Good work chylld!
With all my watercooling experience, ive always seen the zalman reserator and been quite skeptical about it. I'd say a rather a good solid watercooling system put togeather well would easily outperform that thing in most aspects including quietness.
In my experience anything with a large reservoir instead of a radiator works well for computers that arent on 24/7 because the water gradually heats up because when it reaches an exceeds a certain temperature, it cannot get rid of more heat than it is being given. The zalman does look well designed in the sense that it has fins but on the other hand experienced watercoolers would never put up with anything less than 1/2"tubing and it *looks* as if zalman use 3/8". Waterblocks with that small barbs are known to be very bad performance wise (well compaired to the professionally manufactured likes of dangerden etc..).
The water pump that zalman uses looks very low powered too which dosent look like it could match the performance of an eheim 1048. which kinda makes sense as theyre only useing smaller tubing.
... just my opinion really... [open to discussion]
Michael_qrt, that was very interesting to read that not only your performance/value expectations are very similar to mine not to mention your wish to watercool with a portable, high performance, overclocked, QUIET computer. I was in your shoes wanting all that when i looked into watercooling and realised all that IS actually possible and not only that, i actually went ahead and did it myself and amazed not only myself but others on this forum too with my temperatures!
Thats an old image but you get the idea of what ive done in my little 3700 bqe. Ive removed the enitre front bay section for the hard drives for space for my radiator. The pump is an eheim 1048 which is very quiet and MORE than adequate to cool a processor cooling the gpu IMO is ott and most of them can be cooled passively with a zalman. The best part of my system is that my waterblock is quite old and my tubes need changing yet i get amazing temperatures from that setup you see there with the 120mm fan on only 5v. My setup is a Atlhon xp-M 2500 overclocked to 3200+ equivalent speed (the chip can handle a LOT more) and my cpu temperatures at a 23 C ambient are currently 43 C on 100% load (my comps on 24/7). The temperatures speak for themselves.
Portability wise, i couldnt be a finer example. As im at uni, i transport my computer to and from uni and home about 5-6 times a year. The only problem that i have is its a little heavy, otherwise transporting it with watercooling is NO hasstle whatsoever.
Also in the maintainence side at first is heavy as you get used to how it works but now i leave mine and dont touch it. I dont even look at it because i cant as its on the floor with the case closed.
What kinda rad setup you going for chylld? I had an interesting concept/idea of having like a square wind tunnel with a heatercore at each end and a single 120mm fan in the center. So with one single fan you get double the performance in theory although one rad would get slightly warmer air.
(assuming you're from the australian variant of sydney)
