Filed under: Desktops

Dousing your gaming rig in oil is a technique we’ve seen from custom shops before, but not quite like the offerings from Minnesota-based start-up Hardcore Computer. Its Reactor line of submerged gaming rigs, shipping to real, live customers in about a month, use custom enclosures to dunk everything from the CPU to the SSDs in a blue-dyed, non-conductive concoction that we hope is mineral oil (it doesn’t break down and go rancid like canola). A pump circulates the liquid through a side-mounted radiator for cooling while all the wet components slide out of the top for potentially mess-free maintenance. You can get your choice of Core 2 Extreme processors, up to 8GB of DDR3 memory, and even three GeForce GTX 280 GPUs stacked right on top of each other if you have the bank. Prices start at about $4,500, which isn’t as bad for a crazy setup like this, with a well-spec’d, triple-SLI machine coming in just under $10k. We’d certainly call that hardcore — despite the gushy center.

Update: It looks like Maximum PC spent some time soaking in this one and posted some early impressions and a bunch more pics. As it turns out the goo inside isn’t blue after all; it’s just lit-up that way.

[Thanks, Havok and Jamie]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Stacking silicon into what are called 3D chips is something IBM does as good as, if not better than, any other screener. Problem is, all those stacked circuits create a an exponential amount of heat, and traditional cooling methods don’t scale. So what does IBM do? It comes up with integrated water channels about the size of a human hair that it’s calling “interlayer cooling.” According to IBM’s Zurich Research Laboratory, this is the first tech of its kind. The 50 micron channels between individual chip layers are performing at 180 watt/cm² per layer for a stack with a typical footprint of 4 cm². In other words, it works.

[Via TG Daily]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Peripherals

If you’re making wagers with your SO that ASUSTeK’s Low-Cost Liquid Cooling system has graced your memory bank before, kudos to you. Although this innovative (and simplistic) cooling solution has been kicking around in laboratories and a few OEM pieces for awhile, it’s remained largely in the shadows until recently. Now that liquid cooling has risen (somewhat) to the mainstream, the LCLC — which was featured in HP’s Blackbird 002 gaming rig — is finally moving to retail chains. That being the case, the kind folks over at Hot Hardware decided to put the heat on the firm’s liquid cooling system and see if it lived up to the hoopla. All in all, reviewers felt that the LCLC went a long way in overcoming the typical limitations present in water cooling setups, and thankfully, the price / performance were both very impressive indeed. We can’t cover six pages worth of in-depth analysis in this space, but all the gory details are just one click away.

[Via Slashdot]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Peripherals

If you’re making wagers with your SO that Asetek’s Low-Cost Liquid Cooling system has graced your memory bank before, kudos to you. Although this innovative (and simplistic) cooling solution has been kicking around in laboratories and a few OEM pieces for awhile, it’s remained largely in the shadows until recently. Now that liquid cooling has risen (somewhat) to the mainstream, the LCLC — which was featured in HP’s Blackbird 002 gaming rig — is finally moving to retail chains. That being the case, the kind folks over at Hot Hardware decided to put the heat on the firm’s liquid cooling system and see if it lived up to the hoopla. All in all, reviewers felt that the LCLC went a long way in overcoming the typical limitations present in water cooling setups, and thankfully, the price / performance were both very impressive indeed. We can’t cover six pages worth of in-depth analysis in this space, but all the gory details are just one click away.

[Via Slashdot]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: CES, Desktops, Peripherals

If you’ve been toying with the idea of overclocking your rig, you may want to prevent it from experiencing any catastrophic meltdowns. Looking out for you (and your hardware) is CoolIT, which is readying a new lineup of liquid cooling innovations for release at CES. Among the new MTEC CPU / GPU coolers is the Freezone Elite ($449.99), which utilizes both liquid cooling and thermoelectrics to drive down your CPU’s temperature and comes bundled with the firm’s MTEC Control Center to give you constant status updates. The Dual Drive Bay VGA Cooler ($299.99) is out to keep your GPU from turning into a stream of molten lava, but it’s currently only compatible with a few cards from ATI and NVIDIA. Moving on, we’ve got the universally compatible PURE, which sports a “pre-plumbed, factory sealed, closed loop radiator and pump module” to keep CPUs on ice for just $134.99. Finally, the Boreas MTEC Chassis combines the outfit’s most powerful liquid cooling device with the Silverstone TJ-07 full-size aluminum tower case, but considering the $949 price tag, you better be hardcore and wealthy to pick this up.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Gaming

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!