DIY Watercooling

Jonathan Lemmens · March 14, 2016

Hey guys,

I've been wanting to watercool an old pc I have lying around "DIY style" for a while now. I plan to use no off-the-shelf parts, pretty much like Luke and Linus did in scrapyard wars season 2.

I'm an engineer by profession and I have access to good tools and equipment. I also have a decent understanding of how cooling systems work in general, but I have no experience at all in watercooling pc's.

Can any of you give me some tips, or point me in the direction of a good article on this topic?

To be clear I'm using obsolete hardware. I do this for the fun of building it, not because i'm expecting huge performance gains or more overclockability. I'm not even expecting it to be watertight for longer than a few hours.

Any help will be much appreciated!

W-L · March 14, 2016

15 minutes ago, Jonathan Lemmens said:

Hey guys,

I've been wanting to watercool an old pc I have lying around "DIY style" for a while now. I plan to use no off-the-shelf parts, pretty much like Luke and Linus did in scrapyard wars season 2.

I'm an engineer by profession and I have access to good tools and equipment. I also have a decent understanding of how cooling systems work in general, but I have no experience at all in watercooling pc's.

Can any of you give me some tips, or point me in the direction of a good article on this topic?

To be clear I'm using obsolete hardware. I do this for the fun of building it, not because i'm expecting huge performance gains or more overclockability. I'm not even expecting it to be watertight for longer than a few hours.

Any help will be much appreciated!

You could do something like this with premade components just note that if you have a mixed metal loop you must have a compatible fluid. If your wanting to make your own blocks from scratch that's a bit different requiring machining of everything, going with brass or copper at that point would be a good option.

Jonathan Lemmens · March 14, 2016

8 minutes ago, W-L said:

You could do something like this with premade components just note that if you have a mixed metal loop you must have a compatible fluid. If your wanting to make your own blocks from scratch that's a bit different requiring machining of everything, going with brass or copper at that point would be a good option.

For the CPU I've got an old copper (air)heatsink that I plan to modify. For the GPU I indeed want to mill my own block out of solid copper, I'm aware of the risks of mixed metal loops, therefore i was planning to use regular copper pipe to connect everything.

The things i have no clue about are: what kind of flow rate and presure should i be aiming for? And may the liquid flow be allowed to slow down inside the waterblock or is a constant flow rate always better? Would regular de-ionized water be good enough for a rig like this?

W-L · March 14, 2016

2 minutes ago, Jonathan Lemmens said:

For the CPU I've got an old copper (air)heatsink that I plan to modify. For the GPU I indeed want to mill my own block out of solid copper, I'm aware of the risks of mixed metal loops, therefore i was planning to use regular copper pipe to connect everything.

The things i have no clue about are: what kind of flow rate and presure should i be aiming for? And may the liquid flow be allowed to slow down inside the waterblock or is a constant flow rate always better? Would regular de-ionized water be good enough for a rig like this?

For a loop if you keep everything as copper brass or nickel you shouldn't have any problems main thing is to try and avoid aluminum which are usually more cost effective for rads. As for everything else the main thing in a PC loop is having enough pressure to force the water through the blocks as they will be the most restrictive parts of the loop as long as there is adequate flow that shouldn't be a problem.

As for the fluid itself if your using just water, distilled water is ideal where de-ionized has all of it's ions removed and will tend to readily strip ions from the loop. While not a major issue in watercooling it can be if a constant fresh supply of de-ionized water were to pass over anything metallic.

Jonathan Lemmens · March 14, 2016

26 minutes ago, W-L said:

For a loop if you keep everything as copper brass or nickel you shouldn't have any problems main thing is to try and avoid aluminum which are usually more cost effective for rads. As for everything else the main thing in a PC loop is having enough pressure to force the water through the blocks as they will be the most restrictive parts of the loop as long as there is adequate flow that shouldn't be a problem.

As for the fluid itself if your using just water, distilled water is ideal where de-ionized has all of it's ions removed and will tend to readily strip ions from the loop. While not a major issue in watercooling it can be if a constant fresh supply of de-ionized water were to pass over anything metallic.

Thanks! You gave me some food for thought.