I see your point. I hope your line of thinking proves to be false, but it does raise important questions of ethics....

Hey Cathar lighten up - You are a waterblock manufacturer posting on a water cooling forum,(am I right?) Yet I do not assume sinister motives to you other than than you are an enthusiast.

Joe C Looks to me to be one of the original OC enthusiasts like yourself, probably one much longer than you. Like I said see where it goes. Benchmarking product? Trivial. When was the last time OC reviewed a competitive thermosyphon?

I think the point is the resources available to Joe C., aka all the review samples he has received. It is like having a bottomless pocket to buy up all the heatsinks and w/c gear money can buy.

This thermosyphon is being designed and tested against products OTHER than other thermosyphons so I don't see your last sentance relevant to anything. You simply do not do reviews and be a manufacture of a product that relates to those reviews.

JoeC will either have to drop cooling reviews or drop is product or loose any credibility.

I was going to bring this samething up earlier but decided to drop it being I don't care much for overclockers.com anyway.

Trivial advantage- there is allot of junk out there. I can buy one xp90 and 1 top of the line water cooling system and I know all I need to know. Probably I could read Procooling and benchmark without ever buying a system :)

Besides I do not think JoeC is stealing waterblock designs or heatpipes designs to arrive at product, The thermosyphon is JoeC generated, unique, original,a different animal altogether.

Determining whether the C/W bar is just yea high? That's a crime? Everybody does it everyday on this site. It;s kind of a common knowledge thing

What if it pans out when it finally reviewed by Procooling? I have not seen anything in his benchmark data competitive or otherwise so far that makes me feel like he has a credibilty issue. Maybe later if it pumped on the site I would have a problem after product release.

OC' thermosyphon has some very interesting possibilities for those who are not too emotionally invested on one track to consider another

Comes down to the same was the WEI thing I guess.

Bah, lets try to encourage innovation like this instead of worrying about these little things

Basicaly I really dont care. Its his site and his invention let him do what he wants with it. Not even a hint of unethical actions. Who says you cant manufacture and be a hobbiest?

Good, I was thinking about that at first, but no one seemed to share that opinion, so I stayed quiet. :)

In any event, any guesses as to what Joe is using in his boiler? he kinda quiet about that, Carbon Foam? some kind of micro channel? The HP link/test unit was not very good, this is the only thing I am curious about

This isn't so much about you and me and the average reader (although it could be). It has a lot more to do with professionalism and JoeC is setting himself up for one hell of beating from other manufactures. I can already see lawsuits being prepared. Anything that rates worst than his product on his site will be open to lawsuit.

They already have a claim from what Cathar stated above. Joe would have been better off not mentioning the product at all on his hardware site IMO.

Anyway I don't care to much either way. JoeC can dig his own grave how ever he see's fit. :D

Well, There is an incentive for Joe C to be honest then= he just reports data as taken and nobody can complain. If the numbers don lie the truth shall set you free

and that's a fact

I think this will turn out all right at the end. If it ends up commercial there will be other independent tests to verify his claims. He did give himself a publicity advantage, but that's not really a bad thing as long as he's honest.

I'm more interested in the technology. And this is really interesting. The idea isn't new to hardcore hobbyists but who would have thought that this type of cooling was actually this effective.

The technology is interesting. That is not in question.

What is needed here now is a disclaimer on every cooling based review that has been done at overclockers.com in the last 2 years, something to the order of:

"The author of this review is actively engaging in the prototyping, development and future production of a CPU cooling product that will compete with the product that is the subject of this review".

That disclaimer should be the first thing that people read in every cooling review that's been posted in the last 2 years at OC.com.

Look, there is nothing wrong with being an enthusiast and straddling the lines between research and development and commercialism. I open admit that I do such myself. Four years ago I was doing occasional forum based reviews of water-cooling equipment. However the moment that I thought that I would possibly be selling stuff that I made, even if it wasn't for profit, I informed those who had sent products to me that I would not be reviewing them due to a direct conflict of interest, and offered to return their products.

