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Hardware

Koolance Water Cooling Kit 130

VL writes "Overall, Koolance has a very impressive kit in the PC3-720 and is definitely worth considering if you're interested in an easy to use water-cooling setup. Performance is very good, and the case aesthetics are top notch in our opinion. Pricing is something we do have a problem with. Aluminum case aside, this is an expensive setup."
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Koolance Water Cooling Kit

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  • by mrshoe ( 697123 )
    If I'm going to pay that much I don't even want my computer to look like a computer, let alone an ugly one.
  • Slashvertisement (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dnixon112 ( 663069 ) on Monday December 20, 2004 @02:53AM (#11135471)
    Someone should quantify the effects of a quality Slashvertisement like this. How much do these companies rake in?
  • Site is already going slow so here is a mirror

    http://www.viperlair.com.nyud.net:8090/reviews/coo ling/liquid/koolance/pc3720sl/

    /. should automaticly setup the links to use coral cache >_
    Also here is the benchmarking images (For lazy people)

    Idle Temperatures in C [nyud.net]

    Idle Temperatures in C
    Load Temperatures in C [nyud.net]
  • Feh (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ErikZ ( 55491 ) on Monday December 20, 2004 @02:57AM (#11135491)

    Expensive cooling kits that come with NO waterblocks? Flexibility my ass. They should include a "Select 1 waterblock of your choice" to come with the kit. But I'm guessing that's where they make their money. Carving up 1$ worth of aluminum and selling it for 40$

    Until they start cutting their prices, I'm going to have to stick with homebuilt water-cooling. My current reservoir is made from a Tupperware container!
    • Pricing is something we do have a problem with. Aluminum case aside, this is an expensive setup.

      They've acknowledged it as a knows problem, wonder when they'll patch it...
    • Bah!

      My resivoir was made from a waterproof electrical box (it had mounting screws!) and a heatercore from some POS in a junkyard. Let's see.. under $10cdn.

      Those were the days...
    • Especially given that it is a $400 PC case [koolance.com]. The CPU water blocks run another $60, $40 for vid chipset cooler, and another $40 for HDD cooler.

      So $540 + shipping for a case that you can't even buy without the gay window in it. No thanks.

    • Re:Feh (Score:2, Interesting)

      by werelord ( 562191 )
      Its not as bad as you think.. I bought the stand-alone Koolance system (not attached to the case) this past summer; yes, it was expensive, and yes, it did not come with the water blocks. But I look at it this way; the actual resivoir, tubing and such is in investment; its not like normal computer equipment that will lose value with age. The system can easily be transferred to another system; even the cooling blocks are compatible with different processors/sockets, and can be reused. If I were to get a pr
  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 20, 2004 @03:00AM (#11135496)
    For a theoretically open and free news site, Slashdot is -- and will continue to be -- a cash cow, a research firm said Sunday as it predicted the site will bring in more than $35 billion in advertisement revenue by 2008. Framingham, Mass.-based IDC said that overall revenue for ad-links, kool-kases, and self-promoted hardware sites running through Slashdot will reach $35.7 billion in the next four years.
  • ads? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Spytap ( 143526 ) on Monday December 20, 2004 @03:02AM (#11135499)
    Wait, I'm pretty sure one of the main reasons I installed Firefox and Adblock was to get rid of ads...yet they still seem to find a way to my browser...
    • Why don't you cry about it some more? Jesus, man, this is a tech news site, is it that amazing that on a tech news site they will review new gadgets?
  • But I still like that Lian-Li one with the koolance better...
  • Just think, one little leak and you could lose your whole beowolf cluster!

    Seriously, I still prefer to keep water away from my processor wherever possible.
    • When I was in college, there was a leak in the watercooling system for the mainframe - it sprayed all over the motherboard and it was down for a couple of weeks. (Imagine a Beowulf cluster of IBM 360s :-) We also lost service for a week or two when they tried to add the fourth megabyte of RAM to the mainframe, which had previously only had 3 Mbps. Seems like small potatoes now, but back in the mid 70s that was a lot - being able to define a 1 Megabyte virtual machine let us solve much bigger math and
  • by Gopal.V ( 532678 ) on Monday December 20, 2004 @03:18AM (#11135527) Homepage Journal
    These days overclocking is no big deal for half the crowd ... CPUs immersed in cooled flourinert has made it passe to even try the basic level.

