Will Phase Change Finally Compete With Water Cooling Prices?

[The boy 4rm oz]

Some of you may say yes and others may say no but a new future is upon us. Phase change coolers are usually only reserved for the extreme among us and store bought ones such as the Vapochill Lightspeed are generally very expensive. What is our alternative to this, water cooling but is it about to be over thrown?

OCZ are set to finally release their own phase change units named "Cryo-Z". These units aren't like the Vapochill ones though, oh no, these are affordable for the average user. Release prices are set to be around $300US or around $220Euros which makes it about...well my maths not to good but I think around $450-$500AUS for us Australians. This makes it slightly cheaper than my water cooling system (GPU and GPU+2 rads).

Apparently this unit doesn't cope too well with Quad core CPUs and this may be a major draw back for it. Also for some users it may be inconvenient to have another box under their case (same deal with most other phase change units).

Well that's all I have lol. Now it's up to you to make up your own mind.
Here is a link to the original article I read:
http://www.techpowerup.com/?43114
And the OCZ web site:
Not on site yet

[Jetty_200]

Whoooooooooaaa dude.....crazy crazy, gonna buy one?

Anything re: expected release dates? performance? stuff like that?

[Spawn-Inc]

if i ever go phase change i'm building it myself, and maybe a cascade!

[The boy 4rm oz]

I probably won't buy one because I have just forked out for my water cooling system. Keeping in mind that the phase change cools CPU only and my W/C rig has CPU and GPU. It would also look like crap sitting under my NZXT LEXA lol . I'm not into extreme over clocking so water is fine for me, you can always add more radiators to get better performance if you want.

[Spawn-Inc]

you can always add more radiators to get better performance if you want.

true, to a point. you will never get below ambient temps on your cpu no matter how many rads. and you will for sure never hit the below zero mark.

[The boy 4rm oz]

true, to a point. you will never get below ambient temps on your cpu no matter how many rads. and you will for sure never hit the below zero mark.

True True but you can also cool your GPU with minimal fuss (or anything else at that matter). Phase change would be cool but I don't need sub zero temps, keeping my CPU and GPU loop around the 40*c zone is more than enough (haven't actually used the loop yet ).

[The boy 4rm oz]

Just another update.
OCZ are planning to ship the Cryo-Z starting February 4th. The downside is that they will only be sold in the USA and maybe Canada.
Link:
http://www.techpowerup.com/?51442

[Vertigo]

Hmm ... I feel a mod coming on ... a pair of quad cores ... overclocked to hell and back with a pair of these phase changers and a water loop keeping everything else nice and cool.

[The boy 4rm oz]

Finally a review!!!!
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/132...ted/index.html

[TheGreatSatan]

My experience with phase change is horrible. There are soooo many maintenance issues. I don't think it's worth it no matter the price. Although I did OC my 3.2 Pentium to 4.7GHz