This is just a basic concept of reviewers, and the absolute duty of care that they owe to their readers. To do anything less than give full and open disclosure to both readers and companies sending you products for review is questionable in the extreme. The numbers may not lie, and I never said that they did, but it is the lack of transparency in light of a direct conflict of interest that is at issue here.

The technology is sound. The ethics at OC.com have been compromised. Pure and simple.

Oh - one last thing. A review/results are NOT independent if the source is not revealed.

I agree with Cathar but....
I'm a long time reader of both Overclockers.com and Procooling and I'd like to remind all Procooling readers (or tell you if you didn't know) that in the first years of activity OC.com was designing and selling their own heatsink, so this is not the first time they have a conflict of interest.
In all honesty I don't remember if they stopped selling their own heatsink when they begun to review third party products or if they weren't making enough money with it.
Joe did also act as a consultant for different kind of manufacturers in the past (I think it was something related to video card cooling or similar, but I may be wrong).
Joe or Ed did also do some interesting tests with an oscilloscope about motherboard built quality, but they stopped immediately... dunno if they were asked to stop or if it is a different story, I'm just suspicious about that :shrug:

I can't say that it would taint previous testing results, but he'll probably have to quit posting further tests if he is successful in going commercial with this. It would be a loss to the community for sure, but OC.com has been a 90% editorial site for a long time anyway.

He's spent years contributing to the community for (I'd guess) nearly free.
If the fund of knowledge he's built over time has allowed him to come up with something that might make some money, then more power to him. Who knows, this design might make it into millions of OEM boxes and make JoeC a millionaire. That would be a good thing.

I don't recall anyone questioning BillA's radiator analyses, or his motives after he made the leap to Swiftech. He was a valuable member of this forum as well for a while until that company started going public.

OC.COM is one of the oldest more respected sites on the web.

Joe sold the first real overclockers sink the pin fin Alpha's with the 60mm fan more to introduce it to the OC community than to make money he probably sold all of 200 units

Joe was the first to introduce The concept of C/W into the hardware review chaos that existed prior to it's introduction.

Joe was was one of the earliest advocates in promoting water cooling

Joe I think Likes being ahead of the curve. It is hard for me to understand how people have fits of moral certitude when nearly every hardware review site on the web when you open the webpage to review has as his main advertiser the company whose product he is reviewing.

Joe is at least is being upfront he could have made up another story and hid behind a corporate shield. I think the fact he is being honest about what he is doing means allot. The fact that if joe can bring this to market and it has merit chalk one up for the OC community. I for one am cheering the underdog

Well, from a cooling advancing viewpoint for the common user, if there's one good thing that comes from this is that it'll make it a heck of a lot harder for these mediocre water-cooling kits to justify themselves, and that can only be a good thing.

thats always the challenge, Maserati performance at VW pricing. What stuck me as most interesting about joe's block design is a plastic top with a minimal insert in the bottom some kind of copper or carbon foam or whatever. But it looks like it would cost under $5 to make.

For water cooling to become mainstream take your best design and figure out how to make it for $2.00 and you have a winner.

use stainless steel or copper flexhose and make a cheap small copper radiator ala" XP90. white box it and you are on your way to the bank,

Joe's design/cost model looks like a good one

Not sure though of the wisdom of publishing the results of his research before he has a commercial product ready to go.

This is the sort of thing that companies like ThermalTake drool over. Someone else does all the work, then they step in and make it cheap.

He said they've filed for patents....maybe it's enough to keep them covered.

You say you want a disclamer telling people that he is manufacturing HSFs and I think he has done that well enough by posting that article. If he posts some kind of disclamer I think it would be taken the wrong way by most of the audience.

You also say that past reviews come into question because they were done without the audience or suppliers knowing about his development of this. I think that his timing in telling people about this is dead on, with completion of his first prototype.

ls7corvete, there is one other option you forgot to cover in your reply.

