The First Sub-$1000 Watercooled PC has Pedestrian Parts

Posted 10/11/2008 at 7:36pm | by Paul Lilly

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Despite the strides that have been made with high-end air coolers, serious overclockers still turn to water to gain that extra cooling edge, and with it a few extra MHz as well. But diving into water can often be a costly venture, particularly in the prebuilt sector. Or at least it used to be.

The good news is you can now purchase a pre-assembled OEM rig with water running through its veins. The sub-$1000 watercooled PC - being called the Red Blizzard - comes courtesy of Visionman Computers and will be sold through WidowPC. Providing the watercooling is CoolIT's PURE CPU cooler, an all-in-one solution that combines a radiator, pump module, and CPU Fluid Heat Exchanger (FHE) into a single apparatus which, by itself, streets for around a C-note.

The bad news is that you won't find any voodoo magic taking place behind the budget price tag. At the heart of the system sits a modest Intel E5200 processor nestled in an Asus P5N73-AM motherboard based on the aging nForce 650i chipset. Other components include 2GB of DDR2-800 RAM, a 500GB Western Digital hard drive, a single LiteOn 20X DVD burner, and a 9600GT videocard with a 512MB frame buffer. To be fair, there isn't much of a markup on the individual parts, but we can't imagine this self-described "disturbingly powerful" system will live up to its promise of "blow[ing] the socks off all the latest titles."

The Red Blizzard is available now from WidowPC's website.

Image Credit: WidowPC and CoolIT