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+.