Story at the Inquirer here. I probably should have posted this in "Extreme Cooling", but I thought it might provoke some interest in here.
a lil overkill dont you think, so you really need to water cool the power regs and south bridge and its not really full water cooling since they didnt include ram and hard drive blocks but are those needed either?
They aren't needed but even less they have to do with the mobo. After all it was the maain thing of the piece of news there? WC on regulators'n'stuff is definitely overkill unless one is gonna take the most out of the mobo. Also those might become handy if one aims for a silent setup, has watercooling on processor and minimal airflow through the case.
and i think money wise it will be rip off as there will be innovatek's markup, evga's markup and finnally the stores markup. And you will have to take the blocks off to leak test them as well.
It'll be overpriced, but it's awesome - getting reg, NB, SB and CPU blocks with a mobo is pretty cool tbh. The only question is, what size fittings will they supply?
best use for this would be an entirely passive cooling setup (short of the radiator fan(s) ) add in some FlexXLC and an LC 8800GTX and you would have a full LC system that's still under manufacturer warranty. a true milestone, to be sure.
Some systems are BUILT to be low-flow. Don't knock it till you've tried it. Used both, prefer low-flow myself.
I personally use a third type, distributed flow. It requires some complex math, but is ultimately the most efficient. the general Idea is that the source tube is a large-diameter and then is split off to specific diameters, and at a specific flow rate. by causing a slight backup in the system it enables a parallel 4 stick RAM to CPU loop; and no worries about heat buildup from part-to part as with a conventional loop.
8/10mm compression, based on Innovatek standards and the pics. They are G1/4" threaded so anything should work. I don't know about the rest of the blocks, but the full card Innovatek coolers have decent flow paths and aren't restrictive when used with larger than 8mm ID fittings (there's a thread in the WC section comparing an Aqua Computer and Innovatek full card block: good info). Although if past Innovatek performance is still relevant, then the blocks (all but video) won't give better performance with more (better pump or bigger tubes: see Pro Cooling's review of the Innovatek Rev3 and notice that it performs nearly the same, despite different setups).
