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When you hear one of your friends talk about a skydiving
adventure, or even a bungee jump for that matter, do you
tend to smile, nod, and think to yourself, "one of these
days, buddy..."? There is an element of danger
inherent to every so-called extreme sport. However,
extreme, by its very nature, implies the sort of
excitement you just can't experience mowing the lawn on a
Saturday morning. "Humans simply aren't meant to fly
down mountains at 70 miles an hour on a skateboard, as
they do in the Street Luge," you argue. That doesn't
stop a fearless few from risking everything for a few
moments of breathless adrenaline, though. Well, the
same argument applies to the most daring overclockers, who
use unconventional means of combating heat in the name of
procuring additional performance.
Five years
ago, I wouldn't have set a Coke can on top of our case,
for fear of spillage. Liquid, in our opinion, had no
business anywhere near an expensive amalgamation of
components that relied on electricity to operate.. A
short time after, a Peltier cooler found its way onto my
400MHz Pentium II. It was a short-lived
relationship, unfortunately. Condensation took the lives
of the processor and motherboard a couple of days later,
affirming my stance on liquid and electronics. Yet,
the plight of the overclocking enthusiast is a dire one.
I've persisted for the past few years by pushing my
equipment to its limit with nothing more than fancy
heatsinks and powerful fans.
And now, I
find myself armed with asetek's freshman venture into
water cooling, the WaterChill CPU cooler. Designed
with quick-disconnect fittings and a detailed manual, it
is apparent the asetek wants to attract cautious
enthusiast. Yet the components that comprise the
WaterChill kit are well-built, so that even discerning
power users should take heed. asetek certainly is
well known for their hugely successful Vapochill line of
high quality vapor phase refrigerated PC solutions.
Let's see if the WaterChill is cut from the same cloth.
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WaterChill CPU and Chipset Kit Contents |
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Everything you need
to water-cool |
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WaterChill Kit, fully
configured and arranged in series
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WaterChill CPU Cooler:
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Copper
base plate with "half-moon" design
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Supports
Pentium 4 (S478), Athlon XP (SA), and Athlon 64
(S754) - no mention of the Socket 940 Opteron
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Capable
of dissipating up to 200W of heat
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10mm
"quick-disconnect" fittings
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Includes
thermal transfer compound
WaterChill Chipset Cooler:
WaterChill Pump:
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Capable
of moving 700 liters per hour of water
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Utilizes
a hermaphroditic 115VAC power connector for easy
integration
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Designed
to start up and shut down in sync with PC
WaterChill Reservoir:
WaterChill Radiation and Fan:
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Capable
of dissipating 400W of total heat
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Copper
tubing
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120mm
Sunon Fan
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Compliant with asetek's NoiseControl feature for 7V
or 12V operation
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Rated
for 50,000 hours of operation
WaterChill Tube and Accessories:
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Polyether non-kinking tubes
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Anti-algae fluid to reduce bacteria and algae growth
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All
necessary hardware for mounting CPU block, chipset
block, radiator, and pump
The
operating premise behind the asetek WaterChill kit is
fairly simple. Instead of employing a
traditional heat-sink and fan combinations, which rely
on air to effectively dissipate heat energy, asetek
uses water as its cooling medium. The negative
implication is, of course, that water and electricity
don't symbiotically coexist in a computer.
Implemented properly, however, water is immensely more
efficient than air and has a greater heat transfer
capacity to boot.
Of course,
water is only effective if it is, in turn, being
cooled itself. While air is continually
circulating and is generally in no danger of
saturating with heat (unless you live in Bakersfield,
CA where ambient air often hovers around 110 degrees
Fahrenheit), the water in a water cooling system is
less abundant. Once heat is transferred from the
processor to the water block's copper base, then from
the base to the water flowing through the block, it is
circulated through a radiator, which functions much
like that which is found in a automobile. Air is
blown through the radiator (in this case by a 120mm
Sunon fan) to cool the circulating water and is once
again pumped back through the CPU block, to transfer
additional heat from the cold plate and processor.
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| | The
Makings of a Water Cooling Kit
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