Seriously considering going from air cooling to water cooling

First consider your budget. Radiators, pump, reservoir, blocks, fittings, tubing, coolant adds up to many hundreds of pounds. If all bought new it can easily be £500 and sometimes £1000.

Secondly, why do you want to do it? If it's for aesthetics, then your cost will be higher. You'll want all new matching parts, maybe a new case as well. If it's for cooling, water makes a massive difference to GPU but not necessary for cpu. If it's for silence but not looks, are second hand components OK?

Thirdly, what are you cooling? As above, cpu alone doesn't really benefit. If gpu, can it be water-cooled.

So, what are your reasons and what do you want to cool?
 
In my opinion, and it is just my opinion, water cooling is something you have to be "into". What I mean is, you have to be excited by the prospect of tinkering, tweaking, learning and testing. I spent a good few months researching my first water cooled build, I think it was 6 months from starting the plan to filling the loop.

Maintenance is a part of the process. While I got away with a couple of years just leaving the loop alone, I had to put in a pretty intensive weekend recently stripping, cleaning and rebuilding it.

If the tinkering and planning appeal to you, great! I'd recommend reading some build logs, both for finished builds and the build process. YouTube is also a great source. I still watch lots of water cooling videos for new ideas.
 
i think the main reasons to do it are headroom for overclocking, aesthetics, and low noise. You have to be prepared to spend a lot of money up front without knowing if it will all fit together. Probably best to do a soft tubing build first time out.

search google images for pc watercooling to get inspiration and you can follow the links to the build logs.
 
Take a look at some of the build threads on here, have a look at some of the YouTube videos. And if you start with soft tubing and Chinese components it needn’t be that expensive. Be prepared to invest lots of time as you will probably get the bug and then the exspence will start as you try different tubing and configurations and strive for perfection in performance and asthetics it’s a fascinating side to the PC building hobby.
 
they look clean as with watercooling but I'd be scared of it leaking first boot xD

thats what paper towel is for, before booting up surround every component with paper towel and first sign of a leak power down, drain allow to dry for a few hours and try again, if you go soft turbing route its very simple and 99% leak proof anyway, you just have to make sure to tigten the fittings so the pipes are secure thus no leaks, i stick to soft tubing.

I'd love a hardline build but dont have the balls to try as i've seen and heard the horror stories when it goes wrong, thease days the component that benifits the most from custom cooling is the gpu, i ran a full custom loop before moving to a lian li 0-11 mini case

I now run only gpu custom loop, and man my 3090 is much happier, my 5950x is on good old air cooler and remains quiet and cool, i run a ddc/res unit to the card and then to a EK CE 280mm rad which is installed in the side of the case which expels the hot air out directly from the case :), a small loop but it works a treat
 
I’ve run both sides of the gamut- custom cooled loops on both cpu and gpu, dual loops for each, as much rgb lighting as to land a Boeing 747 and back again.
I currently am running a 9900k and RTX3090 both on air- noctua NHD15 on the cpu and 5 noctua fans in a Meshify S2 case and it runs more than good enough and quiet enough for me with temps on each not hitting more than 65c so will stay with that for a while.
That doesn’t mean I won’t get the urge to water cool again at some point in the future though :D:D
 
Remember not to build something that you cannot move once you have filled it with liquid ... ie You don't need a build with 3 x 480 radiators unless you have arms like a wrestler!
 
thats what paper towel is for, before booting up surround every component with paper towel and first sign of a leak power down, drain allow to dry for a few hours and try again, if you go soft turbing route its very simple and 99% leak proof anyway, you just have to make sure to tigten the fittings so the pipes are secure thus no leaks, i stick to soft tubing.

I'd love a hardline build but dont have the balls to try as i've seen and heard the horror stories when it goes wrong, thease days the component that benifits the most from custom cooling is the gpu, i ran a full custom loop before moving to a lian li 0-11 mini case

I now run only gpu custom loop, and man my 3090 is much happier, my 5950x is on good old air cooler and remains quiet and cool, i run a ddc/res unit to the card and then to a EK CE 280mm rad which is installed in the side of the case which expels the hot air out directly from the case :), a small loop but it works a treat

If only I could get hold of a 3090, Good day to you and the super rig dude! xD
 
As long as you have a decent case, you have your starting point.
If not, don't overcomplicate.
The O11 or O11 XL are very easy cases to work with.
Regarding parts, the B-Grade here on Overclockers has been great for parts.
Got my 3 rads and all were as new, open box but unused.
Same for the O11 XL.
Soft tubing is much easier to work with and build your confidence for future projects. The only problem is that you'll need new fittings when/if decide to go hard line.
For the average person, makes much more sense to watercool the GPU, as you can achieve great temperature at very low noise.
Including the CPU in your project makes sense if all you need, once all parts are in and your setup has enough rad area for CPU + GPU, would be a CPU block and 2 more fittings.
If thinking about only the CPU, don't bother. A Dark Rock Pro 4 or similar Noctua or an AIO like Arctic Freezer II (280/360/420) can give similar temperatures than a custom loop.
 
Aqua computer have a revolutionary new product
Making leaks way less likely
It's called leakshield
Ocuk are going to stock it
Though no arrival date yet
Basically a vacuum pump so if got a leak
Air gets sucked in instead of coolant going out
But yeah as said custom water-cooling isn't for everyone
 
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