Budget Watercooling Guide - Step by Step

[@icon0clast274]

What a great video. Shows that watercooling doesn't need to cost thousands and actually SHOWS the process of building the whole loop.

[@vectornetwork]

Thanks for your comment 🙏 Absolutely! I am grateful that you found the video useful. Thank you again for watching

[@LaSombraa]

Lol bro bitspower fittings alone cost as much as this entire watercooling budget.

[@just4gaming639]

​@@vectornetworkthats really cool man the problem we have here is just the waterblock is 300 euros the rest is another 300

[@kazuviking]

Its great except he used the worst thermal paste on the gpu that will pump out in a month and will need repasting.

[@catarinoneptune]

I love how thorough and step by step you are with everything, really feels more engaging that way and answers a lot of questions

[@vectornetwork]

Thanks for your comment 🙏 That sounds amazing. I intend for the videos to be from the viewer's POV, as if the viewer is doing the build. Not much fluff commentary, hands are covered and straight to the content. It's a tremendous amount of work but it's a labor of love. I plan to do my best to improve on each video. I am working on a Mora-Noctua420 build with the 4090 FE and 7800X3D watercooled in the Fractal Terra ITX, which will be the next video release. Hope you stay tuned! Thanks again for watching

[@Mathieu89]

Great video! It's strange, but there are very few videos on KZbin that show the entire custom loop process. I really appreciate you sharing this.

[@vectornetwork]

Thanks for your comment 🙏 I appreciate the positive feedback. If I had to venture a guess on why there aren't more videos showing the whole custom loop process is that it's likely a bit too much work for the potential available audience. These videos take an unreal amount of work but I sincerely enjoy it. I'm super happy that there is an audience and I will continue to do my best to improve with each new video. My next video that I am nearly done filming is a Fractal Terra 4090 build with Mora-Noctua-420 external rad build. I hope you stay tuned! Thanks again

[@vectornetwork]

Please enjoy watching 🙏

[@LMF5000]

I just wanted to thank you for making this video. Most build videos spend all their time talking extensively about unimportant things and then just time-lapse through the actual loop building portion. Your video is exactly what i was looking for because you show the construction of the loop itself. The only things missing are design considerations (like putting the pump and a drain at the lowest water level) and tightening all the blanking plugs and the fittings, but that would make a good follow up video - you can call it "best practices for water cooling" and go over things like radiator placement, fan selection, radiator sizing, loop routing, tips and tricks etc.

[@NM-vw6xq]

Great video! Surprisingly very few videos showing a full inexpensive custom loop step-by-step. Most are either sponsored, show part of the loop (e.g. CPU only), or skip much of the build entirely and just show some b-roll footage. I also got a bunch of Barrow fittings (from formulamod) but paired it up with Corsair rads/pump/res and EK waterblocks and they all work great together. Also appreciate you using affordable last gen components, Alphacool is also a good affordable choice as well as the P12s, great choices all around! EPDM is also goated in the soft tubing world, if you want to go soft tubing, EPDM is the only choice (I use EK ZMT myself). All the sponsored guys on YT use the latest and greatest which cost a fortune and are not practical for the common person to build with. People getting into WCing are just looking for a simple first build, and this shows it perfectly.

[@vectornetwork]

Thank you for the comment 🙏 You got it right on. I can tell this stuff is right up your alley. In retrospect, this has been brought up before, and I think the reason why there aren't more videos like is that it's an incredible amount of work for potentially little gain. Showing everything can actually be incredibly technical and time-consuming. For me, I really love this stuff and I really want to show it how I see it in my head and how I do it constantly in my studio. I play a lot in the high end, but this video was an opportunity to really really think about the budget/low-end. I am very proud of the result. I stand by every unit and I have all the high-end gear to compare. Barrow fittings from the barrow store on aliexpress blew my mind. That kept the price under $350. That and the D5 pump combo were key units to keep the price down. As for the rest, the 30-series was so popular and had so many water blocks, its a great place to get a cheap block. Alphacool is solid and they appear to be spending money on R&D and improvements as their 40-series came with improvements over the 30-series. Your rig sounds solid. Grats on your further ascension. P12s are no brainers. I feature Noctua a lot on this channel, but its the buyer should recognize a part of cost goes into their customer service and warranty. I don't suggest Noctua at all for new builders, its complete unnecessary as they may not be as sensitive to fan noise. And the daisy chaining is great in comparison to RGB fans that may have up to 3 cables protruding from each fan. And man, EPDM. Wow, what a product. It's all I have used (16/10 and 13/10) since I discovered it. I will likely go back to some hard tubing videos, but EPDM has been wow and eye opener and it's inexpensive too. What I am trying to do is make water cooling more accessible. Showing everything up close, so people can make their own decisions and hoping to bring in more people into water cooling that want to try it but would prefer to have a solid guide to start. Thanks again for commenting and watching

[@proterotype]

These kind of comments are gold, Jerry!