    Eventhough what I really want is a silent cooling system - I was quite spooked when my fans stopped working - perfect silence is disconcerting (Alfred Hitchcock could tell you). I want a silent, zero maintanence PC cooling solution (think about the G4 cube) - I'm sure I could compensate for the silence with some nice trance ..

    "Overclocking is easy, silence is hard" :)
    • I have a cube, and it is not 100% silent. In fact, the harddive is damd noisy :-(

      Can anyone recommend a SILEND G4cube compatible 80GB HD ?
    • I have a cube, and it is not 100% silent. In fact, the harddive is damd noisy :-(

      Can anyone recommend a SILENT G4cube compatible 80GB HD ?
      • Most newer HDDs you can buy nowadays may be considered silent.
        Try a seagate barracuda if you want to be sure (they're known for low noise level, hence the name). Any 3.5" IDE-HDD should be compatible with your cube.

        Unfornationally harddisks tend to get louder over time, so prepare to swap in a new one maybe once a year or get a 3.5"->2.5" adapter and install a small notebook hdd which are even quieter.

        • Try a seagate barracuda if you want to be sure (they're known for low noise level, hence the name).

          Funny. The Seagate Barracudas used to be the hottest and loudest drives available. In fact, they were known for their heat and noise production. Of course, this was back when they pioneered 10kRPM (or 15kRPM, I can't remember which) SCSI drives. Then Seagate moved on, and since Barracuda drives were quite good, moved the name onto their IDE drive line. To which the only real innovation was their fluid beari
        • Nice recommendation, also endorsed by CubeOwner.com. Don't stop at 80GB, as Cube supports up to 120GB natively. Seagate Barracuda 7200.7-Plu from OWC [macsales.com]
      • you can get *very quiet* though, but there's no such thing as a silent hard disk. flash ram, maybe, but that's far too dumb to get into.
    • by Anonymous Coward
      I have a silent rig for my home theater. It's an underclocked, undervolted Barton XP Mobile with no fans and no drives.

      The CPU peaks at 75C, but it's stable. The driveless aspect is handled by using Venturcom BXP to network boot XP. There is an external dvd drive used for rentals/borrowed discs, but is so rarely used it's kept powered off.

      It took a fair bit of tweaking to find the right balance of speed, volts, and temp for this chip, but it's doable.

      My previous processor for this box was a P3 Tualati
      • I have an overclocked 2500+ running almost silent. I got a big Thermalright heatsink and a Thermaltake speed controlled fan for it... even at 1.8V it runs silent (at about 60C).

        Even a little fan can do a lot more cooling than convection (no fan), and you probably can't hear it... so I think if you put a tiny (slow 80mm) fan in your box you'll be able run at standard speed.
    • I have some mini-itx systems that are silent but they achieve that by being without moving parts. The systems run just fine without fans and they use compact flash to load their OS. They they do various useful tasks they were designed for including running X sessions from a server.

      Unless you're willing to go without fans and a hdd though you're going to have some noise.

      No real maintanence to such systems. They are pretty rugged givin that they have no moving parts to wear out. Configured properly they ca
    • by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Monday December 20, 2004 @05:52AM (#11135861) Journal
      I want a silent, zero maintanence PC cooling solution

      Easy.

      Get a motherboard with a 933MHz Pentium III in it. A nice big heatsink is all you'll need to cool that 12watt CPU.

      No other processor really comes close to that... The 1.0GHz AMD64 is about 22watts, which might be good enough with a motherboard supporting cool 'n quiet. This is the way to go if you want a 64-bit processor, or if you require DDR RAM.

      VIA processors are under-performing pieces of junk that should be avoided at all costs. I speak from personal experience.

