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Unread 09-05-2006, 05:52 PM   #9
Joe
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Join Date: Dec 1999
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Default Re: watercooling lost its magic

Quote:
Originally Posted by bigben2k
Interesting. So the commercialization of water cooling took some of the interest out of it?

Maybe it just put things into perspective, in terms of cost (my take); It's never been cost efficient, and wasn't ever anywhere near it i.e. a decent water cooling solution is still ~$200, versus any air cooled solution, most under $50.

I think also that we've exhausted water block designs, and that we're past any new innovation.

Plenty more room to work, in phase change ...


No Ben you missed the point. its not that commercialization has taken the interest out if it, its just that few can or are able to improve on today’s designs beyond the companies who make them now. The bar was low before, so it was easy to innovate, and it was fun. Now its expensive, time consuming, and the end result is a product that works realistically no different than another already existing design. Also watercooling was effective cost wise... you seem to forget the time where you could take a $100 CPU and clock it to the level of a $500.00 CPU just by throwing $100 - $150 worth of water cooling at it. And as I said in the editorial... its also been practical because air cooling could never offer what water was offering a couple years ago and you paid extra for that extra cooling. that has changed.

There is room left for work in watercooling, it just isn’t going to be done by the average Joe anymore. Its going to be by people who work in the field already and have access to specialized equipment to design, mfg, and test their designs.

As far as phase change goes... there’s room there also... but the costs are so high to experiment, and its a technology that requires some specialization to work on (like maybe being a A/C repair man?) correctly... that its also up to others. There’s still big limitations on how practical phase change can be.
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