[@proterotype]

@@vectornetworkyou have succeeded at making water-cooling more accessible, at least for one person!

[@WarriorKidd06]

Very cool video. I’m just getting back into PC gear after years of just being away from it. And seeing a video like this definitely makes me believe I can do something like this as well. Keep up the great work with these videos

[@Intel-6969K]

This is almost perfect video. Although I would have highlighted the need of a good quality biocide AND corrosion inhibitor. Don’t think you can get away with only DI water/biocide, a silver coil or premix coolant. Corrosion is the number one issue that isn’t communicated enough in beginner guides. Corrosion inhibitor is essential to prevent minerals (in particular nickel plating) diffusing into the water due to the imbalance.

[@000hitec000]

Cool video, thanks, help a lot ❤❤

[@vectornetwork]

Thanks for your comment 🙏 I sincerely appreciate your encouragement and feedback. I am stoked that you enjoyed it. Thanks again

[@jaykkng]

Your voice is extremely calming, video was very informative and helped me alot as it is my first time attempting to do a custom loop. Thanks alot :)

[@vectornetwork]

Thanks for your comment 🙏Wow, I sincerely appreciate your positive comment. I took a lot of criticism for my narration in the past and I am happy that the improvements are having some results! Thank you for watching and I will continue to do my best to improve and make the best content

[@jacoblynch9862]

First, thank you for telling the prices of all of the components number two thank you for showing that it does not have to be an elaborate system with multiple radiators to cool both the processor and GPU. There are so many people building systems twice as expensive as this one that really don’t cool, any better than this one this just shows though that one good decent radiator is typically enough in the end still simplifies things and makes it cheaper

[@vectornetwork]

Thanks for your comment🙏 Bingo, you nailed it. A solid & thick 360 radiator is all that is needed to get started. Adding another radiator means extra fittings, extra runs, extra costs. The end result and the tests speak for themselves. Cool and quiet. This watercooling game is endless. It pays to start simple. Thanks again for watching

[@king_of_savagery6289]

You sound just like Hjune. Thanks for the video. Cheers brotha!

[@Cpgeekorg]

While the budget liquid cooling system displayed in this video is very well thought-out, well executed, and the guide extremely well produced, I cannot in good conscience recommend spending custom liquid cooling money when you could easily use that money to upgrade your computer's components for enhanced performance. unless (and specifically unless), you're using top end components, I can't recommend doing a custom liquid cooling loop (unless you're trying to cram a bunch of parts into a really tiny case or something and you need a unified small cooling system or something). for example, the $345 spent on this loop could have been spent moving from a 3080 to a 3090 which would yield SIGNIFICANT gains (particularly to gaming and rendering workloads), or perhaps depending on what's available in your area you could have gone from a 3080 to a 4080 (or even 4080 super)(especially if you were to shop around on the used market). Further, the gpu that you're cooling here is ALREADY equipped with an aio. unless the integrated liquid cooler has failed (in which case you can pick up a gpu with a failed aio on ebay or something for SUPER cheap and this WOULD be a fantastic way to get it up and running again), it's very unlikely that you are going to get any additional performance out of this card by going from the stock liquid cooler solution to the one depicted. and an i5 could easily be upgraded to an i7, or imo better, not buying the i5 or it's board and going instead with a used b450 board and a ryzen 7 5800x3d which uses around the same power (very efficient) and depending on the game, can be almost as performant as a i7-13900. AND because it's a low power chip (as is the i5 shown in this video), it doesn't really need liquid cooling to get the best performance out of it either, in which case, I would go for something like a (preferably used) noctua nh-d15 (which has the capacity to cool way higher tdp chips than either of these for about $110 retail (or about $70 on ebay) or you could go with a less expensive $30 tower cooler such as the aged but very functional cooler master hyper 212 or similar. tl;dr: this is a fantastic video on budget liquid cooling, but PLEASE don't build a liquid cooling loop if the cost of that loop could be used for getting you better performing components (preferably the highest end components that make sense for your application and budget. also, given that 4090 air coolers are almost universally overengineered (temps on them are fantastic and they're voltage limited NOT power limited so you can't really make them hotter to improve performance) I don't generally recommend cooling 4090's which at the time of the writing of this comment is the highest end card you can get for consumer use. I'll also note as a pro tip, because those arctic fans are so good and work so well (I use them myself), AND they're daisy chainable (which is a great feature), I would probably recommend doing push/pull (installing 3 fans on either side of that 360 rad) as working together you'll either get lower noise (because they perform better with more of them) or higher performance with more noise if you max them out and because they are so inexpensive, it's a very cheap way to improve performance of a loop like this one. Also as radiators aren't THAT expensive, and if you're running a modern high performance gpu in your loop that can pull 350-450w, installing a second rad at the top of the case ALSO with push/pull fans could make sense as well if you have the budget. the more radiator volume and the more fans you have, the higher the performance and the quieter the sound from the system (because the fans don't have to work as hard to keep the loop at the intended coolant temp. - which brings me to fan curve tuning. it may require added expense (either by using a fan controller with temp probes, (or sometimes nicer motherboards will come with pluggable temp probes as well), but you need to be able to set your fans by the temperature of the COOLANT, NOT by the temperature of your cooled components. particularly on cpus and gpus that have difficulty transferring heat to their thermal solution. (for example, I just upgraded to a 9950x and because of the thicc ihs, the temp of the cpu can ramp pretty high despite being well cooled and the coolant temp not increasing all that quickly. - it hasn't hit thermal throttling range so I think i'll leave it alone, but I've thought a little bit about de-lidding my cpu and getting a direct contact frame which could improve thermal transfer from cpu into my loop, decreasing temperatures overall.

