(^1) INSTALL COMPONENTS
ON MOTHERBOARD
Fit as much as you can on your motherboard
before you install it in the case. Once you’ve
installed it, everything else becomes harder to
fit, especially once you’ve installed your
water-cooling system, as getting at the ports
and heatsinks will be fiddly. So, start by
installing the waterblock mounts, the CPU and
memory. The Corsair waterblock we’ve used
handily comes with thermal paste
pre-applied.
(^2) TEST HARDWARE
It’s a very good idea to test your hardware out
of the case to make sure it works. Dead-on-
arrival components are rare, but you don’t
want to spend a weekend building your
water-cooled PC only to find your graphics
card is flaky. Place the motherboard on its box,
connect the power cables and graphics card,
and connect it to your monitor.
Then install the waterblock, but don’t plumb
it in. We’ll only be turning on the PC for a few
moments to make sure we get a display
output and the CPU will not overheat in this
time. Unfortunately, AMD doesn’t include a
cooler with the Ryzen 9 5900X, so the
waterblock is required at this stage. Switch on
the PC, wait for a display and then switch it off
straight away.
(^3) INSTALL SSD
Remove the SSD’s heatsink. We’ll be using the
motherboard’s own M.2 heatsink, but you’re
welcome to leave the latter in the box and use
the one the SSD came with too. The choice is
yours. Install the SSD using the screws
provided. Ideally, you want to use a slot away
from your graphics card, as the exhaust air can
heat it up and potentially cause it to throttle.
(^4) INSTALL MOTHERBOARD
IN CASE
Go ahead and install the motherboard into the
case. If you haven’t decided on your tubing
routes, now’s a good time to get an idea of
how things might play out, and you can test-fit
other components such as radiators and
reservoirs at the same time.
(^5) INSTALL RADIATOR FANS
You need to check a few things here. Firstly,
you need to make sure the power and lighting
3 5
4
1
2
BUILDING
THE PC
YOU DON’T WANT TO SPEND A WEEKEND
BUILDING YOUR WATER-COOLED PC ONLY
TO FIND YOUR GRAPHICS CARD IS FLAKY
FEATURE / CUSTOMISATION
antfer
(Antfer)
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