This is a closed loop water cooling solution with a very small pump

May 29, 2012 07:31 GMT  ·  By

Water cooling expert LEPA is reportedly preparing to launch a new water cooling solution called HDB120. This one comes with a very slim pump situated exactly above the CPU block.

Water cooling can be much more efficient than the normal and recommended air cooling. The problem is that, to achieve such performance, the pump must be powerful and the cooling fan must also spin at high speeds.

Users that are ok with the increased noise coming from that pump motor and with the high-speed radiator cooling fans will have to assume the risk of using water inside their computers.

Any accident with a normal air cooler usually leads to a shutdown of the system. The cooler might be mounted incorrectly, and thus, the cooler base is not touching the IHS to ensure proper thermal transfer.

The cooler might not be properly secured to the motherboard and might fall completely off the CPU or the cooling fan might stop for various reasons: wear and tear, something blocking the fan blades or a user that forgot to plug it in.

In any of these situations, the CPU thermal protection will kick in and eventually the system would be shut down to prevent overheating damage.

If a water cooling accident happens, like a hose rupture or a leak in the connection of the cooling tubes, the system might be forever shut off.

In the past half a decade, air cooling solutions and thermal interface materials (TIM) have reached such a high efficiency that we’ve rarely seen (if ever) a situation when a mass-produced water cooling solution would provide better cooling results than the best air coolers available at the time.

If the user is fine with putting up with the increased noise from the pump and radiator cooling fans, then he would also be ok with mounting an industrial cooling fan on a high-quality air cooling solution.

It may be, in many situations, that a 4000 RPM 140-millimeter fan on a good air cooler, or even two of them, would definitely offer better performance than a mid-range cooling system at a lower cost.

The HDB120 water block is just 12-millimeter thick and the whole solution will be shown at Computex 2012.

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Lepa's HDB120 water cooling solution
LEPA's Computex stands
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