Pushing your processor and graphics card beyond their computing levels makes them produce a lot of heat.
As a result, your gaming PC will either force the whole system to underperform to stop it from generating more heat, or in the worst-case scenario, your gaming PC will shut down.
If you are gaming on your PC, you’ve just lost the match or the most recent progress you’re working on. This is the reason why your gaming PC should be armed with an efficient cooling system.
Fans have long been the champion of gaming PC cooling systems. They can be as quiet as mouse (the real mouse) most of the time you can hear their fan blades spin when dealing with a hot gaming PC.
For high-end gaming PC hardware that is being pushed to its limits, fans are not enough. They can’t maintain the temperature of the components in your gaming PC. This is where liquid cooling comes in. It is the solution for a gaming PC that generates too much heat.
How Liquid Cooling Works for Your Gaming PC
Just as how diverse cooling fans are, liquid cooling comes in many packages. You have a wide selection available in the market. However, there are just two main types of liquid cooling systems: Custom Cooling Loops and All-in-One (AIO) coolers.
Liquid cooling begins similar to the air cooling process. It begins with a baseplate that is attached to the gaming computer’s Integrated Heat Spreader (IHS) via a thermal paste. The base plate is a part of the cooling system’s waterblock.
The waterblock is filled with a coolant. This absorbs the heat coming from the baseplate and pushes it to a tube connected to a radiator. Once the liquid is exposed to air, the fans that are attached to the radiator push the hot air away from the gaming PC. The coolant then goes back to the waterblock to collect more heat. This is the liquid cooling cycle.
If this process sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the same thermodynamics applied to cool your car’s engine. The heat is transferred from one object to another. The difference between the two systems is, with a car we are dealing with a powerful engine that generates heat. With a gaming computer, the CPU constantly and quickly turns switches on and off via electricity.
Things to Consider Before Installing Liquid Cooling on Your Gaming PC
Price. Since cooling fans have been around way before the beginning of gaming PCs, you can get the best system for your computer at an affordable price. Their function is pretty simple and straightforward as well, its manufacturing process is simpler, making it cheaper.
Liquid cooling, on the other hand, will cost more than air cooling systems. Although there are many options available today, you would still want to source from credible companies known to manufacture the best-performing liquid cooling systems in the market. The main difference between their prices would be the size of the radiator, aesthetic features, and software for controlling the system.
Installation. Since the process is more complex with liquid cooling, it has more components to install. Although the All-in-Ones these days are pretty straightforward, you will need a little know-how to make it successful (read: go through the installation manual).
You will need to place the waterblock, the pipes, and the radiator in their proper places for them to work well both in managing heat and in getting the best aesthetic set-up for your gaming PC.
Installing a custom loop is even more complicated and will require preparation. The reward is the ability to customize your cooling system. You can even add a GPU loop if you wanted to. If you have fully customized tower and gaming PC components, you might want to go this route.
Size. Make sure that your current gaming PC setup has enough real estate for your liquid cooling system. If you want bigger radiators and waterblocks, you would want to consider getting a high tower gaming PC case.
Conclusion
It is our hope that this guide has helped you learn more about the liquid cooling system. Moving into this setup requires you to invest time in reading and educating yourself with the process, you will also need time to search for the best liquid cooling system for your gaming PC, and of course, you will need the extra cash to make the purchase.
If you are going towards overclocking your gaming PC rig, you definitely have to get a liquid cooling system in place.
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