Felix isn’t satisfied with the silence of the building at first. So he had to turn off the motherboard fan and also adjust the pump speed to 80%. The machine was then tested until temperatures began to level off, over various workloads. Testing began with idling for half an hour, playing Peggle for a while, and then running Cinebench for half an hour. Things got serious as Halo 3 was fired up for a session. In the real gaming tests ( Halo 3, Expedition 33, Cyberpunk 2077 ), the GPU never thermal throttled , but the CPU would a little as it hit 95 °C or more.
More stress testing was initiated, culminating in running Cinebench and FurMark simultaneously. This pulled over 450W of power and brought the radiator water temps up to 60C+, which is the maximum rated level for the pump. A throttling CPU was observed again in these tests. A full table of tests, power output, and temperatures is shared in the Reddit post embedded below.
In conclusion, Felix reckons passive water cooling alone isn’t really enough for a powerful modern gaming rig. Even a single case fan would probably be enough to make a world of difference. So, stay tuned for a follow-up video where you can see how the same Billet Labs PC performs with a 120mm fan atop, pulling air upwards, accelerating that chimney effect.
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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-23/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Mark Tyson Social Links Navigation News Editor Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
aldaia Their design sucks. Try this: https://www.powergenadvancement.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Nuclear-Energy-Strategy-1.webp If Natural Draft Dry Cooling Towers can cool thermal and nuclear power plants, they can definitely cool a PC. Reply
Cmdr_Scotty aldaia said: Their design sucks. Try this: https://www.powergenadvancement.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Nuclear-Energy-Strategy-1.webp If Natural Draft Dry Cooling Towers can cool thermal and nuclear power plants, they can definitely cool a PC. That was my first thought, at the very least it needs shrouds between each radiator to funnel the air up through each stage. If done right, air will accelerate due to the narrowing effect and create the needed draft. Reply
BillyBuerger A fanless PC is a fun idea to implement. But the point of fanless is that there are no moving parts in the cooling. Using water cooling means a pump which is a moving part. If you already have that, why not just put some good quality fans at a low speed and optimize around that. It will still be super quiet but will provide a noticeable cooling benefit over fanless. I have two Noctua redux 120mm fans running at around 500rpm in my case and I can only just barely hear them when my ear is very close. Probably less noise then the pump he's using. Reply
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