Home Made PC Water Cooling

by bo3bo3

250K12996

Intro: Home Made PC Water Cooling

One of the most enjoyable things to do in your spare time is to make gadgets and mods to your computer. This DIY project shows how you can add an efficient water cooling system to your computer using affordable stuff and with lots of fun.

STEP 1: Tools

You will need the following:
1.A drill.
2.A normal CPU heat sink.
3.A copper tube. (like the one used in refrigerators)
4.A plastic tube.
5.An aquarium pump.
6.A glass or plastic Jar.
7.Distilled water.
8.Epoxy - Plasticsteel

STEP 2: Preparing the Water Block

The water block is designed to cool the CPU. The block which water runs through is made out of a normal heatsink which is normally attached to a fan that comes with the CPU.

The process of preparing the water block begins with deattaching the fan from the heatsink and then making two holes in the middle of it. The holes end must reach each other to allow water to pass through and that was achieved by drilling holes in diagonal drilling procedures

STEP 3: Preparing the Water Tank.

Use a normal glass or plastic jar and fill it with distilled water to be your coolant tank. Insert the aquarium water pump in that jar after attaching a plastic tube to it to allow water to run and reach the water block. Make three holes in the jars cover one for the outgoing water tube and another for the incoming water tube and the third for the pumps electricity wire.

STEP 4: Preparing the Radiator

An efficient radiator can be made using a copper tube allowing the water to be cooled by going in circles. You can add a normal fan to get air through the circles of the tube which will provide a better air flow and cooling.

STEP 5: Bring Everything Together

After finalizing your radiator, attaching everything together is easy. By attaching the heat sink (water block) to its original place and positioning the glass jar (coolant tank ) in the PC case  in my case I choose to put it under the HDD.- and you should also weir the pump with your power supply, you can use a relay to start the pump when the PC initialize.

STEP 6: Final Project

As you can see you can make your own water cooling system from almost nothing and using none of the original tools used in preparing a water cooling system.
The block is an original heatsink from an original Intel fan.
The tubes used are the ones you can find in a hospital or pharmacy.
The water pump is an aquarium water pump.
This project is easy yet efficient as the temperature after installing the system reached only 24c.
This project was made by Waseem Abusalem and Essra Hourani.

95 Comments

shrishsingh888 3 years ago

I have a dell 3252 with pentium processor. I need a water cooling system because i use 3ds max and my pc utilities full 100% cpu for at least 2-3 hours for rendering on standby. So i need it for extending it's life but problem is that my cpu is slim so it does not have much space. How can i adjust all these..??

AndreasH17 7 years ago

Wich CPU do you have? And what are the Temps under load? I'm sure not soooo great, i have milled myself an cpu block made out of cooper with much much more surface and have still 55°C on it. (Core i5 6600k @4,7 ghz 1,34V)

silentx 8 years ago

This is a horribly bad idea.!!!

Copper+Aluminium+heat+PC=DEAD PC and Wet Floor!!!!!!!!!!

Copper is a strong corrosive for Aluminium!! Copper ions will leach in water and It will eat away at the aluminum and eventually water will leak out. Heat will accelerate the process. You can add additives to delay the corrosion but you will only delay the inevitable. The process is called electrolysis.

Never combine Aluminium with copper or its alloys (brass)

twitsl 11 years ago

This system would work if you have a low power system and just want quiet. Don't wreck up a 1000$ gaming machine trying this. It would be better to get a more squarish heatsink drill holes all the way through it's sides and feed lengths copper tubing through and solder them together at the ends so you have the water passing through all of them. You'll probably also want to somehow solder the copper tubing to the heatsink. But if you're looking for a cooling system for a high end machine just by one from newegg.com you'll get better performance without wrecking up your computer. Although the blacklight and whatever is in the water that responds to it was a nice touch.

ianmcmill 12 years ago

this step needs definitly more pictures.

does this heat sink have a solid core ? your are just drilling in two holes that connect inside the core to let the water flow ?

helios5993 11 years ago

I guess thats what it must be done, maybe like a "V" inside the heatsink. That seems pretty dificult...

Sky Graham 11 years ago

People keep asking bout anti-freeze.
Anti-freeze has a lower boiling point than water under pressure.
If the pressure is removed both will boil very rapidly.
So if your vehicle has a vacuum leak, and air gets into the system, both the water and antifreeze will boil rapidly, the radiator fan wont be able to cool it down, and then your engine will overheat and explode/die.

This is not a radiator under high pressure with high temperature water, so the anti-freeze is not going to help in that respect.

Anti-freeze is poisonous, it also smells sweet and tastes like sugar, one or two tablespoons will kill your dog/turtle.

If you want it to look cool, toss a highlighter into the blender with water and use a black light.

glacier24 12 years ago

what pump should i use?

air pump or water pump?

glacier24 12 years ago

what inside the plastic jar?

and hot do i drill the heatsink??

Graffstar 12 years ago

i still cannot understand how to drill holes in the heatsink and how to pass water though it...... Can anybody help me ??

Minifig666 13 years ago

Is there any way to find the CPU temperature on the phoenix BIOS, or from my OS (Vista)?

kedwa30 12 years ago

I like Speccy. But if your hardware isn't designed to find out, the best way is with a candy thermometer. :-)

B.F.L.M 13 years ago

Just for clarification: The purpose of the 'radiator+fan' is to circulate cool air inside the machine? (would increasing the # of coils cool the air faster?) and the 'water block' is to keep the cpu cool?

kedwa30 12 years ago

I think it works best to put the coil and fan outside of the case. The water block transfers heat to the water so that heat is move away from the cpu quickly. Water can absorb and carry more heat because it is denser than air. The coil is where the heat dissipates, aided by the fan blowing air over the coil that is cooler than the water. The flexible clear tube does not transfer heat as well as the copper tube, otherwise you could do without the copper tube and just run a long enough stretch of tube to allow the heat to dissipate. If you wanted to, you could run the tube through a refrigerator. Just keep in mind that the longer the tube, the more friction there will be and thus the stronger the pump you will need. Another improvement might be to solder copper tube to the heat sink rather than drilling a hole in it. Ultimately you want to move the heat out of the case rather than allow it to accumulate.

rahimosahra 13 years ago

oh gosh!!! I made it but .. how can i make the lighting water? please show the way to do it!!
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