Dominating the performance PC market, liquid-component cooling lets enthusiasts put a large radiator in a better-optimized location compared to standard heat sinks, but without the complication, noise, or decreased reliability of “extreme cooling” alternatives.
On the other hand, bulky external components and severe case modifications have typically limited the best liquid-cooling configurations to the world of “case mod freaks,” rather than true performance fanatics. Though Koolance has produced a few well-finished liquid-cooling cases for as long as most of us can remember, the majority of alternative designs have either been bulky or under-powered.
Because it has stood the test of time, Koolance became an easy choice when we were searching for a suitable reference point to compare a fresh entry in the liquid-cooling market. That competing product is Zalman’s new LQ1000 integrated liquid-cooling chassis, which we first photographed for our CES 2008 coverage.
Both companies target high-end buyers with materials and workmanship unrivaled by mid-priced brands, but limiting today’s comparison to comparable-quality mid-towers almost made this a two-way endeavor after a third manufacturer missed our delivery deadline.
Fortunately we already had another “alternative solution” on-hand. Our March and June System Builder Marathon high-end configurations had carefully selected cooling components with a specially selected case. We were always curious about how our parts choices would compete against custom-designed units and this is our opportunity to find out.




thats what i'm going to do... not buy some case w/ water cooling.... unless its like a modded lian-li case... but those are like 800 bucks... so no thanks
I'm pretty sure the videocards weren't water cooled.
Yea but alot of cheap cases are fugly.
The Koolance cases are modded Lian Li cases and there no where near $800, they start at just under $400 and go to just over $600
These kits are worth an entire PC so imo, I would mod it my self. It's not that hard to do, providing you have the time to do it.
The case with no pump, water block, or reservoir is $400, but what do you do without the parts? A basic liquid cooling kit from Koolance, complete with only the needed parts, starts at around $600.
Also notice:
Liquid cooling often offers excellent cooling capacity, but that wouldn’t matter much if hot case air destabilized another part of the system. In order to test both, we used an overclockedhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overclocking Intel Core 2 Quad processor to heat the liquid and a pair of HD 4870http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_R700 X2 graphics cards to heat the air.
Graphics was left air-cooled to help determine effectiveness of case airflow. It would have been even better to use two 4850's for that, since they don't vent outside the case.
Silver Oxide isn't so great a conductor, probably worse than gold. You said silver, but it's important to remember it oxidizes. The gold plating is super-thin for three reasons:
1.) Gold isn't the best heat conductor, so making it super thin is a good way to assure it doesn't insulate the copper base
2.) Gold is expensive
3.) Only a super-thin layer is needed to prevent oxidation of the copper base, for both aesthetic and conductive reasons
The best solution would be a gold-plated silver base
Jeff
Cooling "just the CPU" allowed the liquid cooling and air circulation capabilities to be tested separately. Looking at the CPU temperatures, its obvious that there's enough capacity for additional devices. Koolance recommends cooling "Everything" including dual graphics cards using its own brand of water blocks. Zalman also recommends cooling as much as possible with Zalman water blocks, but Zalman doesn't have as many products as Koolance.
Because the Zalman case is so "compact" and quiet, I'd like to see a system with it, using the Koolance HD 4870 X2 water blocks on a CrossfireX configuration. This might be a bit much for the Zalman pump, but the radiator can probably handle it. Also, because graphics cards are more heat-tolerant than CPU's, it wouldn't be so bad to cool the graphics with "warm water" from the outlet of the CPU water block.
As for liquid-cooling the RAM and chipset, even though Koolance wants you to do it, it's usually not a good idea. It complicates water lines, and it doesn't account for other components on the motherboard that also get hot. You should have airflow across the motherboard, even if you do liquid-cool the chipset. And since the heatpipe assembly of high-end boards has such excellent cooling capacity with only a small amount of airflow, the ideal solution is to place a flexible fan pointing air across the RAM and CPU socket area.
I've found that the best "liquid cooling solution" is to cool only the major components with liquid, and use the Antec Spotcool fan to cool the RAM, chipset, and sink-less components surrounding the CPU socket. The Spotcool produces relatively little noise, and the Zalman LQ1000 is thick enough to isolate most of that noise.
