AquaComputer

Welcome to the Aqua-Computer Guide



The ultimate guide to Aqua-Computer water cooling systems. This thread should answer most of your questions about the new range of watercooling stocked by Kustompcs.

LINK

The thread is in its early stages and only really covers the basics, but hopefully one of the kind mods will sticky it for me and I will keep adding to it as I have time


The Basics

Now that you are ready to enter the world of water cooling you should ask yourself the following questions:

What do you want to cool?

To start watercooling you first thing you need to know is what you want to cool. There are alot of reasons why it’s good to water cool, overclocking is the main reason for water cooling but there is also other uses for it like silencing your computer.

The most popular components to water cool are currently the processor, motherboard and graphics card as these produce the most heat, but you can also cool your psu, hard drives and even ram.

If you’re looking to have an overclocked system you would want to concentrate on the first three (Processor, motherboard and graphics card), the cooler the components the faster you can get them to go

For a silent system you want to drown out the loudest components i.e. anything with a fan, you can even have a passive radiator so there is no fan in you system at all.

Now you have figured out what you want to cool you need to ask yourself the next question:

How much space do you have?

This can be seen as the main restriction in watercooling unless you’re going to buy a new case for your watercooling.

The largest thing that you’re going to have to fit in your case is the radiator,
Aqua-Computer has a large range of sizes from 80 (one 80mm fan) to a massive 1800 (15 yes 15 120mm fans ). If you don’t want to "mod" your case to fit the watercooling in then you can get what I would call "case friendly" radiator, these would be either 80mm/160mm(dual 80mm)/120mm these will fit in easily to most cases that have pre cut fan holes.



You will also need to think where you wan to put the other larger components like reservoir and pump. Again if you don’t want to "mod" your case there are options for you. The Aquabay is a great option, it’s made to hold the famous Aquatube in 2 drive bays but it has the added extra of being able to hold the pump on the back here’s a pic of mine to give you an idea.



Also if you got for the Aqua-stream pump you may need a spare 3" drive bay to hold that, you can see it below the Aquatube in the above pic.

Getting serious

Now you have thought about the space you have to play with and what you want to cool you wan to start looking at the "Loop", the loop is the way you setup your watercooling so everything runs as it should. This is quite a complicated subject and can go very in-depth but im going to keep it basic at this point.

For a good loop you want to make sure you have a few of your components in certain places. An easy way to think about this is think of water flowing down a mountain (silly as it sounds).

Its always best to have your fill point (the Aquatube) at the top of the loop and a drain point at the bottom with your cooling blocks in the middle which makes it easy to empty and fill your system if needed.

Here is an example of my loop :

Please be aware that im using a V2000 case so my loop may seem to be the wrong way up

Aquatube (res) >>> Motherboard block >>> CPU Block >>> Radiator >>> Aquastream (pump)

Your loop would obviously be different according to your case and chosen components you just have to remember the basic principle of it.

Now ive given you a quick insight into planning your watercooling setup im going to look at the components available to you and what you can do with them.

The Components

To make up any watercooling setup you need the following:

• Pump
• Reservoir
• Radiator