This monster CPU cooler is the weight of a whole gaming laptop

(Image credit: IceGiant)

Do not adjust your arranged, that is a CPU air tank sitting on peak of a normal sorted ATX motherboard. That is non, I recur, that is not a mini-ITX mobo. Yeah, the IceGiant ProSiphon Elite is not only an objective lesson in camelcase or interCaps, just is likewise one of the biggest chip shot-chillers I've ever seen jammed happening top off of a CPU. And I've tried that chonky ol' boi, the CoolerMaster V8.

The ProSiphon Elite actually looks like individual lopped the tubes off an AIO liquid cooler and just screwed the entire radiator atop a C.P.U.. Only the IceGiant design uses a vapor bedchamber inside that rad, similar to what you'll find on pass of many graphics card these days. The heat from the chip boils a little liquid in the chamber into vapor, pulling the heat forth from the central processor, which then travels around the condenser, turn binding into cooled liquid and dropping back out down to the CPU.

Thanks to the fact in that location is a monthlong way for the vapor to travel, and a hatful of agitate/wrench fans in operation either side of the optical condenser, this thing is rated to cool anything up to an AMD Threadripper chip or those astronomical inebriated-end Intel beasts. And has the fat spring plate to test it.

It also costs $170 and weighs in at 4.4 lbs (2kg) and so you've got to feel like you'Re truly getting a lot of solid aluminium for your money, and you've got to then hope your motherboard is built to last too. To put that into some context, that's the same weight as the Gigabyte Aorus 15G gaming laptop computer.

But wherefore not just utilization an equivalently priced AIO liquid cooler? IceGiant says that, because it's just one big, one-man component (asunder from the fans), there are fewer points of failure.

Which basically means: No pump, no problems.

Then it also points out that it's using dielectric fluid, not body of water, so there's atomic number 102 danger of dripping all concluded your expensive kit up.

To comprise fair, I've been lucky enough to not have had a pump fail on me in fifteen years, and the only clip I sprayed water on my PC while liquid temperature reduction was when I tried to build my own custom loop rearmost in 2006 by bolting an smooth discrete radiator onto the side control board of my chassis.

The ProSiphon Elite has actually only touch on my care aft reading HardwareLuxx reviewing it and the damned thing just dominated my web browser for a monthlong patc. I have to say I'm in No rush to see it in mortal, however; non just because I am physically timid by its sheer size and weight, but also because it's reportedly rather loud and can't truly contend with AIO chip chillers around the same price.

But its scale secure caught my eye.

Dave has been gaming since the days of Zaxxon and Lady Bug on the Colecovision, and code books for the Commodore Vic 20 (Dying Race 2000!). He built his first gambling Microcomputer at the tenderized age of 16, and ultimately finished bug-fixing the Cyrix-based system around a year tardive. When helium dropped it out of the window. He first started committal to writing for Official PlayStation Magazine and Xbox World galore decades ago, past touched onto PC Format regular, then PC Gamer, TechRadar, and T3 among others. Now he's back, authorship about the nightmarish graphics tease commercialize, CPUs with Thomas More cores than common sense, gaming laptops hotter than the sun, and SSDs more capacious than a Cybertruck.