Senfu Watercooler Unit

Performance Conclusion

The Senfu watercooler performs better than any conventional heatsink - however, not by much. You will have to decide for yourself whether the slightly better performance is worth the extra cost and the inconvenience of having an external radiator and a water reservoir around your PC. The advantages of the watercooler over a conventional heatsink will become more obvious once you add a Peltier element to the cooler, since Peltier elements create a lot of heat that somehow needs to be removed from the case.

Adding a Peltier element

Peltier elements can provide very effective cooling, but can also be very troublesome. A few points to consider are:
 

·         The Peltier element must be suitable for the CPU used. This means that the power usage of the Peltier element must be significantly higher than the power usage of the CPU. For example, if you try to use a 50W Peltier element with a CPU that dissipates 50W, then the Peltier element will actually cause the CPU to overheat, because it cannot "transport" all the heat generated by the CPU. Senfu also offers a Peltier element, but it is rated at 54W, and thus is not powerful enough for most current CPUs.

·         A Peltier element can cool your CPU below room temperature. This means that condensation might occur around the CPU, and good thermal insulation is necessary. Senfu includes self-adhesive foam for this purpose.

·         A Peltier element consumes a lot of power! You might need an extra power supply for the Peltier element.

It is hard to predict what exact temperatures you will reach after installing a Peltier element. Setting up a good Peltier-based cooling system can take some experimenting.

Conclusion

The Senfu watercooler is recommended especially for very ambitious overclockers who would like to experiment with Peltier elements. For the average overclocker who would like to push his CPU just a bit further, good conventional heatsinks are probably the better choice.

Because of it's great compatibility with all CPU types, the Senfu watercooler is a very safe investment. And even if the heat exchanger won't fit future CPUs (that remains to be seen), you can simply upgrade to a new heat exchanger and keep using the radiator and the pump. The quality of the radiator and the heat exchanger is very good; they are perfectly leak-proof and will last many years. The pump, however, was not very convincing - better look out for alternatives.

Even though the Senfu watercooler is quite convincing (except for the pump), there's still room for improvement: The water channels inside the heat exchanger could have a larger diameter. Also, Senfu could come up with a closed-loop cooling solution that would eliminate the need for an extra water reservoir. The water reservoir is the most inconvenient thing about the watercooler; if you have to transport your PC around a lot, it can be especially annoying.

Unfortunately, Senfu's watercooler is not very widely available yet. The watercooler is also available in Japan and Taiwan, and at least one company in Germany will import the Senfu watercoolers in the near future.