In this article we study the Ahlfors regular conformal gauge of a compact metric space $(X,d)$, and its conformal dimension ${dim}_{AR}(X,d)$. Using a sequence of finite coverings of $(X,d)$, we construct distances in its Ahlfors regular conformal gauge of controlled Hausdorff dimension. We obtain in this way a combinatorial description, up to bi-Lipschitz homeomorphisms, of all the metrics in the gauge. We show how to compute ${dim}_{AR}(X,d)$ using the critical exponent $Q_N$ associated to the combinatorial modulus.