WATERCOOLING, CHECK

WELL, WE’VE MADE IT. One liquid cooled loop completed and for my first attempt, I have to say it’s not half bad! It goes to show that if you’ve yet to build a custom cooled machine, then fear not, as it’s really not as tricky as you may think. Sure, there are a lot more points of potential failure, but if you plan your flow path, you’re patient, and meticulously check your fittings, you’ll be alright.

As with most builds, there are other issues to consider. When priming our pump, the Molex cable that worked for the secondary PSU didn’t work on our primary PSU. We swapped this out for another cable and this fixed the issue but nevertheless spooked us for a moment. Cable management was also a pain in the behind, with less room to work with, daisy-chaining, and two commanders in use, it quickly got messy in the back of the case and took a while to sort.

Of course, we ordered the wrong GPU block and we had to take the heatsink off the SSD, ironically using heat. Other than that and some guidance from our former colleague Zak Storey (now at Corsair), who popped back in to show us how to liquid cool, the build went smoothly. It just takes time to practice the tube bending and deburring. It’s a lot of trial and error at the start, but you soon pick it up.

So, is it worth liquid cooling? The answer isn’t quite a straightforward yes or no. You can think of liquid cooling in a similar vein to the custom car scene. These machines look sweet, and water-cooled builds are certainly attention grabbers and can really transform a setup. Just like show cars, you can customize them to your liking and create something truly unique.

It’s not all just for show though, as our benchmarks show, you get a great performing machine on full-whack. However, there are other machines that can achieve these benchmarking results. It’s beyond the benchmarking where you notice the difference though, as temperatures are much cooler, which results in a smoother performing rig. This machine is also super quiet as a result of the liquid cooling, with the fans running efficiently when running a high-end game to the point that you don’t notice that it’s on, especially when wearing a headset.

There is just one big catch, and that’s the price. It’s fair to say that this is for an enthusiast, as liquid cooling can soon get pricey and if you want to add this to an already expensive arsenal of components, it’s going to only add more heft to the bill. Then again, PC building is a hobbyist experience and liquid cooling is the crème de la crème.

With the added weight from 1 liquid cooling the GPU, we could have done with a GPU bracket to level it out. This slight sagging on the card is frustrating, to say the least. We mixed and matched 2 our 14mm fittings but this build probably would have benefited from choosing just one color. We know RGB divides 3 opinions but this is a bold colorful build. We could have gone all-out and opted for Corsair’s Dominator DDR5 RGB sticks. Custom white cables 4 would have really pieced this build together nicely and matched the aesthetic of the build.