X-bit labs

Four Liquid-Cooling Systems for the Masses (page 8)

Category: Coolers

by Vasily Melnik

[ 10/14/2005 | 03:30 PM ]

It was easy to mount the water-block on the processor:

It is much easier to fasten the water-block than Thermaltake’s air coolers with these plates. Nothing hinders your access to the fastening screws and they can be turned about even without any tools.

And then I tested this Rocket. Considering the passive design and the high thermal capacity of the system I left it working for a while for the temperature to become constant. Generally speaking, testing passive water-cooling systems with a big amount of coolant takes quite a lot of time. It may take several hours for the temperature to stabilize on the same level, and this time also depends on such parameters as the ambient temperature and the CPU load. That’s why I left the Thermaltake Rocket unattended and returned in an hour to find a small lake around the testbed. The hard drive was definitely on the verge of becoming a small steamboat. The guilty party was quickly exposed – it was the pump, or rather its low-quality clamps the manufacturer fixed the plugs on the expansion tank outputs with:

The plugs were made of thin and stiff rubber and the plastic fittings were not well finished, so both expansion tank outputs gave a leak.

The traces of the leakage are obvious and the system lost some of the coolant. Serious problems could have occurred with the hardware in our testbed if I really left the system for three or four hours unattended. As for the solution, you should either replace the clamps right after the purchase or do as I did – I took a piece of the enclosed pipe and sealed these openings without any clamps. The pipe, unlike the black plugs, is rather soft and takes some effort to be put on. The fittings become absolutely waterproof with it. The system lost a little less than one quarter of the coolant in the accident:

This is going to affect a little the resulting efficiency of the system – we should keep this fact in mind when we will compare the results.