Asetek's Extreme CPU Cooler Tested

VL writes "Do-It-Yourself Phase Change Cooling Systems are built and used by a few folks, but they can be complicated to build, mostly messy, and dangerous; certainly not something you should get into without knowing what you are doing. But as with anything like this, there is always a turn key solution brought to market you can buy. Enter asetek, and their VapoChill series of Phase Change Cooling systems. What we have on the review bench here specifically is the asetek VapoChill Lightspeed [AC], a case separate enclosure containing a Phase Change Cooling system for your PC's CPU."

Comments

Heh.

[Anonymous Coward]

My favourite part of this oh-so-professional review is when they try to deduce the "fact" that "CPUs work at higher efficency when running at lower temperatures" by comparing the time some video-encoding takes @stock speed, and the vapochilled setup acchieving a result better a whole TWO SECONDS than the default one (with the complete encoding-job taking about 400secs or so).

Now that surely justifies a maybe 700US$ investment, and is by no means an effect called "measuring tolerance".

Great job. -_-

What about more effective ways

[ioudas]

Back when modding was almost the best thing to do since eat sliced bread these things were out. I once heard that you can actully dunk your whole pc into a coolant that is not conductive and then make that cooling liquid sub zero. I also had a freeon based system with forced air going once. I mean really these units are expensive. Anyone know of any low cost high grade cooling?

Re:What about more effective ways

[GrAfFiT]

You might be thinking about this mentionned on /. here and this mentionned again on /. http://slashdot.org/articles/00/09/17/1427248.shtm l.
They were using Fluorinert, made by 3M at 500$/gallon. That's not cheap..

That was a waste of time

[Anonymous Coward]

The reviewer believes that cooling a processor makes it run faster...

Re:Nothing new here

[evolutionaryLawyer]

Actually if you really wanna get old school, take a look at your skin. Evaporative cooling is how humans have been cooled for at least 100,000 years.

Or even better, look at your cooler full of beer, once again that is some old school phase change cooling. Yep, solid ice to liquid water is a phase change.

Re:Nothing new here

[nbert]

IMO bigger/better fans are just good for fighting the symptoms. We are just heading the wrong way - instead of integrating mobile technology into desktop computers we basically invest the same money into designs which can dissipate more heat.

I think it wouldn't really be much more expensive to produce CPUs with a low TDP (if they are produced on a big scale) and I definitely believe that it would be cheaper in the long run, because those fans and heatsinks etc. wouldn't be necessary anymore.

I really hope the manufacturers are going to realize this soon. The fact that neither AMD nor Intel managed to release faster CPUs recently (in terms of Hertz) makes me hope that they are going to reconsider their current desktop strategy. It's time to correct a fault made somewhere along with the introduction of the P1 architecture.

Surely this misses the point.

[ross.w]

Doesn't it bother anyone that these types of extreme measures are necessary in the first place?

Isn't it about time Intel, AMD et al developed CPUs that don't get hot enough to cook an egg on?

Re:Nothing new here

[Zorilla]

I thought the use of Pentium M CPUs in desktops was the movement toward this sort of thing. What's AMD doing with their low-to-midrange processors these days? I ask because I just recently built an Athlon XP 2700+ desktop machine for my parents and cooling-wise, it could have performed a bit better. 57 degrees C idle and 63 under a full load when using fans on the power supply and CPU. The case is uncluttered and quite open (Another thing Serial ATA is good for). That's quite hot, but so far the computer is rock-solid stable.