Zalman Reserator 2 Fanless Water Cooling

[Rob Williams]

Sporting a longer box design rather than the slender tower, the Reserator 2 provides far more surface area than its older brother. With Matt’s opinion of the first generation product in mind, we are now set to work with the second round of liquid cooling from Zalman. Can the new design improve on performance over the original product? Let’s take a closer look to find out.

You can read Gregs review here and discuss it here!

I was hoping to get a Reserator 1 for my Asus T3-P5G965 but im not sure if it fits the mobo yet! Its younger brother takes up more space and wouldnt look as nice as a huge tower next to my HDTV.

You should have put a comparison between your stock cooling and the reserator too! Not bad overall, plenty of pics!

[Greg King]

A stock comparison was considered. I was of the opinion that you really can't compare them outside of cooling, which is what it is, a cooler, because I personally find the ability to cool your PC at dead silence much more impressive. I can however retest with the stock cooler and report back if it would help anyone.

[Jakal]

Beautiful product Greg, both in form and function. It's size is impressive, too. This has got to be the epitome of silent water cooling. Plenty of surface area to dissipate heat, sufficient pump, quick disconnects. A really good piece of equipment. Zalman impresses once again.

The size and price might be one of the turnoffs for most people, as you've covered. I, personally, wouldn't know where to put it . Like unreg'd mentioned, a comparison to another cooler, even if it wasn't stock, would be good to see. Good job.

[madmat]

Interesting that they added a relay, would've been nice to see that in the V 1.2 that I reviewed a while back. Great read BTW, nice to see that it does the job well. One suggestion, the stock coolant at the ratio that Zalman recommended ended up gumming up the D5 I had plumbed it with, you might consider backing the ratio down a bit. They had it at 2 liters of water to one half liter of coolant, I'd try half that the next time. It should still be enough to kill any galvanic corrosion and not be so gooey.

[Greg King]

Originally Posted by Jakal

Like unreg'd mentioned, a comparison to another cooler, even if it wasn't stock, would be good to see. Good job.

The only recent coolers that I have used are CoolIT's Freezone and Eliminator. Both use peltiers and cool to sub-ambient temps. That wouldn't have been a fair comparison. In the future though, more comparisons will be included.

Please get this man a stock cooler to run comparison numbers against. Without a baseline, the temp numbers given don't hold a whole lot of substance. I would think that should be fairly standard fair for any site that wants to be taken seriously. Don't get me wrong... I enjoy reading the articles here... but without a baseline then the review is really only half done.

Hi! I have the original Reserator 1 model and it does cool well......... at first. If I run my computer all day, the water continues to get warmer and warmer until eventually, I must shut down the computer and let everything, including the water, cool down. So, it would be nice to read a review on the all day usage of the new model to see if it keeps the water at a certain temperature, or keeps rising like the old models do. Zalman does build a quality product. Mine is just a couple months away from two years old and it's run flawlessly the whole time. I've added water (distilled) to it only twice. Also, like a couple other posters, I like the looks of the original blue one. The newer black model and this latest re-engineered one just don't stand out like the blue model.

[Greg King]

While I didn't even think to include it in the review, the Reserator 2 has been running non stop since it was installed. While I don't to it regularly, there have been many days where I would get up in the morning and set my machine to Fold@Home all day while I was at work. Even with 2 instances running, the temps never got out of hand. With the second revision, there is just so much surface area to dissipate the heat away, I don't think the water has all that much of a chance to get uncomfortably warm. With my ambient temps around 75 degrees Fahrenheit, it helps out the cooler quite a bit as well.

[madmat]

The ambient temp is 75C? You live in hell (too)?

[Greg King]

Originally Posted by madmat

The ambient temp is 75C? You live in hell (too)?

Yes, well it would appear that I made a mistake. As much as it actually can be hell, I meant Fahrenheit. Perhaps I just said Celsius because it's easier to spell. Who knows.

[madmat]

So, I'm alone then...bummer, I was hoping for company

[Greg King]

Haha. Sorry I can't help

[Kilamon]

One would like to think that if you're reading about a water cooling system, there's no need to see stock numbers. You should know what the stock numbers are by heart.

Too bad there aren't water cooling options for hard drives. My raid gets really, really warm and I do all that I can to keep it cool. Maybe it's just me. I know that the drive's specs say operating temp is a max of 60C but I try to maintain 40C.

[Greg King]

There are water cooling solutions, most notably by Koolance, but they aren't very practical. When I had a pair of Raptors, they would run a bit warm but never to the point I was worried. I goot 120mm fan has done me well in the past and continues to do so.