I had the pleasure of meeting with Waytronx CEO Bill Clough earlier this week. But who's Waytronx, you ask? Good question. Prior to said meeting, I had never heard of them--and for good reason. The company works on the technology and reference designs behind cooling units, and licenses their work to manufacturers (like Waytronx's newest friend, OCZ Technology). Their work is what's powering OCZ's new Hydrojet cooler, and you can definitely see a reflection of their style in the batch of reference designs Clough showed off.

Before I mention anything else, let's just get the elephant out of the way: this cooler is huge. It's friggin' huge. I'm no stranger to large devices, having seen just about every size of water cooling kit, air cooler, and peltier unit that an aspiring company could conjure up. But the WayCool designs are just big. Clough swears they'll fit within Intel's specification of a 550g (~1.2 pound) maximum heatsink weight, but I just can't believe that to be accurate in the slightest. Especially given what's underneath the hood.

Yes, that's right. This is more than just your typical huge air cooler. The giant radial fan and heatsink combination you're looking at covers up an underlying pump and self-contained coolant mechanism. It's a hybrid cooler, one that can apparently suck four times the heat off a CPU using Waytronx's fancy, proprietary carbon technology. You'll also note the giant hole in the center of the device--it's surrounded by a radial fan, akin to what you would find on a stock cooler for an 8800 video card.

I was expecting a dramatic "woosh" when Clough powered his test machine up for the first time, but the cooler is fairly quiet, given it's unassuming size. I'm not suggesting it's silent by any means, but it's at least not going to blow an eardrum. Of course, this is all just abject speculation--for all I know, the cooler could have been set at its lowest speed setting.

Still, it's a fascinating concept. I'm used to seeing "hybrid" coolers of a more typical variety: a semi-large radiator attached to a CPU block/pump combination via some skinny plastic tubing. It's nice to see these semi-awkward designs go entirely self-contained with the WayCool devices, which still offer plumbing options for extra expansion. As you'll note in the picture below, this CPU cooler is taking on the additional task of cooling two 8800 cards. I'm surprised to see this, as nothing outside of a peltier seems to be able to provide adequate cooling for a typical Quad-Core + SLI 8800s setup. But hey, maybe I'll be proven wrong when we get one of these devices in for review next month!

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