Air, Water or Phase Change Cooling?
 

Many companies are pushing water cooling and even more extreme measures to cool the components inside your PC. Intel and AMD keep making silicon which runs hotter each product cycle; and air cooling might not be able to cut it anymore.

Or maybe it does? I'm still using air cooling on all my PC's and with the correct heatsink you can even do it quietly. What are you using to stop your PC from overheating?

I predict a decline in watercooling due to more and more quality HS being available for a good price.

I voted watercooling, you can cool anything with it and quite some watts are required to max it out. vapor change is too difficult to work with

true, the thermalright XP-120 and alikes are great, combined with A64 cool 'n quiet that + temperature controlled fans they work very well. notebook CPU's are already in desktop PC's, a good thing :)

Me voted for water too, phase-change is just too expensive to run 24/7 and more things to look after.

maybe the best thing is cpu designers need to see to the power consumption!

AMD knows this for a long time, Intel is really aware of it since the Prescott :D

thing is that for decent aircooling you most of the time need giant heatsinks like the xp120 and alike, with a lot of incompatibility problems and a lot of weight on the socket, while waterblocks aren't really big. you might need to add a silent fan however to cool the mosfets

the xp-120 is weighs less then the stock intel heatsink afaik :)

and in terms of compatibillity, there's not a single motherboard the xp-90 won't fit on according to thermalright's (rather extensive) list. and with performance close to that of the xp-120, it's a win win situation really :)

There are tallest structure and the deepest tunnel; the largest and the smallest of any man-made objects because either we are creative or from our curiosity nature.

Some will swear the biggest Heatsink combined with the largest fan solve the thermal issue in their proudly own “machine”; while others seek for the smallest case with everything tiny returns them the satisfaction.

Whichever the approach, manufacturers are more than happy to supply the products for those who are willing to pay with a smile on their faces, “if you are happy, I’m happy too”.

Water-cooling of CPU hobbyists created a new industry long before CPU thermal output reached 70 Watts. Sub-zero was “discovered” by enthusiasts living in the distant land way up north when they found out CPU could run at much higher than factory specs deep in the winter months without any home heating turn on. To ensure their friends could do the same living in the south, they offered them Vapor Chill.

Again, the manufacturers are happy to make those folks happy. Now, if all these devices make sense, I wonder what the reason behind AMD and Intel is not to offer them. For one I guess, they are smart. They have to be, they make processors with millions of transistors in a tiny housing. Perhaps, they are so smart that they know even if the make all the huge Heatsink; Water-Cooling and Vapor Chill products, the enthusiasts will still look for “more”.

They have realized long ago “Dry Ice” cooling without any noise from pump, fans, and compressor is the best way. This concept goes hand in hand with air pollutions; and shall be ready for mass production in 2025 by then either we will not have any problem because the world will be back in the ice age; if not, processors will require this low cost-no noise cooling when they reach the speed of light.

In between now and then, Heatsink covering the size of the motherboard with 200 mm fan at 0.15 dBA rating; water cooling using water lines coming from City Water-Filtration plant guaranteeing +/- 1°C temperature to cool your PC with a reasonable charge; Vapor Chill lines coming from your Home HAVC special unit will occupy he enthusiasts’ thirst for quite sometime.

In the next 3 to 5 years, the people living in India; Mexico; South China; East/West Africa will be very happy to have a simple factory equipped air cooling Heatsink fan as long as they have a PC; which by the way, represents >80% of the world population.

I went water here. I built 4 complete machines for myself since I was 13 years old all using air cooling. The fifth I took on the adventures of water cooling. It’s not as complicated as people make it out to be. As well as it’s not as dangerous as people complain. People automatically think that electricity and water do not mix, in all actually they don't and that’s why it is safe. People do not realize it’s the minerals and other debris in water that makes it conductive. And if you read and follow the directions you are suppose to use distilled water which is none conductive. I say water cooling is going to become a big piece if not already a healthy stage in the pc building community. However people who prefer to not dilly in the pc world and rely on dell and hp to create there limited projections of technical advancements will stay with air cooling simply because it’s easy and they don't need nor want a fast hard core machine.

Here is Swiftech stock performance -
http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom....asp?symb=RCHN

I need you guys to buy more water cooling so I could make money instead of losing my shirt. Put your money where your mouth is. :D

Damn, the heatpipe manufacturers are working overtime.

I went to a meat market and couldn't find any fish.