Despite reduction in manufacturing size, the amount of power modern CPUs require continues to increase. The end-result is that more heat is being dissipated off smaller surfaces and this requires the CPU coolers to perform that much better, especially when overclocking a hot AMD XP or Pentium 4. This makes water-based cooling more and more attractive -- Enter Asetek WaterChill.

Watercooling has been around for quite a while now and even the nether regions of Europe are beginning to pay some attention to it. This summer has been particularly hot in central and western europe and has seen many people coming home from their offices to face temperatures in the > 30C (90F) range. Any enthusiast will know what this means for the heat-dissipating components in many pre-built PC systems. I work in an office full of PCs with CPU temperatures hitting 70C.

Air-conditioning is not very common here as this is the first summer in a long time that has seen any real need for it. This summer has also seen watercooling equipment for PCs selling like beer at the October-festival in Munich.

Suffice it to say that people are interested in watercooling and don't want to fuss around with lots of complicated parts but rather are looking for something that is pre-made and requires only a simple pictogram assembly manual. They are also quite careful about spending $200 for cooling equipment that might not work, or worse, could damage their computer.

This need is something that leading manufacturers of PC-cooling equipment are more than willing to try to take advantage of. Asetek are a well known name in the world of exotic PC cooling -- they brought us the VapoChill™ line of high-performance cooling.

To put it bluntly, VapoChill™ is a pretty good system and will allow you to cool just about any processor to sub-zero temperatures. Whats more, VapoChill™ doesn't require you to own a workshop as it is a pre-built system that you just build your PC-system into.

Using their VapoChill™ experience, Asetek also are trying to cater for the more mainstream PC owners who are not necessarily looking for extreme overclocking, but are seeking a high-performance cooling platform that they can use on their future PCs. This is where the WaterChill™ kit comes in handy.

Asetek were kind enough to send me their WaterChill™ CPU cooling kit KT03, which is a plain water-cooling kit for CPUs using no refrigeration or peltier-based technology. The WaterChill™ set takes advantage of water’s high heat capacity without forcing the PC-owner to fork out for the relatively high-cost phase-change based cooling.

It is aimed at people either looking to cool their PC that little extra or perhaps looking for a quieter alternative to an array of high-speed fans in the warm summer months.