LIQUID LUNACY: ADVANCED PC COOLING IN 2024

Is it worth liquid-cooling your PC in this age of nonoverclockable chips?

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WE OFTEN DESCRIBE PC building as Lego for adults. For the most part, modern systems are incredibly easy to construct. There are, of course, certain pitfalls that you can encounter, but most of it comes down to cable management, clearances, and hardware compatibility. Graphics cards, CPUs, DDR memory, M.2 SSDs, and even the very connectors that power them, are designed to make the build process as simple as possible. Even modern cases encourage users to build their rigs in a certain way to avoid the pitfalls and errors that used to be commonplace.

On the one hand, this makes our hobby incredibly accessible. There’s room for refinement, of course—cable tidying tricks, design choices, hardware combos—but at its core, it’s an enjoyable recreational pastime that with enough knowledge is fairly easy to accomplish. On the other, for some, it lacks the thrill, panache, and knowledge of implementing a skill set you might find in other hobbies.

That’s where custom liquid cooling comes in. It is the absolute pinnacle of PC building, giving you an unprecedented amount of freedom in creating something that’s unique to you. In an age of auto overclocking and temperature-dependent CPUs and GPUs, pulling as much heat away from these as fast as possible leads to far better performance. Because of that, liquid cooling has never been as valuable as it is today.

But where do you start? How do you make that step from off-the-shelf products to custom bespoke designs? Let’s slide into the pool and take a look, shall we? You won’t regret it. –

A HISTORY OF LIQUID COOLING