What with all this ultra high speed hardware, and the various (and often hilariously huge) cooling solutions to tame it we've seen at this years Computex, a company could be forgiven for throwing in the towel.
Keeping all these hot chips cool is a problem everyone seems desperate to solve, and it seems most are throwing heatsinks and fans at the problem in increasing numbers.
In Intel and ASRock's case, however, a towel may be more than appropriate. At the ASRock booth, I spotted a PC immersed in what looked like a fish tank—with two GPUs merrily bubbling away, looking for all intents and purposes like they'd been the victims of a mafia hit.
Of course, what looks like conductive water is instead a dielectric liquid (in this case, a "perfluorocarbon coolant"), so while the components may look like they've been give a slow death, instead they're transferring all that heat into a cool bath.
The project is the result of a collaboration between Intel, ASRock, Thermaltake and Taimax. Supposedly the system is so efficient that wild overclocks are achievable, or in the case of modern Gen 5 SSDs, presumably sustained speeds over long periods without thermal throttling.
After some of the heatsinks and cooler designs we've seen this year, throwing your hands up and dunking the whole thing in a fish tank might actually be the most elegant solution at this point. Plus it'll look great in the background at a dinner party.
Speaking of "screw it, go big" cooler solutions, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out this beauty that our Jacob found at the Seasonic booth:
Yep, that oughta do it. If in doubt, chuck a huge radiator outside the case and cover it in high-powered fans. Job done, we can all go to lunch.
