Displaying items by tag: Cooling

Not all that long ago someone found out that Apple’s iPhone was not all that strong and could be damaged with little pressure. This issue became known as Bendgate… the use of the word gate still following us from the days of Watergate when Richard Nixon was the president. However, there now seems to be another item that could be dropped into the Bendgate fiasco. This is some of Intel’s Skylake CPUs.

CES 2015, Las Vegas NV - Palazzo
Out of all of the people we visited during CES 2015 Thermaltake’s suite was one of the most interesting. When we walked in we found three full suites packed with cases, cooling, power supplies and items aimed right at the gamers out there. I was rather impressed even before Shannon Rob came by to show everything off.

Anyone who’s been involved with PC building and modding for any length of time has seen their share of oddities when it comes to PC cases.  These are the first thing people see after all, and as such they were some of the fist things to start taking different forms as the industry evolved.  It was and still is a dynamic market, and as the designers and PR people put out products that they think we the consumer will appreciate and spend our money on, there inevitably come along some examples that are… out of the ordinary.

EVGA has been taking flak from consumers over an unusual design for the cooler on their GTX 970 ACZ graphics card. The problem arose when someone pointed out that the GPU does not make contact with all three heatpipes. According to EVGA this is the way the card was designed so everyone should calm down and get back to gaming.

I’ve had the privilege of watching the PC industry change over the years, especially from an aesthetic standpoint.  I’ve seen PC cases go from the beige and boring to the neon and gaudy to the sleek and subtle and back again.  Personally I prefer the sleek and subtle, adding in “large” whenever possible.  I recently got my hands on an excellent example with the Urban T81 full-tower case from Thermaltake.

Thermaltake  Technology has always had a full lineup of cases, from elegant to subdued to downright loud.  I’ve had the chance to get my hands on several of their cases over the years in all different sizes and shapes, and I’m glad to say that I’ve received a sample of one of their newest mid-tower cases, the Commander G41.

Today I had the chance to finally put the Raijintek Nemesis CPU cooler through its paces.  This is currently the largest cooler offered by Raijintek, and among the largest currently on the market.  We’ll be comparing it to the previous three offerings from Raijintek: the low-profile Pallas, the mid-sized Themis Evo, and the Ereboss tower cooler.  The Nemesis has quite a bit of size difference over its nearest cousin the Ereboss.  We’ll see if that additional heat dissipation area will translate to better performance.

Today we are continuing our testing of the primary line of CPU coolers from Raijintek.  In previous reviews we’ve already covered the low-profile Pallas and the smaller tower cooler dubbed the Themis Evo.  Both of these coolers performed well, with the Pallas being our favorite thus far.  We’ve been testing these coolers in order of size, working our way up to their monster cooler, the Nemesis.  Today we look at the third out of four samples sent to us for testing, the Ereboss.

So you bought a beautiful new high-end video card and you want to water-cool it.  What’s that?  It’s a non-reference card?  Chances are you’re tied to a universal GPU-only solution and forced to air cool the other components of the card with additional individual heat sinks.  If you’re very lucky your non-reference card may have an aftermarket version for the VRAM and VRMs, like we saw with the popular MCW60 block from Swiftech.

All that is about to change.  Well-known water-cooling manufacturer Alphacool announced today the beginning of a new service that will customize a water block for your non-reference video card.

Last week we brought you a review of the Pallas low-profile CPU cooler from a new company called Raijintek.  We put it through our torture test and we were actually surprised at how well the little cooler did.  With plenty of clearance, a beautiful finish, a quiet fan and an affordable price, the Pallas passed with flying colors and earned itself the Editor’s Choice award.  Today we have the next installment in our series Raijintek CPU cooler reviews: the Themis Evo.