How To Make Your Own Watercooling Reservoir

Forming Tubing

There is a trick I recently picked up on another forum and the idea is one of the handiest I've come across in years of watercooling. I used this several times when constructing the lower part of my loop for the Zenith build, and it works great.

If you want to form tubing for tight bends or any bends, you can shape it the way you want, and then immerse it in boiling then in ice water several times repeatedly. I found a spring for $3 at a local ACE hardware that fits perfectly inside of the 0.4375in id tubing to keep it from kinking while forming.


For the loop in the pic above, I put the tubing into a plastic cup like this, immersed it in boiling water for a minute or two, then ice water, and repeated the process a few times.



Once heated and cooled like this a few times, the tubing holds it shape.

I have a very tight spot where one radiator feeds the other radiator. The space measured from the outside (not the inside) between the barbs is only 2.25in (about 57mm) but the inside space between the barbs is only about 1.25inn. Tubing would normally kink in a bend this tight and since the piece of tubing was very short and the bend had to be so tight, I used a pair of tongs to hold the tubing while it formed the bend.


The tubing formed so that the outside edges were only 3in apart and I had no kinking problems pushing it into just 2.25in apart.


I hope this guide has been helpful, and if you have tried making one yourself - let us know the results - or if you have other ways to make a reservoir or work with acrylic, let me know in the forums!