The standard coolers recommended by NVIDIA for its latest GTX 200 series might not prove efficient enough for those of you who like too keep things quiet inside you PC rig. Since water coolers are becoming more and more affordable, maybe it’s time we made the jump for these improved solutions.

Among the first to provide water cooling solutions for NVIDIA’s new generation is the German PC cooling specialist Aqua-Computer with their aquagrafx G200 water block.

According to Aqua-Computer, the cooler is produced from highly purified electrolysis copper and provides an extremely high cooling capacity. The block comes with 20mm broad channels inside, which provide an extremely low flow resistance. The copper plate of the cooler is around 8 mm thick and weighs 660 g. The German company further explains that the block itself is CNC milled from a solid raw part of almost 2.2 kg of copper.

The GPU area is covered by an optimized cooling surface which offers around 25% more surface than the one used by other companies. The block covers all the vital components of the card, including the GPU, video chip, RAMs and voltage regulators. Altogether, 17 components on the graphics card are cooled by the aquagrafx G200. Aqua-Computer also specifies that the water block connections are G 1/4".

The aquagrafx G200 will cost around 94.90 Euros and it will be available starting June 25 2008.

Summer is almost here, and if you're not living in a cold area, or you're not using conditioned air, your computer may have to be prepared for another hot season, especially if you're overclocking your CPU. Since installing air conditioning equipment may not be that good for your health, grabbing the beauty below and installing it in your computer is a much better idea, in my opinion!


Coming from Arctic Cooling, the Freezer XTREME is a cooler measuring 130 (L) x 100 (W) x 131 (H) mm, that features no less than 102 aluminum fins, four double-sided copper heatpipes, and a 120mm fan placed in the middle of this great twin tower design. The fan spins between 800 and 1500RPM, so you won't have to pump up the music's volume when the CPU is at full load. Depending on the fan's speed, the air flow can go between 35.7 to 60.7 m3/h.

With a weight of 608 grams, the Freezer XTREME is compatible with virtually all LGA 775, Socket 939, AM2 and AM2+ processors, since Arctic Cooling claims that 160 Watts is the cooling capacity available, but no processor for these sockets was able to reach that far yet.

At last, you should know that this new cooler arrives with preapplied MX-2 thermal compound, being backed up by a lifetime warranty(I guess that doesn't cover the fan too...), but it's not yet available. Expected to arrive in July, the Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme CPU cooler will be priced around $40, so there's plenty of time to set aside those money...just be sure not to fry your CPU until then!

Summer is getting near, and apart from going to the beach and hunt some bikini babes, you should also be careful with your computer's cooling. In fact, if you don't have any beach close, and all the hot chicks in the area are nowhere to be seen, grabbing a coloured cooler for your computer should do the trick, as long as seeing a nice piece of hardware instead of nature's beauties is OK with you...


The Thermaltake X5 Orb FXII, pictured above, is a cooler measuring 140mm x 84 mm, with a weight of 591 grams, made from an aluminum heatsink with no less than 140 fins and a 112mm fan. The fan works at 1800RPM, and the included LED display function shows the temperature in both Celsius and Fahrenheit. That's a pretty cool feature, although if you don't have a transparent case, it's virtually useless.

Expected to arrive in red, blue, gold, black and green, the X5 Orb FXII can be easily used with LGA775 and AM2/AM2+ processors, but pricing is still a secret. Anyway, since it's scheduled to arrive in stores in early June, or even by the end of this month, if we get lucky, I guess our patience won't be tried really hard this time...

Currently, the video card is probably the hottest piece of hardware in most brand new computers, and I am not talking about the good-looking coolers or the LEDs added by some producers to their cards' fans. The problem is heat. Obviously, this becomes a really dangerous issue for those overclocking their cards, so today I will tell you about a custom cooling solution designed to do its job well, and to look great, at the same time!


The Akasa Vortexx NEO VGA cooler(pictured above), sporting two copper heatpipes, is a SLI and Crossfire ready cooling system that features a 70 mm sleeve bearing fan working at 2500rpm. Despite this, Akasa claims the Vortexx NEO is a very quiet cooler, and the 290 gr heavy system can be easily installed by anyone, thanks to the fact its design allows tool-free installation.

The list of compatible cards is pretty long,and starts about two graphics cards generations ago, with the Radeon X1800, X1900, continues with the Radeon HD 2600 XT (GDDR4), 2900 Pro/XT, and arrives to the latest HD 3850, HD 3870 cards from ATI, while the Nvidia boards supported include the "oldies" GeForce 6800, 7800, and 7900, as well as the fresh G92-powered 8800 GT and GTS 512, plus the 9600 GT and 9800 GTX.

Solid state drives are slowly becoming a part of the IT landscape that won't make anyone go "Wow!", but solid state cooling is a very interesting and new concept, and since it looks to be a much better option for the future than MSI's powerless cooler, I am sure you'll also find this topic something worth checking out, as I do...


First, there was simply a processor inserted in its slot. Then, as speed increased, a heatsink was added. Later, this heatsink got a fan on top to help keeping the temperatures low. As speed and heat produced by processors kept going up, heatsinks with heat pipes were introduced, while using new materials to manufacture the heatsinks, such as copper. Now, we finally got a solit state fan!

Dan Schlitz and Vishal Singhal, engineers at Thorrn Micro Technologies Inc., have developed a cooling sistem that works similarly to domestic air purifiers. As far as we know, this fan is more efficient than air fans 35 times its size, operating thanks to the corona wind phenomenon.

This invention, tagged as "One of the most significant advancements in electronics cooling since heat pipes. It could change the cooling paradigm for mobile electronics.", is able "to cool a 25-watt chip with a device smaller than 1 cubic-cm and can someday be integrated into silicon to make self-cooling chips," but I am sure we'll have to wait at least a few years until the solid state cooler becomes available for everyone's use...