      The power supply is the complex part. I'd buy a cheapo 500watt PS, and replace the fan with something practically silent. Since you'll probably only be drawing 100watts, it shouldn't need much cooling. You might try to use it without a fan, but I'd have thermometers on-hand, and watch case and PS temps very carefully.

      If you don't mind spending a bit more money, there are plenty of fanless power supplies out there, and you're only going to need about 100watts, so it shouldn't be too expensive.

      "Overclocking is easy, silence is hard" :)

      Overclocking and underclocking (for silence) are both easy. Silence with good performance is the only difficult part.
      • One of the biggest problems I've seen is how you get air in and out of the case. My P133 was always really noisy and I switched fans out quite a bit. Eventually I "Got a clue" and noticed that the exaust fan for the power supply had to go through a "grate" in the case. A lot of fans will end up making noise regardless because they end up smashing air against the case and making more noise. So after ripping out the case grill with a pliers and replacing it with a simple wire grill, I can't even tell th
    • To go silent, Voodoo created a chassis that is all heat sink. No fans / No noise.

      see: http://www.voodoo.ca/sellPage.aspx?productID=1013
    • I bought the VERY FIRST koolance case to run in my studio because they are pretty quiet. I was very happy with it, until the radiator died and dumepd water into my PC. Wasn't so bad though, only lost a stick of ram in the whole thing!

      Flash forward a year ... My PC is overheating all the time. The *ENTIRE* system is filled with this white stuff with the consistancy of phglem (even though I used the growth inhibitors). The pumps are jammed with it and barely moving any water...

      Long story short... WAT

    • How hard can this be? Follow these instructions

      Step 1: Buy a Dell
      Step 2: Place Dell on desk

      In my experience, although horrid to deal with as a company, Dell makes cheap and quiet PCs (look at the optiplex SX line)

      my US$0.02
  • by DraconPern ( 521756 ) on Monday December 20, 2004 @03:27AM (#11135540) Homepage
    To 'Ads to nerds. Stuff that sells.'
  • by selderrr ( 523988 ) on Monday December 20, 2004 @03:58AM (#11135599) Journal
    it is NOISY ! I'm at work now, so I don't know my exact model, but it looks like the one on the Koolance main page (in black, with a case side window, glow-in-the-dark cooling liquid and 2 blacklights in the case). It looks nifty, but I really don't know why they put 3 of these big turbine ventilators on top of the machine when my CPU and GPU are water cooled ? These vents make a horrible noise, even when in low speed mode. In fact, I bought a shuttle 2 weeks ago, which is NOT water cooled but a lot more quiet !
    • I stopped reading after:

      "Other than the Koolance water-cooling which we'll get to in a minute, additional system cooling is provided by a couple of rear 80mm fans (along with the two front fans), as well as your PSU if it has fans in it (most likely)."

      So, 4 fans plus the power supply fan? Seems to me that's 1 fan more than found in my Antec 2U server cases, which I keep locked in a closet.

      Personally, I think most case/cooling solutions are next to hopeless. Ultimately, it may come down to being aware o
    • by Anonymous Coward
      I've got one too, same as yours but before they sold them tweaked out. Its definately not loud - you can hear the top 3 fans but not by much. If I compare it to a standard home dell/hp, the fans make it louder. However, compared to super fast computer friends own, well their fans are deafening (and my CPU is 30 degrees cooler).
    • It looks nifty, but I really don't know why they put 3 of these big turbine ventilators on top of the machine when my CPU and GPU are water cooled?

      Same reason there's a big hunkin' fan in front of your car's engine.

      At the top of the water-cooled system is, quite simply, a radiator. Something has to cool the water that cools the system!
    • I have a Koolance case, the PC-602 I think. It was one of the first they shipped, and I bought it for its silence, and MAN was I disappointed. It did a good job of cooling, but it was very loud.

