Many people are probably wondering how much electricity does a liquid cooled PC AKA water cooled PC uses. When one looks at a liquid cooled PC, there are actually only two parts that require a power supply. The water pump and the fan on the radiator. Therefore, in order to figure out how much electricity a liquid cooled PC uses, one simply has to look at the specs for these two components and find the power consumption numbers.
NOTE: It seems that not all manufacturers provide power consumption details. Therefore, one may have to find either the product manual and/or people who have reviewed these products for power consumption details. There maybe cases where these details cannot be found anywhere. In that case, calling and/or emailing the company to ask about the products power consumption is the only alternative.
Water pump from Swiftech – If we look at the MCP350™ 12 VDC Pump specifications shown on Swiftech’s website, we will see that the power consumption is 8.3 to 12 Watts.
120mm case fans – The radiator needs a 120mm fan to cool the liquid, therefore, one will have to look at the power consumption of the fan. If we look at a 2000 RPM fan, http://www.coolermaster-usa.com/product.php?product_id=2916, from Coolermaster, we are told that it consumes 4.2 +/- 10% Watts of power.
Therefore, this liquid cooled system will use about 16 Watts of power if only one fan is used on the radiator.
As for the rest of the computer, one can usually find many results on an average computer’s energy consumption on Google.