Whenever you talk about extreme overclocking, you can't help but talk about extreme cooling solutions as well. While heatsink manufacturers have been making bigger and better copper heatsinks, ala the Swiftech MCX or Thermalright SLK series, water-cooling has made its way slowly from the garages of the mega-tweaker, and into the mainstream. There are a variety of water-cooling solutions currently on the market that will definitely give you the upper hand in the war against CPU heat.
Depending on your budget and handyman abilities, you can really go all out to keep your CPU, and your entire system, as cool as possible while achieving that huge overclock. However, the majority of the people I've talked to on our forums and across the net are not into having to work too hard to get good CPU temps. Add to that the intimidation factor of having water, of all things, INSIDE your computer, and you'll understand why there are not a lot of people that are willing to take on a water cooled project.
This is where Thermaltake enters the arena with the Aquarius II Liquid Cooling kit. Always looking to improve the way we overclockers handle CPU temps, Thermaltake has come up with what they describe as a simple and relatively easy to put together kit that gives the consumer a balance between noise and thermal performance. A great concept, but will it perform as advertised? Follow me now friends, as I install and test my very first water-cooling solution. Special thanks go out to Weller Chen at Thermaltake for providing me with this unit for testing and review.
