CPU Water Unit

The CPU water unit from the Koolance set is rather an unusual thing. It’s not a standard aluminum or copper “brick”, but something more interesting:

It consists of two hermetically jointed parts: the aluminum base and plastic case:

The base has a square thick foot in its center, exactly where it contacts the CPU die.

The water unit is a high quality product. Look at the CPU-contact pad: it’s actually shining mirror-polished:

Next to this spot, there is a groove for the thermal diode of the Koolance system. The system work mode is chosen basing on the measurements provided by the thermal diode. It doesn’t stand close to the CPU core, but rather to the side and thus takes not CPU, but water temperature:

The water stream is running between the other surface of the heatsink base and the case. The surface of the brick is not smooth under the case, but corrugated. This enlarges the surface washed by the water and creates small grooves where the water runs faster than between two flat surfaces:

The larger surface and faster stream are also the standard measures aimed at increasing the efficiency of an air cooler. But the water unit is almost the same heatsink, with that only difference that it dissipates the heat into water, not into air. The water unit developers claim that their solution can handle CPUs with up to 200W heat dissipation. That’s for real overclockers, no doubt!

The fastening mechanism of the unit deserves a separate mention. It consists of a central part and two bracer sets intended for Socket 478 and Socket A:

One set is for Athlon CPUs:

The other is for Pentium 4:

It’s very easy to install the water unit: just turn up the screw. You will never run a risk of crushing the processor die as there is a tight plate in the cap of the screw, which doesn’t let the screw go on any further when the pressure is too high:

The only thing we didn’t like about this water unit was the connecting pipes. They are plastic and look rather fragile. Koolance recommends using pliers to fasten clamps around the pipes, but warns against too much pressure. We didn’t take the risk and gave up those clamps altogether. There were no problems anyway; the pipes held on quite well:

When installed, the water unit looks like that: