Photos Part Two: The Cooler
I still rather like the basic idea here, I think it’s a good one. The pump is built into the waterblock, the radiator and fans mount to an exhaust fan opening so that all the heated air leaves the case immediately.
Compared to the Performer, the Pro’s radiator is twice as thick, possibly a bit more. This looks more like a meaningful radiator and less like a toy. Admittedly I’m used to car/truck radiators so it still looks a bit silly. Then again this isn’t trying to cool dozens of kilowatts, so it’s all good.
Fairly tight fins, but not extremely so. Most of the dinged fins you see are my fault. You can see that the paint job doesn’t extend all the way through, this is a good thing as paint doesn’t conduct heat nearly as well as aluminum does. We’d be best off with an unpainted radiator, but the time doesn’t seem to be right for that in the water cooling world.
The waterblock comes with some sort of TIM pre-installed, I know from past experience that it is good stuff. Contrary to how it may look, it is not spread too thick. Don’t touch it while installing the cooler, it’s soft stuff. The plate itself is nice and smooth and flat. If you’re curious what the guts look like don’t worry, you’ll see what is inside the entire Water 2.0 series in a couple pages.
The fans are the same that came with the Performer. If we’re lucky they wont whine at low PWM frequencies.
Next up, mounting!
