If you are an avid Guru3D.com reader that some of you might remember that yours truly personally is somewhat fond of water-cooling. Here in my office there are a lot of PCs. Each and every pc has some sort of water-cooling applied to it. And that's not because I just like to play with water (hey, any kid does), moreover it's due to the fact that I hate the noise of loud aircoolers.

Since you are an avid reader, you guys also know that we recently built a new test PC called Protect X. Project X is to date the most expensive test rig we have had in the history of Guru3D.com. Not only does it come with a Core i7 965 processor and an ASUS Rampage 2 Extreme motherboard, no it also has the expensive 6GB Corsair Dominator memory, 1200 Watt power supply and also comes with a custom paintjob that we had done by the guys from Smooth Creations in the USA (and yes then shipped back the chassis to the EU).

So you can slowly start to understand the dynamics here, this is a hideously expensive project. The one thing still lacking was some sort of water-coolling. So I asked the guys from Alpha cool to ship in their latest water-block, and after I had to delay the project many weeks I finally disassembled the entire PC last week, to insert water-cooling components, only to find out that the dual-120mm radiator just would not fit properly *sighs*.

As substitute I figured, let's insert the Coolit Domino ALC for the time being. And after doing so ... I figured, heck it's still too noisy as for an overclocked Core i7 processor, this unit has be set at medium fan and pump speeds. We want absolute silence when we measure dBa readings from graphics cards and such. So again we disassemble the PC, yet this time with a plan. We installed the new water-block from AlphaCool, and figured ... heck, if internal water-cooling is an issue, what is the best external solution that is completely silent? And so I put in an order and acquired the Zalman Reserator XT. It has the same dimensions as the chassis in width, it's nice and black .. and virtually inaudible. Problem solved. The running costs for this PC however have now reached stratospheric amounts. This better work out well!

So this new water-block in combo with the Zalman Reserator XT is how we will be able to finalize our new test PC. This quick article will focus mostly on that Alphacool Waterblock for Core i7 processors. A swift read, where we show the product, the installation, and temperature readings with a semi-passive water-cooling solution installed in several (over)clocked conditions.

It's somewhat of a light weigh article, a diary almost. Let's let's head on over to the next page, where I'll explain the water block a little and take you into what is basically part two of that initial Project-X article. But first have a peek at the new water-block as manufactured by Alphacool.