How to Build a Koolance

Koolance products are designed (and have a reputation) for easy and safe installation. If you are new to liquid cooling, or if you have never purchased a Koolance System in particular, you may be wondering what is required to get started.

"What do I need to buy?"

A typical water cooling system consists of four main parts (see also: Liquid Cooling 101):

1. A Pump to move the liquid
2. A Water Block to move heat into the liquid coolant
3. A Heat Exchanger to move heat from liquid into air (also known as a Radiator)
4. A Reservoir for automatically filtering air from the liquid and storing excess coolant

Koolance offers many options to do this, depending on your cooling application and preference. You should begin your decision based on what components will be water cooled. Regardless of whether you are cooling a computer processor or a heat source anywhere else, the heat output and desired temperature range of these areas will dictate many of your liquid cooling components.

Choosing Water Blocks

For computer water cooling, Koolance offers a convenient Product Selection Wizard. After supplying some basic hardware criteria, this page will generate a list of potential water blocks to use in your future cooling system.

Not all products shown are required. If Koolance has more than one possible model for any hardware component, they are listed. It is your decision which devices to liquid cool and which water blocks to use. The recommended quantity for a particular type of block is listed next to the name, such as CPU (x1).

Choosing a Hose Diameter

Many Koolance systems and components allow you to choose the "ID", or internal diameter of your hose. Systems and water blocks will be designated with one of four icons indicating which nozzle options are available: 6mm (1/4"), 10mm (3/8"), 13mm (1/2"), and "?mm" (Any). "?mm" means the component will work with all Koolance internal diameters. If the component requires nozzles, it will be described as [No Nozzles] with the option for adding these.

To an extent, larger diameters can improve system performance by allowing for a higher coolant flow rate. But this is also dependent on the pump, tubing configuration, water blocks, and heat exchanger. It is possible to reduce performance by using too large of diameter for your system. Increasing tubing diameter can also add extra cost and installation difficulty to a cooling system.

Koolance recommends 10mm (3/8") internal diameter tubing and nozzles for most moderate to high-end cooling systems. Temperature differences with 13mm (1/2") ID hose are often zero to minimal (less than 1°C), although both sizes are available from Koolance. On the smaller side, 6mm (1/4") ID is sufficient for low to moderate level cooling systems. It is also ideal for low-profile servers and other hardware with space constraints like small form-factor (SFFPC) and home theater (HTPC) computers.

Koolance is currently expanding available website information regarding mixed tubing diameters, along with discussing parallel vs. serial hose configurations. This page will be updated once available.

Choosing a Cooling System

To go along with your desired water blocks, Koolance offers optimized "Systems" that already include a pump, heat exchanger, and reservoir. These systems are pre-integrated into a PC chassis, completely external, or provided as do-it-yourself kits that fall somewhere in between. For rack-mounted servers, Koolance also offers pre-integrated IPC chassis.

Water cooling is often chosen for lower temperatures and reduced noise production, so the overall cooling performance of a system is important. While it is not difficult to reduce temperatures below default air cooling, an insufficient liquid cooling system can result in unsatisfactory temperature and noise. This is because a poorly configured system will not dissipate sufficient heat and radiator fans will run faster to compensate.

For computer water cooling, Koolance currently offers systems that target a maximum heat dissipation range of 700-1000W (although 3000W is available). Koolance's wattage rating is at an ideal ambient room temperature of 25°C (77°F) with radiator fans at full speed. The higher the heat dissipation rating, the lower the expected temperature and noise range will be. It might be easiest to simply choose the most powerful cooling system, but this isn't necessary for all configurations, such as a CPU-only system. The type of hardware cooled should be considered, along with potential future additions.

"High heat" devices include processors and video cards. A multi-core CPU generally tops-out at 100-150W under load, while modern video cards can exceed 250W. RAM, hard drives, and a motherboard's components (northbridge chipset, southbridge chipset, PCI-Express controller, voltage regulators) are considered "low heat" sources. These typically range between 5-35W each. Koolance's general system recommendations are illustrated in the Wattage Chart.

This gives an approximate scale by which to choose a cooling system based on its maximum heat dissipation rating. For example, water cooling one high heat source and two low heat sources could readily be handled by a 500W cooling system. Having two high heat components and six low heat components falls between 700-1000W, so the considerations might then become temperatures and noise versus budget.

The chart has also included some adjustment for quantity of blocks in relation to pressure drop. Essentially, the greater the number of water blocks used, the more powerful a pump is needed. Higher rated cooling systems from Koolance incorporate stronger pumps.

System Assembly

Koolance is renowned for its detailed product manuals. Therefore, the best way to learn about your future cooling system is to review the product manual beforehand. The system manuals are separate from those of the individual cooling blocks. All are available online.

Integrated Koolance cooling systems come with the primary components, such as the radiator, pump, and reservoir. You only need to add blocks to the loop and cut the required tubing segments.

To give you more flexibility in your choices, systems may not include some necessary components (such as nozzles, tubing, and liquid coolant). Please check the product's web page to verify if these items are included or recommended extras.