Asetek Vapochill Lightspeed

Vapour phase change cooling in a tidy little silver box.

Sometimes the need for extreme cooling arises, and you know that neither air or water will do the job sufficiently. More extreme methods are required – from Peltiers to the insane levels of submersion – or in the case of the Vapochill Lightspeed – vapour phase change cooling.

Previously only found attached to their cases, Asetek’s cooling section has now been separated and is available as two separate parts – one for 754/939/940 and 478 systems, the other for those who are 775 blessed.

Vapour phase change is the same tech found in your humble fridge – a refrigerant (in gas form) passes through a compressor, increasing the pressure level, temperature and the dew point (the level at which vapour condenses into liquid). Excess heat created in this process is emitted as the gas passes through/past the condenser (or radiator), and the gas becomes a liquid as its temperature drops below its artificially high dew point (hence phase change).

The liquid then passes through a capillary tube, lowering the pressure and hence the temperature, and is then pushed on to the evaporator at a super cold level (in this case, the block which has direct contact with the CPU). The CPU is cooled by the cold liquid, and the vapour created as a by product of the liquid hitting the CPU and being exposed to ambient temperature for a certain amount of time is then collected by the compressor and the process starts all over again.

Apart from attaching the cooling pipe/slug to the CPU, a control board also needs to be installed between the power/reset switches on your motherboard and the respective cables from your case, delaying the startup of your system proper until the Vapochill’s evaporator has hit a predefined temperature. The control board (‘ChillControl’) also allows temperature reporting to the Vapochill software from within Windows (achieved through a direct connection to a USB header on the motherboard), feeds information to the front mounted LCD and can manage the loudness of the fans operating from within the unit, and up to two extra fans and five extra temperature sensors that you may wish to plug in. Mind you it does require a molex connector to run, so make sure you’ve got one spare.

The software is well featured, with not only throttles for all the fans but temperature settings for when to start the PC, when to warn and when to shut it down.

Hooking it up to the Presler cored 955 EE, on first boot up with the fans set at 21% speed, the unit was running at -38° C, bringing the CPU down to -17° at idle and making a quiet fridge style hum. We then ran both cores at 100% for ten minutes using Stress Prime 2004, after which the temperature came in at a massive -1°. Turning the fans up to 100% took off another 3° at idle and 4° at load, but unfortunately also raised the volume considerably.

Of course this lead to our curiosity about the overclockability of a Presler core with such a cooling system – how far could we push it with the Vapochill? 4.96GHz stable. Woo!

If you can stand working or sleeping with a fridge noise in the same room, can afford the big financial layout, and absolutely need the most out of your CPU without having to delve to the levels of freaky homebrew jobs, the Vapochill Lightspeed is for you.