Water cooling has come a long way in past few years. When it came out originally, it was aimed at the extreme overclocker who needed the best overclock out of their systems without spending more than is practical to cool the system. But recently with the higher heat output of processors, water cooling has become more of a mainstream product, but is still considered at the high end of the cooling spectrum.
The principal behind water cooling is simple and has been proven to work on other devices. Cars have used such a device for many years, with your radiator cooling the liquid, usually with a combination of antifreeze and water to keep the engine cool. We are also considered a water cooled device though not in the exact same way that most water cooling systems work.
The basic design of a water cooling system is that it has a pump for the water, which moves the water through the system so that the water is not stagnant. Then there is a reservoir which is where the water enters the system, and also where the extra water collects to move on to the next part of the system. Then there is the water block, which is the only thing that actually touches the CPU, and uses its design to draw the heat produced by the CPU to the water, which is then moved using the pumps force. Now the warm to hot water has to cool down, so it is sent to a radiator, which acts much like the ones on your car, by moving the water over a large area and cooling it with a large fan. Then the water goes back to the pump and starts the cycle all over again.
As water cooling comes down towards the standard user, the price and usability also has to improve. Not many people want to spend multiple hours on a water cooling system that looks bad, takes up a large amount of room outside your case, and has its pieces purchased separately. So a small compact system has become a option many are looking for, though this can take away one of the main advantages of water cooling, its quiet sound levels while still cooling extremely well.
Crossover Water Cooling System WS5 Mission II
Today we will look at one such system that attempts to provide the total solution to the standard user, while not providing a unit so big that it requires you to have it outside your case. Does it succeed in this, or is it a large cooler? To look at some specifications for the water cooler, you can look at either (warning bad translation), or . Lets see a couple of pictures of the system to see what it looks like.
The box is full of pieces that you need, whether to install this water cooler on a PIV or an Athlon. Here is a quick list of what you get:
- Pump/reservoir
- Radiator
- Water block
- 2m of Flexible hoses for connecting the pieces together
- Mount pieces for Pentium IV with LED's for acrylic brackets
- Socket mounting pieces for Athlon
- Socket hole mounting for the Athlon
- A multitude of screws for mounting purposes
- Manual
As first impressions are sometimes the longest lasting ones, how did the packaging look? The outside of the box was fairly simplistic with only the Crossover logo standing out. Otherwise the information about the water cooler was there, which model and how to basically connect it. Upon opening the box we saw two big boxes as well as a smaller one and a couple of bags. Inside the big boxes were the pump and radiator, while the smaller box contained the water block. Also on top of the boxes was the manual. Underneath the boxes was a foam piece that had underneath it the clear plastic hoses for the connecting tubing.
The manual itself was, how can I put it, very bad. The manual was an obvious attempted translation to English, and did not do that well. The manual is only about 6 pages long, and doesn't have that much in the way of information. The only parts of the manual I was able to understand pretty clearly was the images on the system itself. In fact the front page of the manual states "When using, check leaking water out", which would probably be "Check for water leaks when using". The original website for this system wasn't much more in the way of help as it was also a bad translation, and actually finding the product was very hard. This is something I would really like fixed with this system, as the target market for this cooler might not be able to understand right away how to assemble the system, I know I wasn't.
The water block itself looks very good, with a thin layer of blue protective tape over its base so that the copper base is not scratched up in transit. The entire water block comes in at a hefty 600g. This is basically because the entire water block is made up of copper, which is used to improve the thermal transfer from the CPU to the water inside the water block. The inside of the water block is nice and simply designed as you can see from the above picture. The design has the water flow in a spiraling pattern with the water going in directly in the middle and exiting out the edge of the spiral.
The radiator is rather small compared to some radiators that other water cooling packages come with. The size of the radiator is 80*80*30mm, not including the heat pipes that come out the side of the radiator. The radiator itself looks like it could be a regular heatsink on its own, instead of a radiator, as it would fit most Athlon and Pentium IV motherboards. It has a striking similarity in design to the heat pipe based heatsink that Scott reviewed recently.