In fact, for liquid cooling I can't think of ANY reason to choose an Antec case. The only "good" unmodified solutions I know of are the Cooler Master Cosmos S (holds a 3x 120mm radiator on top) and Silverstone TJ09/TJ10 (holds 2x 120mm radiator on top plus 1x 120mm radiator in front). Of those, the Cosmos S offers a huge side fan, but like I said, it's not directional enough to cool memory properly (at least not when you use four modules).
Yes, i'll admit that those situations may be rare, but still a risk, and short of using extremely high end W/C componets with a large resovoir cooling performance isn't really that stellar, especially considering the cost compared to a normal HSF cooler. Unless you throw some TEC's under the waterblocks, but that ups the cost drastically, as well as power consumption and potential for the previously mentioned scenarios to occur.
I don't mind fan noise personally, since when i'm gaming i can't hear any ambient noise despite havin a lian-li PC-g70 full tower with 5, 120mm 110cfm silverstone fans which are 54db at full speed, and am running crossfire 4870x2's with software enabled fan control cranking them up to....well jet engine sound levels. That kind of cooling config has served me well in my overclocking ventures being able to get more than half a dozen barton core socket a mobile chips to
between 2.95ghz and 3.1ghz on air, ambient of 25c with idle temps of 31c load temps topping at around 45c, never went over 50c
939 socket 165x2 toledo core opty from 1.8ghz to 3.2ghz,
144 venus core from 1.8ghz to 2.98ghz, and
a 4400x2 toledo core from 2.2ghz to 3.67ghz (magic stepping, yes i have screenies ran 24/7 with a big typhoon for near 2 years till upgrading)those kept at an idle of around 33c load temps of 42c-48c
In all those instances the cooler used was a TT Bigtyphoon, with a 110cfm 120mm SS cooling it in place of the 54cfm stock fan.
and now my 9850 quad core phenom from 2.5ghz up to 3.4ghz without the ACC aided 750SB board using a duo-orb. Idles at 36c, load temps of 46-50c, the NB actually gets considerably hotter then the cpu thanks to the passive cooling "solution"
Even so, i designed and built a TEC case cooler, that is air cooled atm though am playing around with using W/C for the tecs as they reside in a case seperate from the PC hardware. Getting creative with airflow i can drop componet temps 20-25c, with uncreative airflow methods case temp drops by 10-15c depending on ambient. So i'm content with my little design over W/C, but i must pay respects to the horribly designed $400 TEC cooled case that came out a few years ago, because that was my true inspiration, remeding a horrid design.
Before getting the 4870x2's, i had bought a single cored 4870, and the thing idled at like 89c or something, load temps approached 100c at times and there was no software method of fan control....even if they were within the designed thermal envelope...i don't like hardware that toasty and, the thing was actually heating up my room.
Thankfully though Rivatuner upgraded, and Ati Expert tool as well came about giving access to fan control....and depressingly ATI decided to limit the "dynamic" fan speed to a base of 25%, even under heavy load of more then a couple hours i never saw the fan speed increase past 29%
Now with the single 4870 card in a 25c ambient (78F)....even increasing the fan speed to
50% drops the idle temp to about 35c, with load temps going into the mid 60's,
taking it up to 75% drops idle temp to 32/33c with load temps staying in the low high 40's/low 50's.
100% fan speed drops mine to 28/29c with load temps staying in the low to mid 40's.
Yes, 100% is loud, 75% isn't really that noticiable...and 50% doesn't sound any different from the "dynamic" 25% baseline unless you're within 2 feet of the back of the comp.
Now with the 4870x2, you have the problem of the second gpu having the heat of the first blown across it so there is always a 5-15c difference in gpu core temps in a 25c ambient room.
Baseline 25% dynamic temp is 86c/1 94c/2 idle, 94c/1 99c/2 load
50% takes it to 41c/1 52c/2 idle, 58c/1 67c/2 load
75% takes it to 37c/1 45c/2 idle, 49c/1 60c/2 load
100% takes it to 34c/1 39c/2 idle, 40c/1 49c/2 load
Long term heavy load, those temps will prolly rise by 5c or so, but that's still a far far far cry from the base line temps, and it doesn't require more than a free download and 90 seconds to obtain.
As long as load temps stay under 60-65c i'm a happy guy, and it doesn't increase the noise factor by very much to get that range, and you have the added benifit of being able to clock the card higher with more stability if so inclined.