Zalman Reserator 1 V2 & Fan Kit

[Rob Williams]

Water cooling has a lot of benefits. First off it's more effective, water removes heat close to ten times better than air. Secondly it's generally quieter, this is owed to waters better thermal capacity and the fact that the radiators used have way more area than a simple HSF does. Today we take a look at an un-traditional water cooling system that's about as quiet as you'll ever get.

Read Matts review here and discuss it here!

 

[Greg King]

Good, complete review Matt. Zalman seems to have something on their hands. If only it wasnt so large. I assume thats something you can get used to though.

 

[madmat]

As the girls say, size doesn't matter and thanks! It's been modded as per my review recommendations only with a 655 rather than a 355 and it's happily running away like that on a donor rig. So far so good but I think I didn't go far enough up with the return line into the Reserator body.

 

[Greg King]

Ahh, nice. Any boost to performance?

 

[madmat]

Dunno, different rig, different chip. I just basically did it for S&G.

 

[Greg King]

Nothing like modding a perfectly good peice of hardware to make it better. I love you.

 

[madmat]

I'm just sick that way

 

[Mowcius]

Just read your review after researching passive water cooling setups - great writeup on the system!

With a modified return feed (or even without), this looks like a pretty good piece of kit.

I'm looking at buying this to passively cool my new low power rig (AMD Athlon II x4 615e and NVidea GT240) and from the performance you and others seemed to get in tests, it sounds like it should handle that setup very well.

Is there really nothing new that's come out since this though? - I had a look and couldn't find anything.
I know this has been updated with a new CPU block now (which can be used for AM3 sockets) but I'd still have expected some other stuff to have come out seeing as it's such an effective product.

Oh and sorry for digging up such an old thread

Mowcius

 

[Kougar]

There hasn't been much in the way of passive watercooling, no.

I may be an avid watercooling enthusiast, but I think for your purposes some large aftermarket coolers and very low-speed fans would be better suited to meet your needs and should perform better. It'd also be less expensive!

 

[Mowcius]

It looks like you've got quite the rig to cool

I'm not particularly worried about the cost of it and as far as performance goes, it's not as if it should struggle to keep the computer cool.

Well it's a bit disappointing to hear there aren't really any alternative products out there.
I have kind of got myself excited about not having any moving parts inside this machine now (apart from the bluray drive, and only a silent pump outside it) so any options with fans don't really spark up my interest

The idea so far is an 80 plus silver 220W PSU which can easily be fanless and 2 128GB Crucial M4s for boot and programs (storage of media files will be external) so then with the watercooling and some case modding I should be going completely fanless without resorting to an underpowered atom machine. Instead 16GB RAM, 1GB graphics and a 2.5GHz quad core plus two Eco 21.5" 1080p LED monitors.

Going to start ordering next week - can you tell I'm excited?

 

[Kougar]

Well, no waterpump is truly silent either, so at least from my view I don't see how it's any worse (or better) than some low-noise fans. Noctua specializes in inaudible fans, and although they ship the fans with LNA and ULNA volt controllers I find them to be "silent" to my ears at the default settings. Some people do have ultra-sensitive high-frequency hearing though, I will admit.

If ya go with a pump, I suggest allotting at least 50W for any water pump as well, as 220W is on the very-low side just for the hardware you've mentioned. At full speed my pump can even exceed 50W, and it's not a high-pressure pump.

Also a word of warning, passive PSUs can only stay passive because their design assumes case airflow exists. If you have no fans in your case, a passive PSU will overheat. Please be aware of this when designing your case mod project! Even though the PSU is high efficiency (or even 80+ Platinum rated) its still going to require airflow. Doubly-so if it runs above 80% load, which I'd bet anything your setup would do sans pump.

Two 128GB SSDs makes for a ton of space, not even I have 120GB of games/programs installed.

Going to start ordering next week - can you tell I'm excited?

Hehe, I can tell. And I wish you luck with your project!

SPCR has the most sensitive ear around when it comes to truly silent computing, I think your needs can be best served there. Try listening to the builds they'd recommend sometime, you might be surprised.

Some people have forced the passive cooling issue with modern triple/quad 120 or even triple 140mm radiators, but having a big black radiator at the top of your mod project may not be what you wanted... and only a few radiators have fin spacing optimized for passive airflow anyway. Anyway, feel free to stick around or start a mod project thread once ya got everything planned out! We're always happy to help where we can.

 

[Mowcius]

Well, no waterpump is truly silent either, so at least from my view I don't see how it's any worse (or better) than some low-noise fans. Noctua specializes in inaudible fans, and although they ship the fans with LNA and ULNA volt controllers I find them to be "silent" to my ears at the default settings. Some people do have ultra-sensitive high-frequency hearing though, I will admit.

From what I've read about the one in the reserator it's pretty much inaudible (no doubt helped by the fact that it's submerged) but I see your point. I've got a single 120mm fan on my list and I'm thinking that I'll just have speedfan controlling that based on the temp of something else in my case (so it'll turn on every so often).

If ya go with a pump, I suggest allotting at least 50W for any water pump as well, as 220W is on the very-low side just for the hardware you've mentioned. At full speed my pump can even exceed 50W, and it's not a high-pressure pump.

I think the pump in the reserator is meant to be 5W isn't it? I also think it's independently powered (if I remember correctly)
I haven't done my final checks on the system yet to see if it's all going to work nice but I'm quietly confident.
The CPU's 45W TDP and with the graphics card being 70W max the. The SSDs using 0.3W together and the other minor parts using not a lot, I thought 220W should be plenty.

Also a word of warning, passive PSUs can only stay passive because their design assumes case airflow exists. If you have no fans in your case, a passive PSU will overheat. Please be aware of this when designing your case mod project! Even though the PSU is high efficiency (or even 80+ Platinum rated) its still going to require airflow. Doubly-so if it runs above 80% load, which I'd bet anything your setup would do sans pump.

See above. The design for the case mod has not been decided upon yet but rest assured it will do good things for passive cooling.

Two 128GB SSDs makes for a ton of space, not even I have 120GB of games/programs installed.

It's quite a bit of storage but when I start loading up my music and some videos, programs etc I'll soon fill it
Ideally I'll be able to fit everything I want to on these SSDs for a few years. I'm also looking at getting a new HD camera in a few months (if I have any money left!) so that'll soon eat up the storage.

And I wish you luck with your project!

Thanks!

SPCR has the most sensitive ear around when it comes to truly silent computing, I think your needs can be best served there.

Yeah I've had a good look over that site - it's given me a few good ideas for things.

Some people have forced the passive cooling issue with modern triple/quad 120 or even triple 140mm radiators, but having a big black radiator at the top of your mod project may not be what you wanted... and only a few radiators have fin spacing optimized for passive airflow anyway. Anyway, feel free to stick around or start a mod project thread once ya got everything planned out! We're always happy to help where we can.

I think whatever's done you either have a very minimal case or you end up with stale hot air building up in the case and no amount of passive cooling in a case with poor airflow will rectify that.
Going back to the modding idea though, I am thinking of buying a RAM waterblock for my RAM but also one to modify for cooling the PSU - there's still going to be the other mobo chips generating heat.

Well I'll keep you guys updated with whatever I do

 

[Mowcius]

Edit: Doublepost