We just finished installing the TherMagic water-cooling unit in our game system late last night. The TherMagic system is a fully contained maintenance free water-cooling system for your PC that is designed to install quickly and easily requiring little or no modification to your PC case.

Why water cooling, what’s wrong with the standard heatsink fan combo? A year or two ago that would be a valid question that could only be answered by the most hardcore of system cooling enthusiasts. In today’s 2Ghz and up PC’s the shear size of the heatsink has gotten out of control and can weigh up to several pounds in the more extreme set-ups. That’s a lot of copper sitting on your P4 or Athlon processor/motherboard added to the weight is the fact that in some setups the motherboard actually flexes or bows up to a half an inch or more to accommodate the massive heatsink/fan’s mounting system that is required to keep it attached to the board. Of course the boards are designed to flex for these types of applications but that doesn’t mean that you’re not as nervous as a long tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs while attaching such a system.

The solution to keep your processor cool while not adding a ship anchor to your motherboard is to add a water-cooling system. Right about now you may be thing “Water? In my PC? Is that safe?” There are a few concerns with some systems that require you to use an open source of water or add water periodically to a reservoir but in the more modern kits we are seeing more and more self contained set-ups or kits that make the process much simpler thus decreasing the likely hood of a “spill”.

Enter the TherMagic fully self-contained maintenance free water-cooling system. I first saw this system while at Comdex Fall 2002, they had a demo unit set up what was made with clear resin that would allow you to see the internal workings of the self contained device. I was very intrigued by what I saw after just building a system myself and opting to use a Volcano 7+ heatsink fan setup, I could still vividly remember the struggle I had mounting that big unit hoping that I would not break the board or slip with the screwdriver. I talked with Lesley Lazerus of TherMagic and was eager to learn more about this new revolutionary system. After describing my recent heavyweight experience with my system I was handed the TherMagic copper cold plate and while it was heavy and felt very solid it was only a fraction the weight of the Volcano 7+.

About two months later I was contacted by Lesley Lazerus of TherMagic and invited to test the TherMagic CPU Cooling System in our own setup. A few days later FedEx delivered a package from EverGreen Technologies. The setup comes fully inclusive with the cooling unit and cold plate already assembled and supplied were mounting clips with thermal compound.

I removed the Volcano 7+ from my P4 MSI board and cleaned the CPU with some isopropyl alcohol. I had to remove one of my dual exhaust fans from the back of my PC to make room for the cooling unit. Most cases will only have one exhaust fan but don’t worry the cooling system as an intake fan and an exhaust fan, so you will not be loosing any airflow. As an added cooling bonus the heat generated from your CPU is carried way using the water cooling system and exited from the case never being given the chance to blow its heat into your case like a conventional Heatsink/Fan combos.

After applying the supplied thermal compound to the heat spreader on the P4 I placed the copper cold plate on top of the CPU and attached the mounting clips, no tools required. The water-cooling housing is attached to back of the case where the exhaust fan used to be mounted using push rivets. I then attached the power connecter and was done; it was so effortless I felt kind of guilty.

The system was powered on to get some temperature readings. On our 2 GHz system the average idle temp was 105 to 107 degrees Fahrenheit. Using Sandra http://www.3bsoftware.com/downloads/sandra.html we ran the CPU burn-in procedure to task the CPU. The average temperature during this max load was 122 to 125 degrees Fahrenheit. How well could we push this 2 GHz processor? After increasing the front-side bus to 120 MHz (480 Bus Speed) giving us 2.4 GHz of speed we ran our temperature program again. The idle and full load temperatures were 109 to 111 degrees Fahrenheit and 125 to 127 degrees Fahrenheit respectively. We pushed the system to its limits of 2.5 GHz and obtained a temp reading of 127 degrees Fahrenheit however the system was not stable; not because of heat but the lack of the boards’ ability to increase it’s voltage beyond 1.6 volts. I am confident that the cooling would have kept up if we could have supplied additional voltage. This will be re-visited in the future with a board that can supply more voltage.

The thing to remember here is that this system is not designed to take your CPU to sub zero temperatures but to provide a better cooling system that increases the life of your CPU and system components while lowering your overall system temperature. After the amazing ease of install and obvious ability to cool the system and exhaust heat from the inside of the case I can say that this set up is a definite winner. I have heard that they are also working of a more advanced “Gamer/Enthusiast” cooling system that will provide the extreme cooling many overclocking gamers and PC cooling enthusiasts may be looking for.

I will be taking this system to GDFest 2003 www.GDFest.com this weekend to give it run for its money on cooling my system for a full day of gaming. I will post additional results of testing if necessary.

More info at: http://www.thermagic.com/

Bill Landon
Senior Editor