Tearing Down A PC Air Conditioner
Hackaday were intrigued by an offer to review a product from CoolingStyle, called Master Cool, which is an air conditioner for your PC. It is not your average LCS for several reasons, not least of all is that it is roughly the same size as your case, at 300 x 175 x 295mm (11.8×6.9×11.6″). The Master Cool is currently a Kickstarter, with an impressive $699 price tag if you are curious enough to back them.
The basic idea is similar to your average LCS, with one very big difference. Instead of having the pump and radiator inside of your PC case, they are completely external. This certainly comes with benefits, the largest of which is that all the heat producing parts are not inside your case, nor can any heat from the radiator escape back into your system. It also allows the use of a much larger pump and radiator thanks to the extra space. It also means they can include a compressor in the loop, which would be a very bad idea inside your case.
The design is very repairable, and in theory you could replace some of the parts with higher end ones if you so desired. The front panel is also rather nice, with manual controls for temperature, temperature thresholds, flow rate and fan speed. Hackaday weren’t able to test it on a HEDT as they do not have one handy but it did work on their Kerbal machine and when the cold plate was put into a bucket of hot water it brought the water temperature to below room temperature less than two minutes.
There is one small problem with the design, unless your case is designed with grommets for external watercooling you are going to need to leave the side of your case off in order to connect the Master Cool. That said, if you need some serious cooling, there is nothing else on the market like it.
