Steven wants to know: "how do I water cool my gaming computer? Could you give an overview of the process?"

Water cooling your computer is a pretty good idea, especially when you consider the temperatures involved in the average gaming computer. Heck, Intel and AMD are investigating ways to install micro water cooling systems into their processors, because the current method of delivering heat to the outside metal housing is too inefficient for the next generation of processors.

Now that's just water cooling on a microscopic level. Here's what you'll need to water cool your entire computer:

• Water pump
• Reservoir
• Cooling blocks (one for the CPU, others for your GPU and North/Southbridge if you prefer)
• Radiator and fan
• Tubes and connectors
• WaterWetter-type product and mold/mildew inhibitor

You'll want to pay special attention to the diameter of the water ports on your cooling blocks, reservoir, and water pump. Generally I like to keep the diameter the same so I know what size tubing, and connectors, I should buy.

WaterWetter and mold/mildew inhibitors are only used in a pure water system - it inhibits rust, and improves cooling performance of plain water by about 30%. Most cooling companies, like Danger Den offer coolant's that are designed to perform in a computer-cooling environment.

We highly recommend the use of these coolants (as opposed to pure water) for three reasons:

• They're mostly non-conductive
• They're mildew/mold/rust inhibited
• Their cooling performance surpasses plain water by far

Commonly, your liquid-cooling setup will look kind of like this, where "-->" represents connecting tubes.

reservoir --> water pump --> CPU --> radiator --> reservoir

If you have enough water, and your radiator can handle the additional heat load, you can put other processors in the loop:

reservoir --> water pump --> CPU --> GPU --> radiator --> reservoir

However this method isn't likely to keep your temperatures as low as you'd like to see them, that's why many experts encourage the use of a "dual-loop" system. Essentially, the water takes two separate routes - one to the CPU, and one to the GPU - then meets back in the radiator to cool off and return to the reservoir.

whatever you decide to do, remember to get the proper cooling blocks for your computer. Putting a P4 cooling block on a Core i7 processor would just be a waste of time (and the mounting holes wouldn't align properly anyway).

Do you have a question you need answered? E-mail me! lordkat@gmail.com

Click here to check out How to Build a Gaming Computer for Under $1000.

Be safe,

Jason