Alphacool HF 38 Niagara Intel Core i7 CPU water block review - Introduction

It is not exactly a secret that yours truly is a big fan of liquid cooling for the PC's processor. Literally every and any PC here in my office is liquid cooled. Even our beefy primary graphics card test system (project-x) has liquid cooling applied to its Core i7 processor. It's just such an effective cooling method, and when done right it's silent and very pleasing for the eyes as well.

It should not be a surprise that liquid cooling comes in many forms and shapes. There are many starter level kits out there that cool as well as a regular air-cooler. In the mid-range segment we see liquid cooling solutions often offered as kits with semi-professional reservoir, pump and radiator.

And then there's the high end segment. Definitely costly, sure. But it really is the best segment to be in when it comes to liquid cooling. Really high-performance, and the stuff that lasts a long time. In that segment, you nearly always make your own selection in radiator, tubing, fittings, pump, reservoir and fans, yet of course also choose the CPU, Chipset or GPU water-blocks yourself. Typically you purchase them separately.

Fact is, there aren't that many companies out there that offer liquid cooling products which you can purchase separately. There's a handful of them. One of them is the German based Alphacool. Recently they introduced a new CPU block called the Alphacool HF 38 Niagara. This new water-block is designed for Socket 1366 processors, aka Nehalem aka Core i7.

A little while ago we already reviewed their Alphacool NexXxoS XP water block (review here) and were impressed, but recently they launched this new high-end CPU block for 59,95 EUR... and we just had to check the new Niagara out...