HARDLINE LIQUID COOLING

The pinnacle of water-cooling beauty: the hard-piped build

We explain all you need to know about creating the pinnacle of water-cooling beauty: the hard-piped build.

There’s something indescribably beautiful about a hard-piped, liquid-cooled build. Those smooth elegant lines, subtle curves, and piercing sharp reflections dancing around the interior of your chassis, as the coolant flows through it, glorify any rig; taking it from the bland basic hardware it once was, and transforming it into something magical, something exceptional.

Is it easy? Well, it’s a lot easier now than it ever has been. But it still takes time, patience, and—most importantly—a sizeable chunk out of your wallet. It’s easy as pie to set up your own soft tubing custom loop nowadays, but if you’re thinking about taking it one step further, and opting for the hard-piped variant, you’re more than likely going to be forking out a hell of a lot more money and time. Why? Well, it’s purely down to effort, and what effect that has on how you plan your build. To be blunt, bending tubing, although fairly easy once you’ve got the hang of it, takes practice, and often a considerable amount of time. It can be exceptionally frustrating. On top of that, hard piping adds nothing more to your build than aesthetic beauty; you gain nothing from using hard tubing over soft tubing, or vice versa. That being the case, cooling just your CPU, although entirely possible, tends to come across as a waste of time. You’ll want to throw a GPU in that loop as well.

When it’s finished, that’s when the magic happens. That’s when you can sit back, admire the angled fittings, listen to the low hum as your fans spin at sub-1,000rpm, stare at HWMonitor as it registers your CPU clocking in at a comfortable 45 degrees under load, and just thoroughly enjoy it. Liquid cooling, particularly hard piping, is for the artists, for those looking to get the most out of the hardware, for the overclockers, for those who enjoy building something unique, and it’s well worth your time to put together.