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Swiftech have just released their Q (as in Quiet) Power water-cooled midtower suited for high end workstations as well as entry level servers. The heart of the setup is the Swiftech MCW462U waterblock. A total of 4 120 mm fans (two intake, two exhaust fans) provide enough air circulation inside the case as well as airflow through the radiator mounted on the case's back to keep even the hottest CPU lukewarm. Building on the almost proverbial quality of Swiftech components, the Q Power is an extremely interesting solution for any high demand setup, especially in thermally compromised environments or where low noise is required.

Swiftech Q Power
This sneak preview of the rear end of the Q Power case already reveals what the whole thing is all about: Watercooling

Cooling has come a long way in the past few years. Air cooling has gotten better and better, however, it has gotten fierce competition in the form of liquid or water cooling. Some 4-5 years ago, water cooling was more a hobby of the extreme overclocker than a mainstream venue and we had heated discussions about the optimal transfer media, ranging from glycol to oil and different purity gradients of water. Regarding the latter, the main idea was that distilled water, which is electrically non-conductive could be a safety net for a potential leak. Alas, distilled water is also chemically extremely reactive and dissolves most metals until it reaches a chemical equilibrium. This means that not only the container is compromised but also that after the metals have been dissolved, the water carries enough ions to become highly conductive. In other words, distilled water is exactly the opposite of an optimal cooling media but I digress ..

As mentioned, cooling has come a long way but so have CPUs. The thermal dissipation of today's high end CPUs is somewhere in the vicinity of a small space heater and requires extremely efficient cooling devices. With air cooling, the limiting factors are the overall surface to the outside media, the exchange rate of the media (rate of air flow) as well as overall design criteria as fin pitch, height and thermal conductance coefficient. Other factors are defined by the surrounding platform as there are spacing of capacitors or other obtrusions on the mainboard that will increase the amount of back pressure and potentially cause the best heatsink to malfunction because of environmental obstacles to the airflow.

While liquid cooling systems are inherently more efficient than air cooling, they also have the advantage of being completely ignorant of the factors posed upon them by the mainboard layout. That is, a waterblock couldn't care less if there were any capacitors in its surround since the caloric delta is generated remotely in either a reservoir or else in the form of a radiator. Still, the design of such a unit is not that easy and requires extra safety precautions to avoid spillage. Another advantage is that the CPU does not go through rapid changes in temperature like in the case of air cooling. Once a steady state of the cooling system has been reached, the CPU temperature does change only marginally, regardless of whether the processor is idle or under load.

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