Swiftech H20-220-T Thermoelectric

This behemoth stands in judgment of other coolers. You’ll need some serious cash though.

The thing about this thermoelectric cooling system is that one needs to be richer than that special kind of doctor that arrives via parachute from a helicopter, strips away his flight jacket and attachments to reveal the lab coat, strides casually in, announces his patient has a cough, then calmly rolls into his Aston Martin driven by a bikini model and revs off into the sunset. The hardcore will seemingly pay anything to get at a damn good widget, so the question that simultaneously screams for both an answer and your children’s kidneys, requires a tad more deliberation.

For a cooling system priced this high, one might expect God-like performance. Whacking it on Chernobyl at 80W, it spat out a marvellous 10°C in an already cool ambient 21°C. It is indeed almighty and God-like.

However, from such an obscenely expensive unit we expected some small luxuries, such as a fine-leather-bound manual and an easy to install retention mechanism. Perhaps, also, the manual could be sealed by the utterly awesome meta-lips of Angelina Jolie.

Not even slightly. Toss all luxuries and psychotic fantasies out the door, screaming and on fire. Installation is meticulously heavy duty, involving a power drill, grease, acrylic lacquer, cutting tubes, concocting up a coolant mixture and finally piecing the monster together. Quite the valiant effort.

Where did all the money go? We were left wondering, as it lacked all forms of articulate design. We have arrived at a theory; it is probably entirely within the carefully-placed staple that binds all 16 pages of the photocopied manual.

One observation is clear; this is the bitching Juggernaut of all that is cooling. If you can flippantly slap this on your shopping list, temperatures will grovel at your feet, as will your bank account.