For the past three years, I’ve beenwater cooling my computerfor ultra cool, ultra quiet performance.
It’s been a fun project, but it’s also been extremely stressful and costly.
It’s time to move on.
The itch got bigger and I tried acustom loop with a kit.
The kit leaked a little (due to my own idiocy), but everything was okay.
Until now, I had gotten by without breaking any parts, but water cooling still had its frustrations.
The whole project, while fun, had just been incredibly costly, both in my time and money.
So I knew my “final straw” was coming.
I was ready to quit.
If I hadn’t already been dead set on quitting, I would have been then.
Learn From My Mistakes
Now that it’s over, the whole thing feels a little bittersweet.
It producedmy favorite video we’ve ever done here at Lifehacker.
All that said: I don’t rescind my previous recommendations for water cooling.
Custom water cooling is expensive.
Cheaper parts will be noisy, leaky, and more frustrating to put together.
your gear will occasionally be out of commission.
Repairs and tweaks are complicated, and can take awhile.
If this were just my gaming machine, that might not have been so frustrating.
Know that even if you do everything right, things can still go wrong.
It’s rare, but it happens.
Like overclocking, don’t undertake the project if you aren’t ready to replace things when they break.
Some of you will have no sympathy for me, and that’s fine.
After all, I did put water inside my computer.
And I’m not crying because my video card diedit was a risk I took on knowingly.
I just thought sharing my story might help some on the fence.
For me, the annoyances are no longer worth the reward.
That’s what I’ll be doing.
I’ve replaced my CPU cooler with abig honkin' dual tower cooler from Phanteks.
Thankfully, you have lots of choices, and most coolers will work with any CPU and any fans.
(Linus even got rid of the CPU fans entirely in his build.)
Graphics cards are a little tougher.
A lot of modern graphics cards actually have decent, quiet coolingbut you have to buy the right one.
(Just verify you buy one that is compatible with your card!)
Other than that, it’s all aboutoptimizing your rig for silence.
Title illustration by Tina Mailhot-Roberge.
