VapoChill PE by Asetek

Company: Asetek
Product: VapoChill PE (Intel Model)
Street Price: ~$550 USD
Date Reviewed: February 6, 2003
Reviewed By: Jason R.
Rating: (9.5/10)

Chill Control:

Included in the bundle is a floppy and serial cable. One end of the cable connects to the PCB, and the other to a serial port. The floppy is bootable and comes up to a screen that lets you set all sorts of options. Some of the more notable ones are being able to control the fans RPM speeds, maximum temperature you want the system to try and get down to, by default it is set to -15C, but we cranked it down all the way to -30C. There is also adjustments for when you want the system to turn on, or if it exceeds a certain temp it should shutdown, etc..

Speed:

This is the part I'm sure most of you are the most curious about. How much more speed does the VapoChill give you over regular cooling?

The 2.4B C1 that I had maxed out stable air cooled at 3.15GHz (175FSB) @ 1.825v (as set in the BIOS, actual voltage was lower).

Using the VapoChill I was able to achieve a stable OC to 3.33GHz. (185FSB) @ 1.75v. I was able to hit up to 3.42GHz (190FSB) @ 1.85v, however the system wasn't even close to stable.

Being a C1 core, it was able to OC pretty good right off the bat, hitting over 2.9GHz at stock voltage air-cooled. Even though there was only about a 200MHz gain over air cooled, you really need to take voltage into consideration. Running a P4 over 1.75v is not recommended and many people have reported problems with their CPU after running for a prolonged time over that voltage. However running on the VapoChill I was able to achieve a higher speed at a safe voltage level that I have been running 24/7 for a couple weeks now. Most of the time the system is just running Folding @ Home for The Overclockers Forum team, and it hasn't missed a beat.

My overall suspicion is that I simply just maxed out that CPU, which getting almost a 1GHz stable OC from it isn't bad at all. With a 2.8 or 3.06 I'm sure the Vapo would really start to shine as it is able to dissipate the high heat load generated by these CPUs as they reach 4GHz and beyond.

Cooling & Temperatures:

Unfortunately the MSI board doesn't read negative temperatures, so when it got below 0C it would just be blank. However under load running at 3.33GHz @ 1.75v it would get to maybe about 10C. These temps were the on-die readings, which is about as hot and accurate as you can get for the CPU. The temperature that is displayed on the front LED is your evaporator temp, which idle it was able to get to a chilly -29.5C, and under load it would get up to about -19.5C.

Like I said before in the chill control section, by default the system is only set to try and hold at -15C, so if you want it to get colder you have to run the chill control program and set it colder, which -30C is the max. However, remember the colder you set it, the more power it will consume.

Benchmarks:

Not a ton of benchmarks for ya, hopefully enough to show you the performance and that the system was stable at the said speeds. As I mentioned before, the motherboard was a MSI 845PE-Max2, using a Radeon 9700 Pro.

SiSoft Sandra Scores
General Info	CPU:
Memory:	MultiMedia:

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