Water cooling is an excellent method of keeping any computer system cool and quiet. Although the thought of putting water inside a computer may seen a little obscure, it does make sense. While the fact does remain that water and electronic circuitry does not mix well together, when done correctly this method of cooling can be extremely beneficial. There are two very positive aspects to water cooling. The first and easily the number one reason that initially sucked users into this type of cooling setup, was its ability to easily out perform air-cooled solutions.

Even after years of refinement the latest and greatest air-cooled solutions of today still have a hard time competing with the most basic water cooled setups. Given that todays high-end processors demand such an extreme amount of cooling power to operate, water cooling is the next logical step. This is not to say computers of the future will be water cooled as they certainly will not be. Processor manufacturers such as AMD and Intel are continually working hard in an effort to reduce the amount of heat their processors output. However, those that want to push these high-end processors that little bit further require something along the lines of a water cooling system.

The second positive aspect to using a water cooling system is how efficiently they can operate. For example, high-end air-cooling solutions require large amounts of air to be drawn over the cooling element. This in turn generates a lot of air noise, which is caused by wind resistance and friction. Water cooling on the other hand has the unique ability to operate with almost silence and today I have for you a system that can do just that. While most water cooled systems use some form of a radiator to cool the water, the radiator must also be cooled. This is generally done by nothing more than a simple 12v fan.

However, as we all know even the lowest fans generate some kind of noise; they will also become louder over time as they age. In order to remove the fan from the equation, a different form of radiator needs to be developed. Quite some time ago Zalman created the Reserator which was a tall cylinder that would hold a large amount of water. This water would be pumped into the bottom of the cylinder where it would be cooled. The heat would be dispersed out through the cylinder walls.

Thermaltake, have modified their Big Water cooling system, creating a fanless variant that is now known as the Rocket. The Rocket is much like that of the Zalman Reserator, however the Thermaltake version is slightly smaller and the pump is not submerged in the cylinder. The draw back to these fanless designs is that they require quite a large reservoir and this can be costly. The Zalman version cost around $250 US, making it very expensive; unfortunately the same price tag will apply to this Thermaltake version.