Closed-loop liquid cooling
The cooling solution, clearly, has changed. Gone is the noisy and average-performance air cooler, and in its place is a closed-loop liquid cooler that'll chill both CPU and GPU simultaneously.
If it's looking just a tad familiar, that'd be because it's essentially a customised version of ASETEK's LCLC - a solution seen back at COMPUTEX '08.
Together with ASETEK, Sapphire has kitted out its ATOMIC card with a custom GPU waterblock (pictured above) that exists in the same loop as a CPU-mounted pump cooler and a radiator equipped with a 120mm blue-LED fan. Users should be aware, however, that it isn't possibly to daisy-chain another card into the same loop - Sapphire's barbed joints are sealed for life.
The pump-housing CPU cooler, pictured below, supports both Intel's LGA775 and AMD's AM2 sockets, with support for Intel's Core i7 (socket LGA1366) expected to be added in the near future.
Sapphire states that the pump and sealed joints have been independently tested to 50,000 hours MTBF (mean time before failure), so users wary of working with liquid-cooling equipment needn't worry.
Despite the provided cable, it's worth noting that we found ourselves unable to adjust pump speed via our motherboard's headers.
Both the GPU and CPU coolers are connected via Flexible Teflon tubing to a chassis-mountable radiator that sports a PWM-controlled 120mm fan delivering up to 60cfm of airflow at full speed.
The radiator can be mounted to the rear or top of a chassis, but there are a few points you'll need to be aware of. As you may have guessed, your chassis will require a 120mm exhaust fan to be replaced with the Sapphire kit. Trying to attach the radiator to any other-size aperture will require some thought or custom modifications.
Ever since August, ASETEK has been claiming that the LCLC can lower GPU temperatures by up to 28 degrees whilst keeping noise levels at a relatively-quiet 30dB. We'll get to temperatures later on, but we can confirm that the cooling is fairly quiet when idle, and doesn't get too loud under load, either.
With just the single 120mm fan serving both CPU and GPU, overall system noise is noticeably lower than the average air-cooled alternative.
