In the end, everything came across quite well. The kit was able to keep the chip chilly, even at increased frequencies. It didn't leak, or demand extra liquid or even begin raising its fan past the indoor volume. Heck, everything was perfect. But, good sense dictated that maybe I should wait it out - let this cooler have a test run with an advanced heat load before bringing in a bigger gun - something like the Prescott Rivaling x1900xtx. That's when something happened. Sure, this cooler is quiet, attractive, simple to use, and a great value, but just what could go wrong in a month?
Any enthusiast will tell you one thing and one thing alone about cooling - you'll love it so long as it works. For what it's worth, I loved the simplicity and efficiency of this system. Hell, with its ability to cool a sizzling Prescott system, and the low noise which it did that with, I had no qualms with implementing it in my work machine in weeks to come. This is, of course, where the issues came in.
While it is rare for a product to be physically destroyed here at motherboards.org, you've got to understand just how a certain Editor In Chief above me feels when he trusts and endorsees a product. Then the pump dies, and kills his prize CPU. A gaboffle like that usually results in everything being carefully uninstalled, then hurtled out the window at the highest point of the house - well, you get the picture. If the unit's pump had not died, and the system had lived, I might have recommended it in the review, but with the pump dying, and the unit causing a system fatality - one that was worth around ten times it's value to boot - well, that's just not acceptable.
Not acceptable is being gentle to the product; while DOA units like this are bound to occur in the wild, it should then be the manufacturer's duty to do something like Corsair did back with their Hydrocool. When the pump stopped, or the temperature reached past a point of sanity, the unit would first begin with a painfully loud siren, and finish off by powering down the system. Having been gone at the time, you would just come back, turn on the machine, and be alerted - by that hellishly loud siren - that something was very wrong. Said siren was also loud enough to wake you up if you had been asleep, giving you the time to realize that you'd have to fix things in the morning. Instead of all these things, the Evercool unit just died, and the processor merrily putted along, until it passed on in a plume of magic smoke. As such, I can NOT recommend this until Evercool implements a safety feature (or features) such as the ones outlined here.
