Date:
Tuesday , October 16, 2001
Author:
Kyle Bennett
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VapoChill and P4 @ 2.46GHz

It has been over a year since we visited asetek's vapor phase cooling solution. While vapor phase cooling has not changed much, asetek's approach to building a friendlier VapoChill certainly has.

Our original VapoChill review is located here, if you would like to give it a look. As we mentioned in the intro paragraph, vapor phase cooing has not really changed that much, just the way the VapoChill unit goes about it has. Excuse me if I cut and paste a little on the technology side to explain exactly what Vapor Phase cooling is and touch on how it works.

So what exactly is a VapoChill unit and how does it work?

It is a case module made in Denmark that has a patented vapor phase cooling unit mounted in the top of it that is capable of getting your CPU to very low temperatures while under a load depending on your specific conditions. The difference between this one and the Kyrotech that you may have seen is very simple when it comes to what is important to us OCers. The VapoChill unit is packaged for the speed freaks that like to build and tweak their own systems. While the Kryotech is a full system, the Asetek is a simply a case with the CPU cooling unit built in. That leaves us free to add our own system components to suit our own tastes.

To give you an idea of exactly what this thing is, we will give you some brief descriptions of how this thing works. You know we are NOT big on specs, and quite frankly neither is asetek, but they can be found here if you want them. Here are the basics.

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VapoChill™ consists essentially of technology that can be found in any home – a refrigerator. Not entirely with the exact same components, but the principles are the same. The main component in the system is a 12V DC cooling compressor driven by the computers Power supply. ASETEK is pending for patents on this technology in USA and a variety of other countries. This cooling compressor pumps out fluent refrigerant under pressure inside a vaporizer. This vaporizer is installed on the processor. In the vaporizer the refrigerant expands and it begins to boil. Heat is absorbed causing the coolant to boil. The heat is removed from the processor and the processor is cooled down. Whenever water boils, in time the water will vaporize and that goes for refrigerant too. When the refrigerant is vaporized, it returns to the condenser where it is cooled, returned to liquid form, and begins the cycle again.

Simple stuff, right? It's just like water, only the temperature ranges are a bit different. OK, OK, OK, you need me to draw you a picture?

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Seriously, we know the words "Vapor Phase" sound a bit intimidating, but the whole thing is very simple. What we are going to do with this technology is attach it directly to the top of our Pentium4 CPU and use it to keep it cool, foregoing an air or water cooled heatsink solution. Below are some shots of an asetek compressor in action. This compressor happens to be from an old Slot 1/A unit that we have here in the Bunker that we have broken down to use for other purposes.

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Above, you see the basic compressor unit that powers the heart of the VapoChill. Again, this is an older compressor from one on the first prototype units we received well over a year ago, so many modifications have been made since then. Still, the overall unit is pretty the same in layout. The black housing is where the compressor is sealed in a vacuum. The insulated arm you see extending from the unit is the evaporator unit. The new evaporator is much more complex, yet easier to use as you will see in a bit. The radiator-type unit is the condenser that will be utilized to remove the heat from the environmentally safe Freon that the unit uses to cool.

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This is one of my favorite shots from playing with the VapoChill over the years. It shows the evaporator with a big block of ice frozen to it. I had started the compressor unit and laid the evaporator in a dish of water for about 30 minutes to return to this. Does it really get that cold? Yep, sure does.

Odds are, if you are reading this, you already know that when we cool a CPU we can generally get it to overclock better. The cooler the CPU, the faster we get to go. Here is what Asetek has to say:

The theoretical superconductor works at a temperature of absolute zero (0°K, -273°C, -495°F) and only as a consequence of the energy-level of electrons. In practice this means, that the lower the temperature at which the processor is being run, the better it performs at a given frequency.

To put it in layman's terms, if you freeze it, you slow down all those little electrons speeding around in the CPU and this keeps them from bumping into each other so much, which results in less interference. Less interference lets your CPU's signal travel easier. Got it? Don't techno geek out on me and write nasty email stating that my explanation is TECHNICALLY WRONG. We just want everyone to grasp the concept of why we would want to do this to start with.