Zalman Cool Tower

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kahuna

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Oct 25, 2004
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The other day I was in a store and saw a rig running with the new cooler from Zalman. This is one sweet-looking system. Take it from me, I'm a robotics engineer and know "sweet" when I see it. It uses a 2 ft tall blue finned extruded aluminum water tower and a pump. No noise from the pump, and no noise from the tower, becuse it uses no fans. The reservoir seems to be large enough to allow enough passive heat transfer to keep the rig running smoothly. They were running the 3DMark test in a loop (wasn't the demo) and the tower was barely warm.

Any opinions?
Kev
 
The Reserator works pretty well for cooling with almost zero noise. However, the cooling performance is greatly enhanced if you provide some active air circulation over the fins. I have one cooling a 3.2 Prescott and an ATI 9800Pro 256 and it will get up to about 50 C in a warm room, 28-30 C. I stuck a box fan next to it and it dropped the temps down to about 41 C in fairly short order. Now that it has cooled off here in GA, I have the fan in the window, about 18 C outside, and it keeps the CPU load temps down around 32C. As you can see, it doesn't keep the temps as close to ambient as most water rigs do, but for the noise level, it does its job remarkably well. And for the aesthetics, it just kicks ass.
 
Zalman, on their own website, state that this set up will not work better than high end air but thats not its goal. Just absolute silence. If your OCing this isnt for you as you dont really care about a small bit of noise for better performance anyways.

It is , by far, the coolest looking setup out there IMO.
 
malfeasance said:
The Reserator works pretty well for cooling with almost zero noise. However, the cooling performance is greatly enhanced if you provide some active air circulation over the fins. I have one cooling a 3.2 Prescott and an ATI 9800Pro 256 and it will get up to about 50 C in a warm room, 28-30 C. I stuck a box fan next to it and it dropped the temps down to about 41 C in fairly short order. Now that it has cooled off here in GA, I have the fan in the window, about 18 C outside, and it keeps the CPU load temps down around 32C. As you can see, it doesn't keep the temps as close to ambient as most water rigs do, but for the noise level, it does its job remarkably well. And for the aesthetics, it just kicks ass.
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I wonder what a piece of sono tube and a 10" box fan (even on low) mounted on the top (pulling ait up from the bottom) could do for one of these?

And yeah kahuna, they are sweet looking. But they also look an awfull lot like these...

trans-cooler1.jpg
 
PsycoGeek said:
I wonder what a piece of sono tube and a 10" box fan (even on low) mounted on the top (pulling ait up from the bottom) could do for one of these?

And yeah kahuna, they are sweet looking. But they also look an awfull lot like these...

trans-cooler1.jpg
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HEY!!! What is that? Looks like a hydraulic oil heat exchanger. I'll get me one and anodize it black or a deep violet.

Kev
 
Here is a link to where I found it. Kinda pricy and it needs work to work...

http://www.srbymichael.com/products/trans/cooler.shtml

It is welded on both ends and has fewer fins than the Zalman unit. I thought they had to get their idea somewhere. As a matter of fact, I had the idea to use something like this a few years ago with a fan setup as I described earlier. Never got around to getting anywhere with it though. With that idea (the fan pulling air through an outer tube and over the Reserator) it would be a much better performer with little sacrifice in noise, especially if you use something like a SilentX fan.

-edit- That oil cooler would probably not be all that good for water cooling, but it could make one heck of a performance resevoir or two (it's 18" long).
 
What if you hung that sucker outside in the middle of winter? Think it would freeze the lines?
 
Ingonuts13 said:
What if you hung that sucker outside in the middle of winter? Think it would freeze the lines?
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Unless you were using antifreze as an addative, yes. And even then, probably. The ammount you use for a WC setup is less than that for a car and would probably only lower the freezing point a degree or two. Unless your middle of winter is in Florida! :p

Interesting fact... Pure antifreez will freeze faster than water.
 
Ingonuts13 said:
No kidding, how did you arrive at this conclusion?
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A lot of people don't actually know that. It was a basic science experement from grade school, somehwere around 6th grade I think... Some think the more antifreez you add, the better off you are. I've known several adults and handymen/home mechanics (I use the terms losely) who didn't and ended up cracking blocks and hoses. Every time they checked the radiator level and it was low, they just added more antifreez. When sub-32 degree weather set in, they found out their mistakes rather quickly.

I wasn't being smart or anything, just mentioned it.
 
Actually, I've been thinking of slapping together a 120mm push/pull with the reserator to move air up and over the fins. I've seen others who have suggested/tried using clear plexi to create a shroud around the Reserator to improve the overall cooling. At least this way, my less hardy/intoxicated friends can still be in the same room without having the window open and a fan blowing in when its 40F outside. But, the CPU/GPU temps are fantastic when its that cold outside. Plus, minimal electrical bill coming back to haunt me.

As far as it freezing in the winter, you'd only need a minimal amount of anitfreeze to lower the freezing point of the water enough to make it doable. I can't imagine though that antifreeze by itself can freeze faster than water. Otherwise, why would you add it to water to keep the water from freezing? Just my $0.02.
 
Antifreez is only effective when mixed with water in the right ratio. 50/50 max. Over that and it looses effeciency and will eventually freeze in very low sustained temps.

Try a glass of antifreez and a glass of water in the freezer once. Just make sure the antifreez is pure, as well as the water. Now mabe the enviro-safe stuff won't, but 25 years or so ago we didn't have that.
 
lol, don't put the anit-freeze in the freezer lol. I think its toxic. And I know you weren't being smart, I was just curious is all.
 
During WW2, German liquid cooled aircraft on the Eastern Front (Russia) used pure ethylene glycol as a coolant, a major ingredient of modern antifreeze. There was no water mixed with the ethylene glycol. To prevent damage to the engines from the coolant freezing, the Luftwaffe used to build fires under the engines of their aircraft.

Historical tidbit.

Kev
 
That is interesting. I wonder why antifreez freezes then? Must be the other junk.
 
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