      Recently, I upgraded to an Athlon 64, and this time around I bought a Koolance Exos... I bought it with thirty feet of external tubing, figuring I'd put the cooler in the closet or in the next room -- behind a closed door. But for whatever reason, the Exos AL is a LOT quieter than the visually identical 602. It
      • I had the same problem getting the Exos to be quite that you did; specifically one of the pumps will aspirate air if there's more than a few cc's of air left in the reservoir, and those bubbles get really noisy cascading through the radiator. I had to take a syringe with a curved needle to reach into the reservoir and back up to the air pocket in order to draw it out. A PITA, but now it's dead quite.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 20, 2004 @04:05AM (#11135614)
    Here's how the /. community can respond to these adverts disguised as articles:

    1- Do not click the link
    2- Post comments about COMPETITOR PRODUCTS, and alternative solutions. Spread focus.
    3- Contribute replies to such posts made by others, i.e. keep discussing alternatives but try to avoid the advertiser.

    No need to bash the original advertisers, just form a healthy discussion with a wide area of focus. Avoiding focus of public interest on the advertiser is the goal here.

    4- Mod up articles such comments. Mod down comments which tend to announce "coolness" of the advertiser.

    5- Profit - (i.e. enjoy the illusion of taking your news for nerds site back.)
    • by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 ) on Monday December 20, 2004 @05:53AM (#11135862) Homepage
      I agree with everything except the bashing of the original advertisers.

      As someone in advertising, I will tell you right now the saying "any press is good press" is a crock of shit. If people are GENUINELY pissed off about a company, and voice that, others will take up their cry and not spend money with that company.

      I think it is quite telling that as of this posting, about a third of the posts were random posts about cooling, and the rest were bashing the Slashvertisement and the whole slashvertisement problem at slashdot.

      Frankly, I'm pissed off that NONE of the admins address this concern of their readers (or most of the other ones). And I'm sure the reason is that people will continue to read slashdot regardles, but it says a lot about the company running it, and if there were a viable alternative, I would seriously consider switching.

      And honestly, I don't mind disclosed slashvertisements that much. There have been times when people get stories posted blatantly whoring something of theirs, and they admit it right away and don't hide it, and I have MAJOR respect for those people.

      I wish there was a story moderation option that would let people moderate the story as a Slashvertisement, then I could filter them out.

    • "2- Post comments about COMPETITOR PRODUCTS, and alternative solutions. Spread focus.
      3- Contribute replies to such posts made by others, i.e. keep discussing alternatives but try to avoid the advertiser."

      Uh, no. The whole point of these articles are to generate interest. Your idea about not clicking the link is dead on the money, but posting more replies simply allows Slashdot to go back to the advertiser and say "Look at all the discussion for your post!" Chances are the advertiser won't read the comme
  • There are many heat-generating items on a PC backplane and power supply.

    The most intense sources of heat *require* some sort of heat-sink/fan help, as the ambient air flow alone is not enough.

    But for the other components, the forced air cooling provided by the fans alone was sufficient.

    What I am leery of is that if I tamper with the airflow which the original equipment manufacturer designed for, I may end up with all sorts of thermal related failures from parts which normally did not require heat sinking

    • Koolance IS the original equipment manufacturer in this case unlike with do-it-yourself kits. Koolance cases have the usual spots for fans in the case. It's not a bad idea to put at least a couple fans in there. You're mostly just using the water cooling for those parts that get exceptionally hot. Also you can buy extra attachments to hook to secondary processors and such if you like if you feel they get hot enough to benefit from the water cooling too.
  • The temps, especially for the athlon 64, really surprised me. I recently built an athlon 64 system (granted it is a 3200, not a 3500, but that should not make a huge difference) that idles at about 28C and about 38 "under load" (I have not really tested under load yet, but the temp maxes out at about 38-39 after playing world of warcraft for an extended period). This is with a relatively cheap air cooler in a lian-li case. While the systems in ont whisper quiet it is not the loudest system I have ever ha
    • Got an athlon 3200 myself, and a Radeon 9800 Pro EZ which has a little bitty sink and fan on it. Put a $35 Zalman circular cooler on the CPU, got a plain 80mm case fan for $5 to vent out. Put that inside one of the cheapest cases I could buy that had a side intake fan. Played Dawn of War for 6 hours. 33 degrees. Who the hell needs this watercooling nonsense?

