( 31) STAY FROSTY
Fully customized liquid cooling can be a monster to do right, but it does come with some major advantages. Lower running temperatures are a given, generating more potential for overclocking, but the key draw for many users is the significant reduction in sound. Fans can be run slower, resulting in less noise. Creating your own liquid-cooling loop is a costly process, though, demanding a budget of at least $500 to do properly.
Planning out the build is absolutely necessary if you’re going to be installing coolant tubes in your case. Take a side-on photograph of your case, and use your picture-editing software of choice to plan out the positioning of your components and tubes, making sure to ascertain which direction you want the coolant to flow. The larger your case, the easier it becomes; reservoirs and radiators can take up a lot of space. Smaller cases may demand the drilling of holes through metal frames to feed through tubing. Angled fittings can remove the need for bending your tubes; while flexible tubing is an option, hard tubing is easier to secure in place, and tends to look better, too.
The pump needs to be gravity-fed by a reservoir, so vertical installation within your case is required. When it comes to radiators, it’s worth having at least 120mm of radiator space allocated per component being cooled. For example, if you want to cool your CPU and your GPU on the same loop, you’re going to want a minimum radiator size of 120x240mm.