[@Rayjockey]

Very useful video! Learned alot and not need to be pricy!,👌

[@Treeck57]

Thanks for the guide! Budget watercooling would be a great idea. I've been researching about how to install the water cooling parts and what kind of fittings, etc for a few days. The budget is not really my concern. I could buy anything only if I could afford. I'm just stuck on part where I'm trying to figure out is where to mount a reservoir cylinder. My case is Phantek Enthoo Pro. I have three options. I could try to mount using Phantek's own reservoir bracket plate accessory, or mount on 120mm sideway where 5.25" bay and HDD cages are. Second option is remove a PSU cover and mount on bottom 120mm fan. Third option is horizontal reservoir mount on top behind of the 360mm radiator. The problem is my MSI Gaming Trio X 4090 is so big and its got way past the 5.25" which is I had to remove the HDD cage unless I have to swap the 4090 cooler with a water block so it would be shorter, but it might be tight if I want to mount a reservoir on 120mm sideway that next to the 4090. Thoughts?

[@vectornetwork]

Thanks for your comment 🙏 Where to mount the reservoir isn't always straightforward. There are often a lot of (limited) choices. My thoughts are to not try anything that looks like it may not fit or may not be ideal. Go with the initial options. Using Phantek's own bracket plate seems like a good options, as long as it will fit and you have to consider the fittings and tube runs and not just the reservoir itself. Mounting on the bottom 120mm fan sounds good too. Sounds sturdy and seems like there would be room down there. Hope that helps.

[@dylanmcclung9106]

Great video, I feel like I could actually do this now.

[@zinamogg]

Thank you for uploading this video. It really shows a good way to build your custom loop without spending more than the necessary. I'm planning to do something similar with my system but I may go with 2x360 radiators (I have to cool a 6900XT and a 7800x3d). What's your opinion? Are 2 radiators really needed in this scenario? This is my first custom loop so I'm not really sure. I heard that with 2 radiators I would have a quieter system and that's the whole reason I'm heading this way.

[@ItsBigEz]

Great video, I'm gonna use this as a guide for my first water-cooled build. The only question I have is that if the fittings linked will work for everything? Cpu block, and pump/res combo? The only thing I would use different is the cpu block, I wanna use the heatkiller iv pro, would the same fittings and soft tubing used in the video work for it? Thanks in advance!

[@thenextlevel123]

Awesome video man, will take advice from this to build my own and my girlfriends

[@EpicBunty]

I have a dream. A watercooling dream. Clear soft tubing. Direct pathways, least resistance. Ahh...

[@chrisputkamer3249]

You could say he's using bottom of the Barrow parts.

[@splindizzle5413]

Its impressive to gather all this for 350$, considering that some of the AIOs are around 200$

[@vectornetwork]

Thanks for your comment 🙏 Right on and absolutely, friend. Every piece has a place and the loop functions just like all the high-end ones on the channel. I had to double check the GPU temps a few times. It was so low that I thought it was off. Nope, that's just the temps. There is plenty of headway to add a beefier CPU.

[@HotNHorny]

seriously. AIO has gotten so much more expensive that custom loop is not much more unless you do hard loops.

[@AlanGresham]

@@vectornetwork’headroom’, not ‘headway’. Great video 👌🏼

[@AlanGresham]

You make an excellent point! AIO’s are disposable junk. Air or custom loop.