  • by mboverload ( 657893 ) on Monday December 20, 2004 @04:11AM (#11135626) Journal
    I have the Koolance EXOS, which has pretty much the same parts but this one has them built into the case.

    I bought my Koolance about 2 years ago and have had many problems. First the raditor spung 3 DIFFERENT leaks due to crappy welding. I sealed it up with some silicone I had laying around, lucky for me it has not giving me leaks since. Next, I found the part where you hook the tube onto the CPU cooler was crappily made, There was this tab on the bottom of it (something left over from manufacturing) which caused the tube to leak because it could not make a seal. I fixed that with a nail file. AND THEN it started growing algae in the system becasue Koolance didn't put enough bleach in the mix. 1 year later, when I was opening it up to clean the radiator (you have to do it to clean all the dust off or the things useless) one of the connections to the resivoir spung a leak. This was no fault of my own, the plastic was cracked and by me moving it it finnaly gave way. It splurted green water everywhere (it has UV green dye in it and it sprayed because I had the machine on) The bleach in the water semi-bleached a nice shirt I was wearing, that sucked. I used 3 sticks of hot-glue to close it up. That took 3 times before it stopped leaking.

    Since I fixed those 4 problems, it has been fine for me =) If it was anyone but me, they probably would have given up, however.

    I am still extremely happy with it though (probably because I want to think the 400 dollars on all the parts was worth it) It is running right now and totaly silent. (Mod me up, I realling need the points!)

    • by MikeFM ( 12491 ) on Monday December 20, 2004 @05:01AM (#11135721) Homepage Journal
      I have a Koolance system and so far have had no problem with it. It looks nice (a cool blue color) and seems to work fine. The case is fairly roomy and is designed such that it's easy to work with. It was definately much easier to setup than a from-scratch system. No leaks, no breaks, no algae, no problems of any kind.

      My one complaint with the system is that it doesn't come with any front ports for usb, firewire, and sound which are common features these days and are somewhat expected.

      My one suggestion, other than adding these ports, would be to use led lit fans in the top. These three fans are much more visible than the fans in most cases and it'd be cool if they were lit. Not being able to change out the fans myself is something of a disappointment.

      I'd not say the system is silent though. The three fans on top run most of the time and they make quite a bit of noise. Not as bad as some systems I have but much noiser than my mini-itx systems which are mostly fanless and which have much quieter fans when they do have fans.

      I'm not really sold on water cooling yet. It seems to have benefits but the trouble setting up and maintaining the systems leads me to think it'd be difficult for those that aren't techies. I'll probably buy more Koolance cases though as I think they make pretty good setups for high-power gaming machines.
      • Seconded... (Score:3, Informative)

        by The Tyro ( 247333 )
        and I'd add the following caveats.

        Looooong build time. I have one of the black models with the top-mounted fans, and it took the longest to build of ANY computer I've built. Like most of the geeks here, I build my own systems, and occasionally systems for colleagues/friends. Once you've built a few dozen systems, you can throw them together in record time... not the Koolance. The koolance literally took me most of the day to assemble, due to some unforseen mounting problems (see below).

        Not silent... i
    • by Anonymous Coward
      I had a Koolance unit for about 1.5 years. It was a pain in the ass. The pump broke twice and needed to get replaced. They are good about replacing stuff in warranty but the second it goes out they will dismiss you and offer a small discount on a brand new system.

      I ended up getting some foreign substance in my water (even though it was distilled) and it ended up gunking the entire hose up so I had to throw it away.

      It did run very silent, but in the end it wasn't worth it. I ended up getting a Thermalt
    • I've had my Koolance system for about four years. The ONLY problem I ever had was when I dropped my computer at my parent's house on their hardwood floor in 2002. I had just moved back home after finishing my MS degree, and was trying to move quick. I ended up breaking the reservior and water leaked out.

