Do I need a drain port in my watercooling loop?

Depending on who you ask, which websites you spend your time on, and your previous experience with watercooling, the necessity of a drain port can be questionable.

Much like anything related to PC building, especially watercooling, there is a lot of conflicting advice out there. So, we’re going to talk a bit about drain ports and come to our own conclusion.

First, though, what is a drain port?

A drain port is just a specific point within your watercooling loop designed to make draining the loop easier. “Drain port” does not necessarily refer to a specific type of product, by the way, there are several different ways to create a drain port in your watercooling system. Now, where should you put it? How can you create it?

To make life easier for yourself when you get around to draining your loop, positioning it near the bottom of the loop is a good idea. It is not mandatory however, as it will still work if put elsewhere, you’ll just need to rotate the PC to get the rest of the loop above it as much as you can to make it more effective.

It’s worth noting here that no matter where the drain port is positioned, opening the drain port alone will never completely empty the loop. There will always be liquid that cannot be emptied out of the drain port due to being trapped in tubes, blocks and radiators. Bear this in mind when disassembling your loop. Jamming copious amounts of paper towel around the more sensitive components is recommended.

The only way to truly empty a loop (almost) fully, is to somehow blow out the coolant that is still trapped in all the little nooks and crannies of the system. You can see how we did this with a mini air duster in our Hydro X maintenance video below.

This is a simple, cost-effective way of creating a drain port. You can insert a ball valve, such as our Hydro X Series XF ball valve, at basically any point in your watercooling loop. The ball valve will sit there fully open for normal operation, and won’t have any affect on performance.

When it comes time to drain, simply close it, then detach the section of tubing that comes after the ball valve. The liquid should pour straight out. Unscrewing a fitting higher up (with some of that paper towel around it to catch errant drips) will let air in and make the liquid drain faster.

This works in much the same way, but instead of having a ball valve act like a tap, we have a fill port. Also, it doesn’t live inline with the loop, but instead attaches to any G1/4” port on any section of your loop.

The way of implementing this method would be to pair it with a CORSAIR XD5 Pump/reservoir combo. iCUE LINK XD5 or regular XD5. Both will work for this example.

The XD5s have 3 inlets and 1 outlet. This means that no matter your configuration, you’re going to have a spare inlet. Putting a fill port in one of the lower inlets can create a totally serviceable drain port. This is also a more aesthetically pleasing solution than having a ball valve hanging out halfway along a tube.

Those looking to get truly fancy can opt to combine these two and route a drain port directly into the floor of the case for true lowest point supremacy. Additionally this looks a lot tidier than having a a ball valve on the end of a section of tubing flopping around in the case.

Some cases come with punchouts specifically for this purpose. Just pop it out and your hole is made. just remember than the location and existence of punchouts varies from case to case so check before buying if this is something you want to utilize.

No, you don’t. your watercooling loop will perform perfectly fine without it, however, it does make life easier when you do eventually drain the loop. If you aspire to take good care of your watercooled PC and perform regular maintenance, we recommend it. If you don’t aspire to take good care of your computer, just hack at the tubes with a machete if you want to get the liquid out.