MSI's X38 gets water-cooled
ENTHUSIASTS HAVE BEEN watercooling their kit for a long time now, but the mainstream types in Taiwan have been reluctant to make provision for this form of extreme cooling in their products.
Not so for much longer, it seems, as pictures of MSI's first designed-for-watercooling board have tipped up on the net. The X38 HydroGen board is really just the X38 Diamond board that we're all expecting out anyway. But instead of the standard heatpipe cooler over the VRMs, northbridge and southbridge, the chips are covered in large, connected blocks of copper with big holes in either end for watercooling barbs.
It really doesn't look like it's going to be the most efficient of watercooling setups since the pipes that connect the three blocks are pretty tiny. But perhaps MSI knows something we don't.
The pricing is expected to be through the roof for this model, to the point where it's probably cheaper (and more effective) to buy a third party WC kit for another board. But hey, that's the mainstream for ya.
Grab the pic here. µ
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I have been using watercooling for years now. I have a standard Eheim pump linked to a heat exchanger on the CPU and, from there, to a passive radiator. The liquid transits via supple plastic pipes.
One day, a bad case manipulation on my part led to one of the pipes being almost bent in two - severe kinking ensued.
The PC was running at the time, and I didn't notice the problem until the next day. When I did notice that the pipe was letting very little water through, I checked the hardware monitor in astonishment - the temp was three degrees above the usual 41°.
So you don't need the Niagara falls to efficiently cool down a chip. Your local stream in the backyard will do fine. A little hotter than it could otherwise, but fine still.
I have built a few water cooled systems in my day so I have agree with the original author on this one. Yes sure you can restrict the flow of coolant but its not really reccommened. I have talked to the guys at swifttech and they test out all kinds of configurations to get max cooling with real scientifc based tests. I am sure based on their newest designs they have improved considerably since the days of plastic crimps for connections to the radiator.