Swiftech 8500 Watercooling Kit Review

playafly187 writes "OCIA has posted their review of the Swiftech H20-8500 Watercooling Kit. The following is a direct quote from the review: 'This kit is aimed at those who want the low noise operation of watercooling, but are confined to a somewhat small case and/or those who don't want to fool with extensive modding of their case to accommodate a watercooling setup. The only requirement for your case is at least one 80mm rear exhaust fan opening and an empty 5 1/2" drive bay. I will take a look at each component provided in detail, then will walk you through our installation and testing.'"

Comments

Install an AMD processor lately?

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't touched an Intel processor in ages, so I can't say how they are.

Up here in the Great Amish Stronghold of Pennsylvania, it gets hot during the spring and summer. Around where I live, not everyone has an air conditioner. Actually, most people don't have 'em.

People ask me for advice on getting new computers. It's sad, but I have to tell them to stay the hell away from AMD unless they're going to buy an air conditioner to keep in the same room. I then tell them that if they're having someone build a box for them, don't skimp on fans. If they're buying a store-bought computer, buy the damned warranty, and extend! Extend! Extend!

Before I put my air conditioner in my window last spring, my Athlon 600 started having heat issues. As in, Linux started having weird errors, and Win 98 started BSoD'ing like mad. (*sigh* No, that wasn't normal for Win 98.)

I put the air conditioner in, boom, problems solved.

Now that I've upgraded to a nice AMD XP 1800, I intend to put my air conditioner in this year while there's still frost on the ground. ;)

I'm not a cheap arse, aside from picking AMD over Intel for both cost and performance reasons. My fans cost quite a pretty penny. The processor still runs hot, and the box is still loud.

It doesn't matter if you have supposedly silent fans when you need a huge arse one for the processor, one on the chipset, one on the video card, and a case fan to help vent out hot air. The noise adds up. (Oops, did I forget the power
supply fan? They're always noisy. ;))

And again, as for heat - not everyone has air conditioning. (I think people who don't at least have a few units stuck in windows are freakin' nuts, but hey. ;))

Water cooling is the future. The current number of fans in boxes is getting ridiculous. The noise is climbing to outrageous levels, and they're slowly becoming inefficient when dealing with heat. Many people can't fit a full tower case
into their decorum, and most people wisely don't
wish to leave the sides off of their case for
better ventilation.

Most of us who deal with high-end computers have to deal with the severe heat issues that come with them. Processors are hardware. Video cards are hardware. Power supplies are hardware. Heat sinks and fans are hardware.

You know what? Water cooling systems are hardware. And they're shortly going to become important pieces of hardware, even for those who don't overclock.

Re:I find this annoying

[Zzootnik]

Except that this paticular item isn't really aimed at overclocking...There are much more efficient (larger) products for that...This is a basic, easy-to-install, and working water-cooling mod for the purpose of SILENCING your loud-arsed cpu fans...

Actually, except for the 275 dollar price tag, this looks really good....Too bad it won't help me, though...its all those scsi hard drives making the racket in my case...

Re: Noisy drives - Try This

[Zzootnik]

Solid-State drives seem too expensive to justify.

I had a neat thought on this one a while back, but haven't been able to find the solution yet...Ram-Drives. Isn't there anyone that make a hard-drive sized box that you can plug standard sdram into? Without the ram, it seems like it would be fairly cheap to implement, and anymore, the ram isn't that expensive, either...just start adding 512 mb sticks whenever you can afford it...Add a small battery backup (how much voltage can it really take to keep sdram sticks alive, anyway?) and MAYBE a hard drive to back up everything to... Gotta admit that it would be pretty nice to work one of these hypothetical devices up to 20 gigs-or more-

Silent, fast, and fast. (Yes- I put 2 fast's in there on purpose---Cause it would be...)

External fluid feed/drain?

[Scriven]

I've been thinking about this for a while (mostly for older CPU's, just as a way to possibly cut down noise), and I was wondering about hooking up external sources of the coolant, perhaps though a unused slots in the back of the computer. Hook up to an external pump/cooling system, and then connect multiple computers up to the same system (in parallel, so each gets cold incoming of course).

I was curious about what other people think about this. A system like this one, with some modifications, seems to me like it would work fairly well. I'd just need different CPU cooling modules (Why not for everything Pentium and up?), so I can replace all my CPU cooling fans with liquid-cooling systems. Then I'd add coolant-filled pipes to the mess behind all my computers. :)