Processors On The Rocks VOL. 2

Introduction

"It's Chilly inside and it's chilly outside." Which fan of 'Get Shorty' would possibly forget Ray 'Bones' Barbone's flat joke about Chilly Palmer (John Travolta) at the beginning of the movie? Working with Asetek's new Vapochill unit in cold Europe instantly reminded me of those words. So I say, "Look at me", as I am giving you 'the beef' about this Danish super cooling solution for socket processors.

You certainly remember my initial article 'Processors On The Rocks ' from not quite a couple of months ago, where I described the technology behind Vapochill. I strongly recommend you read this article if you should not be familiar with Vapochill yet, because in this new article I will only focus on the actual Vapochill system without regurgitating the theory behind it's function. However, understanding the basics behind this super cooling device will be very helpful for understanding all the issues in this piece.

In the initial article I was pretty impressed with Asetek's technology and I certainly generated a lot of positive expectations. However, we know that the proof is in the pudding and before Vapochill can get a 'thumbs up' of 'thumbs down' the very unit has to go through rigorous testing. Tom's Hardware received Vapochill several weeks ago and we have played around with it a lot. Let's find out if Vapochill can indeed live up to the high expectations that I had after looking at its technology two months ago.

The Manual

Who in the world would ever start a review with the manual? Well, I would, but only if a manual is as good as Vapochill's. You can have a look at it by yourself, because it is available as PDF-file at Asetek's website. Now don't get me wrong here, I am fully aware that a manual is just a manual, and in fact you will find out that Asetek has all reasons to supply a manual as detailed as possible, because there are several nasty traps when working with Vapochill. However, Asetek put a lot of dedication into this manual and each complaint of Kyle or me was addressed in there to ensure a smooth setup process for Vapochill customers.