How do you choose the best PC water cooling components for your budget and needs?

Closed loop is the way to go as your far more unlikely to have a leak. Imagine coming home to find your Pre-Built water cooler has leaked all out and killed all your components.

Typically in my experience, a custom water cooling loop is not necessary unless the user is looking for some serious performance and overclocking headroom. Air coolers are more than sufficient for the average PC-builder, and an All-In-One (AIO) water cooler will do plenty for average overclocking. I tend to think of custom water cooling builds as recreational, and in that context I am a huge fan. I don't believe anyone should start building a computer and expect they need a custom water cooling loop unless they have high expectations of their overclocking goals.

When researching custom water cooling components and beginning to put together a list of components, a very important distinction to make is what metals the different components are made of. It's important to choose one metal that all of the components are made of if possible, otherwise corrosion is inevitable. Corrosion can be delayed or generally prevented with proper maintenance and a corrosion inhibitor like automotive coolant. Corrosion inhibitors should be used in any water-cooling loop, but especially in those featuring components made of different metals.

Assembly can be difficult depending if you're using soft tubing or hard-line tubing. Hard line tubing must be heated and bent carefully, and a first time water cooler should buy extra in case there are a few mistakes. Something else to be careful of is vapor lock. Vapor lock is when there is air that is unable to escape a space that liquid is trying to enter. The moral of the story here is to make sure there is ample space for air to escape when you are filling the reservoir with coolant. Otherwise there won't be any space in the reservoir for the coolant to occupy and you'll have a difficult time filling it.

The most important step in maintaining the water cooling components in your system is to do a coolant flush once a year. Make sure to use distilled water for the flush before refilling with new coolant. When doing the flush, it's a good opportunity to clean the water block as well (whether that's on your CPU, GPU or both). Many experts recommend removing the water block from the system and soaking it in a 50/50 vinegar to distilled water solution- unless the block is Nickel plated because vinegar will strip the finish!