Radical Make-Over: Water Cooling From Koolance

Introduction

Finally Perfect - CPU Water Cooling From Koolance

There's a first time for everything - since our last review of a barebones system from Koolance, the company has moved mountains. But let's not get ahead of ourselves - in our article "Barebones PC Cooling Tower: A Showy Case From Koolance" , we pointed out a slew of weak points in the barebones system. One of the main problems was the insufficient cooling performance of the system, which was caused by grave design errors and the use of inappropriate components. In response, the manufacturer removed the "old" system from the market and replaced it with a new one. The result? All of our gripes were heeded and problems were solved. Even our critical lab engineers were delighted by the new Koolance system, but we'll give you the lowdown on that in our test report. The target customers for Koolance's new barebones tower are overclockers and power users: the new design is ideal for AMD processors (Athlon and Duron) and for Intel Pentium III CPUs. However, the test system isn't compatible with Intel's latest baby, the Pentium 4, since the CPU element integrated into the system only works well with Socket 462 and Socket 370 platforms. The price tag on this barebones PC cooling tower is about $250, which, considering the system's performance and quality, is definitely acceptable.

New barebones water-cooling system from Koolance.

The USB and audio ports are hidden behind a flap on the front.

Temperature indicator and operating unit.