Posted 07/29/09 at 12:00:19 PM by Nathan Edwards

CoolIT is somewhat notorious for enormous but effective closed water-cooling systems: its Boreas and Freezone Elite kick the pants off of conventional air coolers and are much more user-friendly than piecemeal water-cooling setups. Now CoolIT wants to bring self-contained water-cooling to the masses with the Domino Advanced Liquid Cooling.

The Domino eschews both the large heatsinks and the Peltier thermoelectric coolers of its predecessors in favor of a radiator and single 12cm fan, which gives the Domino less oomph than the Boreas or Freezone Elite, but confers several advantages to the water-cooling newb.

First, the Domino costs a cool $80, compared to $600-plus for the Boreas and $350 for the Freezone Elite. Second, the Domino is much smaller and easier to install; CoolIT boasts that an amateur with no CPU-cooling experience can install it in 10 minutes.

Continue reading this review after the jump.

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Posted 09/30/08 at 06:15:09 PM by Andy Salisbury

We may or may not recognize it, but fluid is a very integral part of our everyday lives. It decides everything from our fuel economy to (in some cases) how cool our computer runs. Until now, there was only one key way of deciphering the mechanics of fluids, and that was the Prandtl equation, developed in 1904. Sadly though, the Prandtl equation has many limitations, including only having the ability to calculate only two-dimensional problems, and a steady flow (such as that of a car traveling slowly). Thanks to a breakthrough by MIT’s George Haller, that’s all about to change.

A recently developed new equation, which is a product of four years of work by Professor Haller, will apply to three-dimensional and unsteady flows. This was confirmed with the aid of Thomas Peacock, the Atlantic Richfield Career Development Associate Professor at MIT, who lead experiments in order to validate the equation. Professor Peacock states, “This is the tip of the iceberg, but we’ve shown that this theory works.” The new work will probably go down as one of the greatest scientific advances of the decade, if it survives the peer review that will come.

This innovation in the mechanics of liquids will have an overwhelming influence on many industries, including aerospace, automotive and even computers. With these breakthroughs in calculating how liquids will act and perform in different environments, there’s no doubt that your PC’s liquid cooling system will soon get an overhaul.

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Posted 07/11/08 at 07:33:48 PM by David Murphy

We never said water cooling was simple, and Cooler Master’s Aquagate Max doesn’t make the delicate assembly process any easier. But once you connect your last run of 3/8-inch tubing to this beastly setup, you’ll have accomplished two goals: doubling your geek cred and giving your processor an awesome heap of non-peltier cooling.

Hit the jump for delicious info on this ESA-enabled monster.

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Posted 05/22/08 at 02:43:57 PM by David Murphy

Whenever we see an all-in-one water-cooling setup that combines a pump, radiator, fan, and miniature reservoir in a small enclosure, we get nervous. They remind us of those wacky commercials from the black-and-white era of television, when a slick-haired man in a fuzzy gray suit would try to sell you some mystery tonic that could cure your coughs, polish your car, and kill your cat. Just as those elixirs are little more than junk science, we’ve found that budget water “coolers” attempting to put too many operations under one roof tend to perform marginally better, and often worse than, your processor’s cheapo stock cooler.

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Posted 05/07/08 at 02:08:10 PM by David Murphy

Hands down, CoolIT’s chilled-water Peltier coolers provide the best way to cool your CPU. However, as the technology for these coolers has advanced, so has their complexity and size.

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Posted 03/07/08 at 07:38:00 PM by David Murphy

There comes a time in every young PC builder’s life when he seriously considers outlandish ideas for modifying and cooling his smokin’ new gaming rig. But you don’t need to mod your PC into a refrigerator to reach subzero temperatures, not if you have CoolIT’s latest 12 TEC cooler, the Boreas.

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Posted 01/28/08 at 05:41:21 PM by David Murphy

Zalman is no stranger to gigantic external liquid-cooling devices. We’ve become so accustomed to seeing its huge, tower-like Reserator coolers that we nearly choked when the 15-pound Reserator XT arrived in our Lab. For starters, it’s not a large, awkward-to-carry cylindrical column. The rectangular apparatus is comparably compact and sleek, more akin to a subwoofer than a home-theater speaker. 

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Posted 01/17/08 at 01:01:25 PM by David Murphy

Sweet mercy, at first glance Koolance’s PC4-1025BK case seems like a perfect power-user box. Unfortunately, this water-cooling-enriched case is simply too small to contain certain enthusiast hardware and too complicated for the average user.

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