How To: Maintain Your Water-Cooling Setup
Water-cooling your PC is an exercise in trade-offs. What you gain in performance and overall geek cred by attaching tubes and water blocks to your pricey parts, you lose in time devoted to maintenance. Unlike an air cooler, which needs only a good blast of compressed air every now and then, a water-cooling rig demands a bit of attention over the course of a year. We’re not talking about new-puppy-level time commitments, but be prepared to spend a few days a year performing some basic maintenance tasks.
What happens if you just sit back and ignore your computer’s cooling? Get ready for gunked-up water blocks, murky tubes, and decreased performance. But taking care of your water-cooling system isn’t as difficult as you might think. For your cleaning convenience, here’s what you need to do to maintain your setup.
| What You Need
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Paper Towels
- Vinegar
- Toothbrush
- Distilled Water
- Rifle-Cleaning Rod
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1. Draining the Fluid Without Staining Your Floor
This one should be obvious: You’ll never be able to get any maintenance done on your water-cooled rig unless you get the fluid out of the rig’s tubes. But thanks to the wonders of air pressure, draining a water-cooling setup isn’t too complicated.
You want to hold one of the tubes nice and high in the air, with a tube at the other end of your setup as low to the ground as possible and preferably going into a bottle, jug, or bucket of some sort. Obviously, liquid is going to start coming out of the tube the moment you tilt it downward, and once you get the opposing tube into the air, your rig will magically drain itself—sort of.
If your water-cooling setup is entirely closed (that is, it uses only a T-line, or for the truly bold, nothing), then draining it is even easier. Air pressure should take care of most of the liquid, but if you’re impatient, you can just wrap your hand around the free tube and blow, blow, blow. Try not to get any coolant in your mouth.
Reservoir setups are a bit more finicky since the liquid in them will drain from your kit only until it falls below the output hole of the reservoir. Blowing will do you little good at that point, so you’ll need to physically tilt your case in order to get the liquid out of the reservoir. Of course, you could always just remove the reservoir, but be sure to watch out for drips while removing the tubes!
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| If you can't drain your rig using the air-pressure method, you'll have to start by dumping the reservoir. |
2. Cleaning Your Kit
If you just want to spot-clean your rig, first get a container of hot water. You’ll be turning it into a reservoir of sorts by dipping the tubes into the container so that the hot water is sucked through your rig and then spit back into the same container. If you want to get really fancy, use a separate container for the gunky output portion of the cleaning; using this method, you’ll still want to run the hot water through your system for a good amount of time—30 minutes to an hour.
For truly filthy rigs, or truly dedicated water-cooling aficionados, a complete kit disassembly is in order. Once you’ve got your parts laid out, you can start scrubbing. Depending on the condition of your tubing (and potential coolant-staining issues), you might just want to start over with brand-new plastic pipes (street price: $4). But if you insist on keeping your current gear, head down to your local gun shop and pick up a rifle-cleaning rod. A little warm, soapy water or vinegar and some brisk scrubbing will clean your pipes but good. Rinse and then run some distilled water through your tubes.
For the deepest clean possible, take apart your water blocks. Be advised that doing this will likely void their warranty, but it’s a small price to pay for shiny, residue-free cooling accessories. Grab a toothbrush and some vinegar and apply a thorough helping of elbow grease. Don’t forget to give the parts a good rinse in hot water when you’re done. Next, rinse them with distilled water or you’ll completely invalidate the wonderful cleaning job you just did. Reassemble your blocks, and you will have successfully completed your cleaning duties for the day; provided your blocks don’t leak, that is….

Don't forget to rinse everything with distilled water as the last step in your cleaning process!