What I don't understand is why so much heat is held in by the 'heat pipes'. I mean there can't be much difference in the actual contact blocks of air coolers and closed unit water coolers, nor with the fans used. The radiator fins are usually a lot smaller on a water cooler so why is so much more heat being transferred by the liquid than the heat pipes?

I think it's to do with the specific heat capacity of water being lower (or maybe higher? can't remember) than air - or that water is a better conductor of heat rather than the fins / heat pipes etc.

Article Quote: "it was still far quieter than our graphics card - in fact we had to momentarily stop our case and graphics card fans to actually gauge the Dark Rock Pro 2's fan noise at all"

BitTech why aren't you using quiet case fans and a graphics card with a quiet cooler or even one of the passively cooled ones for tests like this? Surely that would be a far more subjective test overall?

With air coolers you are relient on the hot air in the pipes to rise to the cooler. With water cooling the pump moves the water round meaning greater capacity to take the heat away. Not much difference to car cooling system really.

Originally Posted by Petrol head
With air coolers you are relient on the hot air in the pipes to rise to the cooler. With water cooling the pump moves the water round meaning greater capacity to take the heat away. Not much difference to car cooling system really.

Yeah that would make sense. Didn't think of forced heat exchange rather than a thermal one.

Originally Posted by tad2008
Article Quote: "it was still far quieter than our graphics card - in fact we had to momentarily stop our case and graphics card fans to actually gauge the Dark Rock Pro 2's fan noise at all"

BitTech why aren't you using quiet case fans and a graphics card with a quiet cooler or even one of the passively cooled ones for tests like this? Surely that would be a far more subjective test overall?

We spent a fair amount of time tuning the systems to be able to obtain some useful results with overclocked hardware. While passively-cooled graphics cards and low-cfm fans will allow for a quieter system, emphasising the noise the CPU cooler makes, these machines are run flat out for hours on end and get quite toasty as a result, even as they are. In our experience, this would simply lead to more frequent hardware failure - something that isn't workable with a test system like this. Our LGA2011 system in particular needed an additional case fan just to keep the motherboard cool and stop it throttling the CPU.

I still feel a bit uneasy about the quality of the all in one water coolers, so these uber air coolers are nice for me. I have the Dark Rock Pro 1, and it's great. Although this will probably keep me happy at least another year or two and by then, I'm assuming the all in one water coolers will be too good to pass up.

Surely this just shows that all in one coolers will replace fan cooling, in a similar way SSD's will replace HDD?

I was going to go for the cool look on my cooler choice for my next & the Zalman CNPS12X was a likely candidate for me but...

Seen the difference between the noctua D14 & this & for the less noisy fans on this I'd say this is the best air cooler available & it is so asking to be modded to become an even better air cooler performance wise & looks.

As noted in the review of other system noise, it pretty much voids the point of it being nice & quiet so I'm keen to find out what kinda temps I can get this beauty to. :D

I'll be using this but not as it is, a mod is definitely in order to bring it's full potential to surface I think. :D

But the pesky awesome steam sale has a hold on me at the moment but I must buy this cooler so I can get all the important measurements ASAP. :D

Originally Posted by SolidShot
Surely this just shows that all in one coolers will replace fan cooling, in a similar way SSD's will replace HDD?

People have said that before about air coolers... Then they released new models with heat pipes and breathed new life in to the system. I don't think they are dead just yet. Fingers crossed that a new design/tech will soon be launched. We still haven't seen Vapour Chamber cpu coolers as far as I know and they have done a lot for AMD's GPU units.

It is kinda big though. 1.25kg (hopefully including fans). . . So how much weight can a motherboard take? Wouldn't want to be moving my pc much with this inside.

I suppose you could secure it to the case itself somehow. That's probably the approach I would take.