Planning & Installation
Unlike air-cooling equipment, a liquid cooling setup really requires at least some basic planning before installation. Liquid cooling introduces some unique variables that the user has to consider.
Primarily, we have to remember that the installation must be designed with convenience in mind. There has to be a clear path for the coolant hoses to come into the case and travel between the components. In addition, we want to make sure that the cooling system allows some breathing room so the system is not difficult to work with in the future.
Secondary concerns are that the flow of liquid coolant should be as unrestricted as possible. We must remember also that the coolant will heat as it passes through each water block. If we designed the system to flow the coolant into each successive cooling block in a series-first the CPU, then the chipset, then the video card and finally the video card's voltage regulator - then the voltage regulator would always get coolant that was pre-heated by every other component in the system. This scenario is less than ideal for the last component in line.
To alleviate this problem, it is a good practice to split the liquid coolant into separate parallel paths. When done properly, the flow of coolant is less congested and there is no single component in line that receives coolant preheated by every other component.
The Koolance EXOS-2 kit we used for this article is designed to work primarily with 3/8" tubing, and their CPU cooling blocks are designed with 3/8" compression fit connectors. However, Koolance chipset and VGA coolers are designed to work with smaller ¼" tubing. This forces the user to use the single 3/8" to dual-1/4" splitter fitting, which works well when we split the coolant flow into two parallel paths. One of these ¼" tubes will cool the motherboard chipset block and the other will cool the VGA card blocks. After these components are cooled the tubes will be rejoined with a dual ¼" to single 3/8" fitting, and the single 3/8" tube will carry the heated coolant out of the PC case and back to the radiator to be cooled.
It sounds more complex than it looks, so here is the diagram that's worth a thousand words:
This is our planned water-cooling system configuration
Drawing a simple diagram when designing your water-cooling system is a good idea and may help you to keep things straight during installation. With a good idea of what we want to accomplish on paper, we can now get our hands dirty with the actual installation.
You can start by laying out the cooling blocks on a table and pre-cutting the hose lengths you think you'll need. Leave yourself extra length; you can always trim it off later, and you will not be in trouble if you end up needing more
With the preliminaries out of the way, we can install our water-cooling blocks. The Koolance CPU block we're using requires a metal support bracket to be installed behind the CPU socket. The support bracket comes with a plastic flange to prevent electrically shorting out the motherboard, which is really quite good. We begin by detaching the motherboard from the case and installing the support bracket:
The CPU block support bracket on the back of the motherboard
With the motherboard detached, we can also remove the stock heat sink that is attached to the motherboard's chipset. In our case, the motherboard is a Biostar 965PT, and the chipset is cooled with a passive heat sink that is held on with plastic pegs.
The motherboard's chipset with the heat sink removed, ready for the water block
Once it's removed, we must attach the mounting hardware that comes with the chipset water block.
During this installation, we noted that the chipset cooler's mounting hardware - specifically a plastic washer - appeared to pressure a resistor on the back of the motherboard. This is the kind of thing you have to watch out for during an install of custom equipment. Simply tightening the bolts for this mounting hardware might have done irreparable damage to the motherboard, so pay attention and take care!
With the CPU and chipset mounting hardware attached, we can re-attach the motherboard to the PC case and start thinking about attaching the water blocks to the CPU and chipset. Make sure to clean the CPU and chipset of old thermal paste before applying a thin layer of new thermal paste for the water blocks.
The CPU with the water block mounting hardware
You may want to attach the liquid coolant tubes to the water blocks before mounting them to the motherboard. Although it's a bit more difficult to work with this way, I was more comfortable twisting on the compression fittings - which take a bit of torque and force - before they were attached to the vulnerable CPU and chipset. Just make sure you've given yourself enough hose to play with and you can trim it to fit later.
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