cooling a computer is a difficult challenge for most beginners to approach due to serious repercussions if done incorrectly. Liquid cooling is the end goal for most computer enthusiast because it means you have gone as far as you can go with computer building and no further. As with anything else in life there are different ways to go about liquid cooling and various levels of difficulty to its application ranging from store bought systems to custom made components.
The point of least resistance for a beginner would be to start with store bought components. All of these off the shelf solutions are easy to install and can be reliably trusted to not have leaks thanks to factory quality controls. There exist a wide range of brands and styles to store bought solution with cover all circumstances that an individual would face when building a liquid cooled computer. In most cases the installation would be the application of thermal paste to the CPU before screwing the heat block on to it and proceeding to screw in the radiator on to a side panel of the computer case while making a point to place the piping in a location that is out of the way.
A person seeking to advance in complexity would see their next challenge to be soft pipe water cooling. In this method you will be assembling the entire water loop by hand. The items needed are the water pump reservoir, plastic tubing, fittings, water block, and distilled water. All the components can easily be purchased on the internet and the water at a supermarket. It is also recommended to add a biocide to the water to prevent algae build up over long term use. The biocide can be applied in various forms, like liquid additives or a piece of silver called a kill coin is place in the reservoir. While the complexity of putting to ether various components without creating any water leaks that can damage the computer’s hardware can seem daunting at first but once an individual has past the learning curve doing this project again can feel like assembling Lego bricks. There also exist benefits to this method over the store-bought prebuilt water loops. The first benefit is being able to customize the layout of the water loop and adding more components to be cooled; the most common being the Graphics card also known of the GPU. This method also provides that benefit of allowing aesthetic customization to your computer. Most people chose to add LED lighting to their computer at this point as well as adding coloring to the distilled water permitting the implementation of a color scheme to the computer. However, there are also down sides. The most prominent of which the increased rich of human error that can lead to water leaks that can damage your computer components as well as the price tag that the water loop have increasing the cost of purchasing your computer.
The next step in difficulty would be hard pipe water cooling. This methodology uses the same components and concept as soft pipe water cooling while replacing the soft tubing with heat shaped tubing. The use of this technique is generally only approached by individuals seeking to give aesthetic appeal to their computers internal components and is never used without the use of water coloring. This method requires the purchasing of a heat gun and specialty tools for molding the tubing to your desired form.
The final and deceptively simple method of liquid cooling are mineral oil cooled computers. Mineral oil is produced from petroleum and does not corrode the hardware of a computer; however, it does damage plastic. The most common approach is to use a tank that has a large resemblance of fish tank; however, it comes with mounts for the computer components to be fixed upon. The first step is to remove all plastic and stickers from the hardware and then proceeding to fill the tank once ready. This solution provides the best cooling to the intense heat producing components but comes with the large downside of limiting access to the computer due to it being submerged.
The main purpose for going through all these hurdles apart from being rewarded for achieving a difficult task is the increased performance the computer can achieve through these methods. It is also possible to go too far with liquid cooling. The best example is a liquid cooled key board, but generally the people that do cooling to this extent are doing it for the bragging rights or the comic value. On the other hand, once in a blue moon someone does it seriously.
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