Ice Age - affordable phase change cooling for overclockers, by overclockers
Written by Andreas G 06 October 2008 09:36

Startup company Turbo Cooling is currently working on a whole new phase-change cooling system together with Chinese industrial cooling manufacturer Taichi Industrial Corp. The goal is to develop and market a phase-change cooling system ready for market early next year. With both OCZ and ThermalTake trying to bring back phase-change cooling after the market being rather dead for some time, we're certainly looking forward to what Turbo Cooling will bring to the game.

We haven't heard much about how OCZ CryoZ has been received, and ThermalTake's Xpressar is just out, but if both companies have found that there is a niche for phase-change cooling, there is every chance that Turbo Cooling will succeed. The information received at least points to that it will have a competitive product.

The cooler called Ice Age should hit the market in the first quarter and is in the final stage of the R&D phase. Preliminary testing with an Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz (Prescott, hot hot hot) and the more recent Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.66GHz) have showed promise with sub-zero results, speaking Celsius of course, far up the frequency scaling curve. The Pentium processor managed to go to 4.8GHz at best, and with some more tweaking they are hoping to do 5GHz (not displayed in chart).

For the non-US readers:
32°F = 0°C, 26°F = -3.3°C, 20°F = -6.7°C, 14°F = -10°C, 8°F = -13.3°C

The Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, with two more cores under the IHS, was pushed to 4GHz stable under 100% load. They have reached 4.1GHz since the creation of the chart. These are some respectable results considering their main goal is to make it affordable and attractive to the large crowd.

The specifications released so far tells us that Turbo Cooling has chosen to use a compressor from LG that puts the cooling range between -30°C to -5°C. The capillaries are filled with R134a refrigerant and the whole cooler is said to measure 7"(W) x 11"(L) x 12"(H), or 17.8 x 28 x 30.5cm and will NOT require you to make any kind of physical modifications to the case your using.

The cooler comes with interconnecting components, alleviating you from any kind of drilling procedures. It will fit all current and older sockets, including: Intel Pentium D/Extreme, Celeron D, Core 2 Duo/Quad/Extreme processors (all same socket, I know), and AMD socket AM2, 754, 939 and 940 processors. The whole system will weigh less than 25 lbs., 11.3Kg.

The price? Turbo Cooling hopes to present its product with MSRP of at most $249. This puts it at the same price as a high-end water cooling setup, and based on what we've seen today it vastly outperforms any kind of water cooling setup.

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Related news:
2008-10-28 MSI spikes Radeon HD 4830 with more power phases
2008-09-24 Thermaltake Xpressar RCS100 brings back phase change cooling
2008-07-28 Phase change laptop cooling
2008-04-10 OCZ testing Cryo-Z, units ready soon
2008-03-05 ThermalTake working on case with built-in mini-phase change cooler