Watercooling the XBox 360

Steve from Hexus writes "Steering clear of jokes about overheating power supplies, one company is claiming to have constructed a watercooling kit for the XBox 360. HEXUS.gaming has obtained pictures of the product, seemingly attached to an XBox 360, though how it works and how it is installed remains something of a mystery."

Comments

That is no water cooler

[Oldsmobile]

It looks just like a car heater.

Like so:

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0000V0AKE.16._A A260_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

UL certification does not mean reliable

[Flying pig]

Sorry, but all UL certification means is that the thing will not catch fire or get hot in a way that will cause damage in a domestic environment (that's why it's Underwriters' Laboratories for Heaven's sake). Every single example tested could fail open circuit in five minutes and it still could be UL certified because it does not create an INSURANCE risk. UL approval does not mean that additional cooling could not be beneficial.
Odd you mention coffee machines because some years ago there was considerable trouble with them catching fire and it took UL a long time to evolve an acceptable testing methodology.

But this leads to an interesting possibility about these add-ons. It's possible that additional cooling could cause a thermal trip or similar overload protection device to fail to operate when it should, perhaps resulting in a fire starting elsewhere in the system. (For instance, a number of systems use PTC devices as simple thermal trips. Blowing additional cold air over a PTC could prevent it tripping). If this resulted in a fire, you might find your add-on cooler had invalidated your household insurance and you were not covered. The situation with changing the CPU cooler is different because the total heat and net airflow in the case should be unchanged.