Watercooling Drifting Mainstream

pacc writes "With Prescott said to dissipate 103 W and the dual Apple G5 playing in the same league, air cooling seems less than sensible. Nikkei Electronics has an article about watercoolers getting standardized by Hitachi. A technology pioneered by a NEC desktop last May."

Comments

Prescott will actually dissipate around 130W

[Alereon]

The 103W figure for the Prescott 3.6Ghz is actually the Thermal Design Power. This is the amount of power the processor is expected to use during "normal" operation. A P4-C 3.0Ghz with HyperThreading has a TDP of about 80W, with an actual maximum power usage of 104W. Assuming a similar scale, a Prescott 3.6Ghz can be expected to dissipate around 130W. It's this maximum figure that really matters, since I don't think most people want their processor to throttle during gaming or whenever they are driving their CPU hard.

Re:Comparison?

[MBCook]

Lots of sites do many MANY reviews. Overclockers.com, Hardocp.com, and even THG have done stories on watercooling. I've been following the "scene" for quite a while now, as the noise from my PCs drives me nots. There are a few thing I can comment on:

• Watercooling is MUCH more efficent than the average stock heatsink. You can beat a cheap watercooling system with a REALLY GOOD heatsink, but...
• Watercooling is much QUIETER. In a normal heatsink, you are cooling a small area with a small fan (on the order of 60x60mm for a good heatsink/fan, but you can use an 80x80mm fan). But with the radiator that cools in a (standard) watercooling setup, you can fit at least one 80mm fan, or even 2. And since the air is designed to pass through it and over it (instead of onto it and off the sides) it's quieter. You can either run your system cold at a decent noise level, or go near silent and get fine temperatures.
• You can cool the water many ways. While most of the time you run it though a radiator, I have seem setups on the 'net that use a bong (Water is sprayed in a tube of air as a mist, it loses it's heat as it falls through the air), groud cooling (one guy buried a welding tank DEEP in his yard. He pumps water in and out, and the earth cools it for him), watercooling (you could make a little heat exchanger that runs cold water from your water pipes next to the water from your PC to cool it down), etc. You have OPTIONS.
• The biggest problem I've seen is usually the cost. This is mostly due to the fact that a LARGE number of watercoolers are overclockers, and they are willing to PAY big cash for a great waterblock and such. So the majority of waterblocks you find cost $50 or more. So if you cool your CPU, Graphics card, and chipser, you could easily spend $150 on the blocks alone if you wanted to. Most watercooling kits (that cool the CPU and graphic card) seem to be around $300. This is due both to the aformentioned situation, and low volume of sales (relative to other options, like a new heatsink).
• Customisation! You think putting a cold cathode in your PC is cool? How 'bout putting an adative in your watercooling water that under blacklights or ultraviolet lights glows a bright color. It looks REALLY cool. Check the forums mentioned below to find some pics of this.

Learn more, it is facinating. Look around the old articles on HardOCP and Overclockers.com and you can find out a ton. Just search google! Also, if you look at like the HardOCP forums under cooling, you can find tons of pics of people's Watercooled PCs.