VapoChill SE
VapoChill Premium Edition: First look
Those of us who like to push our equipment to the absolute limit will sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that we have the highest CPU MHz possible. After all, nothing quite gains you kudos in the overclocking world as having the fastest processor in town.
As you may know, the colder you get a processor, the further you can usually go. Classically, we've used air cooling, extreme air cooling at that, to achieve the best possible results. For the majority of us, that's fine, but for some, the need for ultimate speed gives rise to more radical cooling.
Obtaining temperatures below ambient is something that air cooling cannot really achieve with any kind of success. Watercooling, on the other hand, does a slightly better job if you can keep the said water cool enough. What's needed for some real heavy-duty cooling, however, is a practical system that allows you to keep the CPU near or below freezing.
VapoChill, a name synonymous with extreme cooling, use a phase-change approach to their cooling. The idea is quite simple. It works on the principle of your home freezer. Put simply, we have compression, condensation, throttling, and evaporation of R134a refrigerant, all housed in a neat package. The idea is to take the heat away from the CPU via the use of this refrigerant through an evaporator (R134a changes from liquid to vapour in absorbing the heat, re-liquify the R134a through compression, and remove the resulting heat from phase-changing by condensation. We go from liquid - vapour - liquid). The idea being that the liquid R134a keeps the CPU as cold as possible.
To achieve the best possible results from phase-change cooling, we need to keep the refrigerant as cool as possible when it is in contact with the CPU, or, to put it another way, we need to keep the evaporator as cold as possible by the use of highly-compressed R134a refrigerant.
The original VapoChill, a favourite amongst die-hard overclockers who wanted their PCs to resemble standard PCs and not some mad professor's experiment, used this phase-change cooling to great effect. Time has caught up with us such that modern CPUs, running at multiple GHz, put out far more heat than the VapoChill was perhaps designed for.
With perhaps an eye towards modernising their own product, and making it appeal to a greater number of potential buyers, Asetek, have decided to update their successful VapoChill cooling system. I'll let the pictures do the talking.
I'd personally been a little apprehensive of owning a VapoChill. Sure, it would allow me to push my processor further than conventional cooling, but it just didn't tickle my style buds. The revised VapoChill fascia is a quantum-leap away in style terms from the older build. It feels sturdy, well-made, and pretty impressive in the flesh.
Once we remove the side and top panels, we see that the compression and condensation functions remain largely unaltered. The devil is in the details.
The newer, upgraded compressor, now known as BD50F, is the beating heart of the new VapoChill. To get things cooler, Asetek decided on upgrading the compressor, thus allowing for cooler R134a refrigerant to be pumped down to the evaporator. We will in our review be comparing the BD35 with this unit, there is a 90$ price difference between the Premium and standard edition Vapochills
The compressor is kept relatively cool by the large Sunon fan supplied with the unit It also helps the condensation stage.
Phase-change cooling is a relatively complicated affair. You need a capable monitoring mechanism. Asetek have decided to upgrade the Chillcontol unit, too. The unit keeps the system in stasis until the desired evaporator temperature has been established. It also serves as a comprehensive monitoring function.
Speaking of the all-important evaporator, here it is. Extremely cold refrigerant (in a liquid state) is pumped into the evaporator. The CPU's heat is absorbed by the refrigerant turning from super-cool liquid to vapour.
To show you just how cool it can get, here is what the Chillcontrol reckons is the evaporator's temperature when keeping a 3GHz / 1.55v Pentium 4 cool when idling in Windows. Note that the temperature isn't that of the CPU itself, merely that of the evaporator's head. -29.5c seems pretty cold to me.
In terms of cooling, this Premium Edition, equipped with a more powerful compressor, is able to outperform its stablemate at all CPU heatloads. It really comes into its own as we raise the wattage to around the 150w mark, though.
We've had a very brief look at what R134A-cooling is all about, how Asetek envisage their newer VapoChills to look and perform like. We'll carry out an in-depth analysis of this new Vapochill's housing system, compression function, and overall performance in a full review on the 23rd September.
Without giving the whole game away, this may be of some interest to you.
All will be revealed in two weeks.
