SUMMARY: In the past just mentioning the words water and computers in the same sentence usually scare the average computer users that much that they avoid the two, at all costs. Enter the Corsair HyrdoCool 200 Water Cooling Kit. It offers simple installation with a package including everything required to water cool your AMD or Intel processor. Read on as Shawn "Toxic" Baker tells us the good and bad on Corsair's first attempt at the PC water cooling market.
- Extracts up to 200W of heat from a PC CPU - Extremely low noise - Included CPU water block fits both P4 and K7 - High efficiency water block and heat exchanger gives RSA rating of 0.13 - Rugged high reliability 12V in line pump - Visual flow meter confirms water flow - Non - drip quick connect hoses allow system to be easily separated from PC with no leaks - Real time temperature display in both Centigrade and Fahrenheit - Programmable alarms and emergency shut down
Features Comparison
As you can see from the chart which was ripped directly from the PDF data sheet file from their website, it looks like Corsair have the jump on their competition, we will have a look at some of the features more in-depth in just a moment.
How It Works – Short lesson on Water Cooling
While putting together DIY (Do It Yourself) water cooling kits you also learn the basics of how water cooling works as you do. If you are new to the scene and wondering how water cooling does work, you will find that there really isn’t much too it at all.
Here is a typical description of how a closed circuit water cooling system works, just like our HyrdoCool 200:
The loop starts with the reservoir which holds the water, just like the name would suggest. From there the pump pushes the water through the piping moving toward the radiator with fan/fans cooling it down as well as the water which passes through it – just like a regular car radiator system. (Radiators vary in size - simple ones that use 1 X 80mm fan or 1 X 120mm fan (like the HydroCool 200), some people go for 2 X 120mm fans and from there you can go even bigger depending how extreme you want to go and how cool you want the water to be)
Now the water has been cooled, the flow continues on through the radiator and through to your water block or blocks where the water passes through them to cool your processor or northbridge or GPU. Due to these pieces of hardware operating at hot temperatures, the water is warmed up and obviously is required to be cooled down again at some stage. (This is where the pump comes into play making the whole cycle possible – otherwise you’d have to put up with warm water which will not work after a few minutes as water temperatures increase)
From there the water flows back to the reservoir through the pump and again through the radiator for another loop and so the cycle goes on and on and on.
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