The moment one realises that they are entering a position that can be perceived as a conflict of interest, then cease all reviews and hand that responsibility over to someone else, and develop the technology behind closed doors. Heck, it's what everyone else does.

Am still a little perplexed about the definition of an independent test though, especially with this statement:

"there will be independent tests published by a very large technology company which has assisted us in this effort"

Must be a different definition of "independent" to which most people are accustomed to. Confusing though is JoeC's own tests placing it behind the XP90C, yet "independent from a company that's assisting us" places it far ahead.

An alternative yet again to your limited response is this:

The correct timing of this, if he were acting as a true enthusiast would be as all enthusiasts do: explain the idea publically, explain why he thinks it'll work, and commence a work-log from the time that the project starts. Alternatively if you have an idea to make a commercial product, you develop it silence, keep it behind closed doors, and present it when it's nearly complete like he's done. Nothing wrong with that, but the entire time he's been doing that he's been presenting himself as an independent reviewer.

Look, I'm not begrudging JoeC his work, his time spent, or his right to turn a profit. I don't agree with the way the timeline has played out with respect to disclosure.

I've had my say. I'm stopping now.

I just think he is in the middle, between commercial and hobbiest. He has a enough innvested into this to keep it secret but still does not have enough in the works to be commercial.

How things are handled from now on are key but I have doubts that there will be enough sales to change his status considerably. Only thing to do is wait and see how production turns out.

My guess is the new condenser looks tooled to me, so does the cap He might be closer to production than you think.

XP 90 on the independant Tests are small die at higher W. While most of Joe's tests are large die IHS tests at lower W. I would like to see a comparable tests water/XP90/thermosyphon Low and high W, a range of motherboards,die Large and small. Looks promising but I would like to see the full range to get the total picture.

Homemade prototypes do look rough and may not reflect the finer attributes you would see in a fully realized production model

Patents are easier to get around than you might think. One, because it is difficult to make a patent complete enough to prevent competition without being rejected for being too broad or being too vague. Two, because some countries don't care as much about US patents.

3, because patents cost a bloody packet and people often just say they've filed for a patent when in fact they havent, in an attempt stop people from copying an idea - so the patent may never be in existance. Unless hes got a lawyer friend, it will cost him a small fortune...

I'll bet Thermaltake is reading these forums and getting ideas...

Cathar is right, there is a conflict of interest.

However... the conflict as described (by Cathar) is competitive against other cooling solutions, which, IMO, is pretty broad, but still valid. The proposed disclaimer would be appropriate.

Something needs to be cleared up though; at issue is not that Joe has used his testing (so far) to create a product; nothing wrong has been done, and no one has claimed such.

No one has reason to believe that Joe has falsified any tests to otherwise promote his product. The issue is that this potential now exists.

Since Joe now has his own product, some manufacturers may refuse to send him samples, which then skews the entire testing effort.

As for the "independant testing" of the current product, I believe that it would best be called "testing by a 3rd party", but I suspect that there's going to be more to it than that.


Many products have been promoted as being "better than the competition" but we all know that the credibility there is pretty slim. Not even Swiftech publishes numbers about other waterblocks; it's rather pointless. Instead, Swiftech has published results on their site of a " Competitive review, courtesy Procooling.com" (here: http://swiftnets.com/products/mcw6000.asp# ).

I also plan to test a few water block designs of my own, and if I came up with one that would be marketable, I'd be facing the same thing; I'd have to drop one or the other. Effectively, that puts me in a conflict of interest, right now.

If Joe was hired as a consultant for a third party to advise them on a particular design issue, or otherwise assist them on a design, that would also be questionable.

Then again, we don't know if there might have been any kind of agreement, prior to testing any particular units, which would have covered any such thing. No one in the general public has been made aware of such.

You can bet on that.

Thermaltake is already getting tooling made up....:D