      The absolute best part was talking with the Koolance repair folks. They told me to take the reservoir to a local computer parts store, and I got a new reservior, 1 meter of tubing, several clamps, and
    • If you are putting bleach in your system, that may very well account for corrosion of the aluminum radiator and cracking of the tubing.

      Putting bleach in there is a very bad idea. There are plenty of commercial products based on quaternary ammonium compounds that will do a fine job and not corrode anything. Just go to Home Depot and ask for some algae control stuff, and then check to see if it says 'quaternium...' or quaternary ammonium on the label.
  • by MikeyVB ( 787338 ) on Monday December 20, 2004 @04:12AM (#11135628)

    Maybe it is true that some people over clock their CPU's more for the challenge than to save any money.

    Check out the price of the cooler [pricegrabber.com] and compare it to the price differences between CPU's [pricegrabber.com] (of a comparable class. i.e. - Don't compare an intel to an AMD, nor a P4 to a Celeron) and their clock speed differences (what you would be gaining from using the cooler). You will probably notice that the cost of the cooler is more than your savings on purchasing an inferior CPU and going through the trouble of over clocking it.

    Is it really worth it?

    • Maybe not for the initial system, but after you upgrade and re-use your cooling system on the new motherboard & CPU, then you've saved some money.
    • Depends what you plan to do with it. Personally, I'm planning to shift to watercooling with my next computer - not so I can overclock, but so I can quiet my computer down.

      (Speed is important enough that I want to use high-end CPUs, also, so I can't just "switch to mini-ITX" or "buy a slow CPU".)
  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re:dam straight (Score:1, Insightful)

      Hmmmm, I thought that's why we had the earth pin on the plug. Or don't you use that in the USA?
      • Sure we use grounded outlets in the US. However, I'm not sure how many people actually check to confirm that their ground is true. Besides even if an electrical appliance is grounded, I'd not want to be the one to test it. You?
  • Kool ! (Score:1, Funny)

    by ebelloti ( 208019 )
    Is it for KDE?
  • Cheep water cooling (Score:2, Interesting)

    by lhaeh ( 463179 )
    Water cooling can be done on the cheep as well, under $50 for the whole setup.

    The hardest part is the water block, making one isn't all that easy. The way I did it is by taking a smaller then normal heat sink and surrounding it with plexiglass. It has holes for an in and out tube in it. Figuring a way to keep it on the cpu securely wasn't easy, I ended up using thermal epoxy.

    I got my radiator from a store that fixed air conditioners. I got the plexiglass from a surplus store. The pump from an aquarium sto
    • by Vo0k ( 760020 )
      What about getting a radiator with thick, long ribs and draw copper pipe between them? Not a single leakable point from the beginning to the end of the setup (you never cut the pipe, just bend) except of attaching the pipes... (but if you want, you can pull the copper pipe outside the case, so it runs without a single joint through the whole inside)
  • If you use this, you use it for overclocking. If you overclock, you should be able to put a few tubes together.
  • I went to shop, bought Koolance kit number PC3-720, went home, installed it in my PC and you know what happened? Everything EXPLODED. Now I have no computer and must write this post from netcafe. Make sure you will never buy any Koolance product or your computer will explode like mine.

    And BTW are there any Slashdot alternatives without xmas adverts posted as news?

  • It was nice to see easy access to front fans as mounting one in front of a harddisk seems a must these days. However why can't they fit air filters for blowing in fans to try an help keep all the rubish out of the case. This results in me still having to mod the case before I can use it. If they are trying to sell a premium case it should come with air filters, lian-li ones do. Atleast akasa now sell fan air filters! On the plus side it was nice to see lots of holes in the front of the case to allow the air
  • Non-conductive fluid is easy to find and relatively cheap. Just google Fluid XP.
  • case aesthetics are top notch in our opinion

    I can only assume that the submitter was talking about a different case. The case pictured in the article was made with cheap thin metal, with piss poor riveting, and sported a cheap looking insta-break plastic front bezel. Aesthetics is all about the fine details of a quality product. This case is just cheap gaudiness.
  • koolance is ricey crap and is the bane of every real modder. it cheapens the art.

Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!

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