MYTH BUSTING

Radiator Sizing

How many radiators do you need for your fancy, swanky build? The usual rule of thumb is that, on average, you want one 120mm radiator for each piece of hardware you’re trying to cool. And if you’re looking to overclock, you should double that to 240mm for each component.

Loop Configuration

Another myth to bust is loop orientation. We received a lot of queries about our last watercooling feature relating to the position and orientation of our loop. Particularly that our GPUs went straight into the CPU, then into the radiator. The theory being that there should be a radiator between the two. In reality, your loop orientation doesn’t matter. Once you close off the loop and introduce pressure to the system, the overall temperature of the water won’t change at any given point within the system. What’s important is that your pump is gravity-fed by a reservoir, just to ensure it never runs dry.

Fan Selection and FPI in Radiators

By now, no doubt you’ll be aware that the cooling world has two types of fan for use inside your PC: static pressure fans or airflow optimized fans. Static pressure fans (Corsair’s SP120 or Noctua’s NF-F12, for example), are designed to work primarily with air cooler towers, and radiators with a high fin density. Fin density, usually measured in FPI, indicates the number of fins dissipating heat per inch within a radiator. The higher the FPI, the more benefit you’ll get from utilizing a static pressure fan. However, this has diminishing returns—once you get below around 10 FPI, you really won’t gain much by using static pressure fans over their optimized airflow equivalents, short of a slightly more expensive bill.