Gadgetory

first of all whatever the lightning bolt shaped scar on my forehead might indicate water cooling is not magic it makes your pc's temperatures lower but it doesn't make your components output less heat that means that an air-cooled CPU that runs at 80 degrees or a water-cooled CPU that runs at 60 degrees are both actually kicking the same amount of heat out into the room the temperature improvement on them comes from water's ability to move heat away from the CPU to a large heat exchanger much faster than air this heat exchanger is called a radiator and its job is to dissipate the heat that your liquid coolant brings to it to the surrounding air sounds great right so now you want water cooling question number one I get from prospective water cooling owners is what sized radiator should I use and the answer is usually the biggest one you can with modern pumps and CPU blocks as close and performance as they are the size and type of radiator will often have the largest impact on the system's overall ability to dissipate heat now most case manufacturers are actually listing radiator compatibility on their websites these days so life has gotten a little simpler here but you've still got some work to do as they don't suggest exactly which product to use because there are just so many choices let's break them down a little bit most prefilled liquid cooling systems use either 120 millimeter or 140 millimeter fans and are available in either single or dual fan configurations now just to make sure you were paying attention which of those four options do you think is best yes the dual 140 millimeter fan radiator will outperform the other solutions for a couple of reasons by presenting the fans on your radiator a much larger surface area to cool you're allowing them to spin slower and deliver the same performance giving you a quieter system or spin at the same speed that means more airflow through the fins of the radiator giving you a cooler system but let's say your case doesn't support 140 millimeter fans and you still want more surface area and more heat dissipation good news you can make your radiator thicker or you can increase the density of the fins that are folded between the water tubes and the rad by folding them tighter and closer to each other this approach does have a disadvantage though making the radiator thicker may cause interference with other nearby components in some cases and both of these things will require you to use very high static pressure fans I mean it's generally better to use static pressure optimized fans on radiators and heat sinks it as a whole but for dense ones it can have an enormous impact on performance now most of what we talked about so far is for folks who are buying prefilled liquid coolers or custom ones but these last considerations are mostly for the DIY folks or anyone who bought an expandable prefilled like the cooler master Glazer 240 l some custom builds are going to require you to find a radiator that has fitting ports on the top or on you know opposing sides or even on opposing ends those are out there but they're more of a specialty item for people who are trying to achieve a very specific tubing layout in their build another thing to watch out for though it's much less common these days is the material the radiator is made out of in a water cooling loop if you're not using anti corrosive additives you want to avoid mixing metals unnecessarily wherever the water makes contact with them brass and copper in the same loop so copper in your block and brass in your radiator tubes are okay and most radiators are made of these materials but I do suggest using an appropriate additive if you want to use an aluminum radiator with that said if the fins in between are made of aluminum that's just fine speaking of appropriate additives I guess I'll add the sponsor message huge props to coolermaster for sponsoring this episode of fast as possible Coolermaster has a wide range of liquid cooling solutions from the compact side and 120 v all the way up to the enthusiast grade and a totally expandable glacier 240 L that I mentioned before which I'm trying to pick up right here there you go you guys can check out the full details at Coolermaster comm guys like this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment and let me know if you have any constructive criticism for me or the rest of the fastest possible team and as always don't forget to subscribe for more videos like this from tech quickie