[@vectornetwork]

@@AlanGresham Ah, thank you. I will keep that in mind as I will likely have to say something similar in the future. 🙏

[@Dexx1s]

And then, you can always add/upgrade parts bit by bit if you want to. Also...I'll always add a drain port if there's an unused port. Sure, it doesn't drain the entire loop, but you really want it to empty the reservoir.

[@danielmendez2646]

U should have a course people will register to learn how to do water cooling custom 😎

[@proterotype]

God, this is a great video

[@vectornetwork]

Thanks for your comment 🙏 And thank you good PC brethren. I am motivated to keep improving the videos and producing more of them. Thanks again for watching

[@9Decembrie1986]

Ieftin și foarte fain,,mie-mi place👍

[@vectornetwork]

Thanks for your comment 🙏I appreciate the kind words. Thanks again

[@Ex-xe4jd]

Wow, good job!!!

[@Kavila1r]

I used the bykski custom loop kit but this woulda been way cheaper .

[@gab882]

which is the return and output side of the radiators and is it possible to fit 2 radiators in series?

[@THESHADOW97139]

Wait... copper and aluminum?? I had read that you should not mix alloys??

[@murenitu]

could someone help me? Can I put 16/12 EKWB fittings on an alphacool core 1? Or won't I be able to screw them in?

[@UniqueCustoms11]

Do you not need a power supply box for this build and the motherboard can you use any motherboard

[@vectornetwork]

Thanks for your comment 🙏 This build only addresses upgrading from a finished air-cooled build. So it involves replacing the air-coolers with water blocks, adding reservoir and pump, etc. But it is assuming you already have a complete system. Hope that helps

[@UniqueCustoms11]

@@vectornetwork no I want to build a water cooled pc from start to finish

[@vectornetwork]

@JGKustomSneakz In that case, feel free to check out the other water-cooled PC builds on this channel, but those videos are not geared towards a budget

[@UniqueCustoms11]

What's the case that you used in this video

[@vectornetwork]

Thanks for your comment 🙏It's the be quiet! Silent Base 802. Hope that helps

[@UniqueCustoms11]

@@vectornetwork thank you

[@samuzao-s]

How do you empty your system?

[@vectornetwork]

Thanks for your comment 🙏 Typically, I would add a drain port to make draining the system a bit more convenient. I would typically find a spot on the Reservoir or use a T-splitter and put it on one of the radiator ports. Either way, you want it at a location that is as low as possible. I didn't add the drain port to this build because it is truly not necessary and it would add complexity and cost. Whether a drain port is installed or not, it still requires breaking apart the loop carefully to get out the remaining water. Keep in mind, I have heard that some people will use an air blower to inject air into the loop to get out all the water with a drain port. I haven't tried that myself. What I do is just find a spot in the loop where if you undo the fitting, undo and pinch and pull away the tube, the coolant that may come out will not immediately drop on any components. It is easier with soft tubing. Long story short, how to drain this is to just get a funnel, a bucket, a towel and then find a good tube to pull out and slowly take apart your loop and get the water out. There probably is better ways, but I enjoy taking apart the whole loop when I do maintenance. It's why I recommend starting with the EPDM tubing, as you can continually reuse it. Hope that helps

[@NikitaNikitaNikita]

good job but 12400 dont need watercooling)

[@xav500011]

Is the water pump not noisy with the case lids on?

[@vectornetwork]

Thanks for your comment 🙏 The pump is not noisy. From my experience, noisy pump may be attributed to air in the pump and/or installation where the vibrations are causing unnecessary noise. Hope that helps

[@pkx_phant0m456]

Great video, but watercooling anything other than the 4090 is foolishness. That's money that should be invested into upgrading the system, not adding a redundant watercooling system to inferior hardware that operates fine without it.

[@armandocardona6975]

Water cooling is a hobby… relax

[@Numptee86]

You don't get out much, do you...

[@rageofheaven]

I used build my own loop back in the days of slotfan gpus. I dont anymore, its a waste of money. Since 2012 though, this has been pointless. GPU heatsink design has come a long way, youre more likely to hear the coil whine than the fans. AIOs are so good at this point that MTF times are around 60k hours, same amount as a D5, and will last years. Your view on them is antiquated.

[@Aagggyy]

There are always people like you. 🙄

[@zinamogg]

It depends on the GPU. I personally own a Sapphire Nitro+ 6900XT SE and those fans at 3000+ RPM are something else man. I'm looking forward to watercool it.

[@johnlabu1154]

​@zinamogg i am price hunting for nitro. So, is it still a problem or is it ignorable? Planning to undervolt the cpu so it doesn't stress enough.

[@9Decembrie1986]

Nays 👋🫶👍