First off, this is not a product review. This is a narrative of my experiences with the Asetek Low Cost Liquid Cooling CPU cooler. The main difference between this narrative and a product review is that no one could possibly replicate the exact scenarios that I am going to tell you about, just like you cannot replicate a lab’s scenario in everyday life. I am going to tell you about my experiences with it, and hopefully you will take away a lot more than charts and graphs would give you.

The first time I read about the Asetek LCLC was while skimming my first review of the HP Blackbird 002. For anyone under a rock for the past year or so, the Blackbird is the first child of the HP – Voodoo PC marriage. Complete with Voodoo DNA, this HP computer is actually a really neat package. It packs water cooled GPUs and CPUs into an “available for retail” box. By utilizing AseTek’s LCLC, we were told that 4.0 ghz overclocks on Core 2 Quads were possible, an amazing feat for any cooler, let alone one that was supposed to cost less than $100 in quantity.

Fast forward a few months to August of 2008. Chris, a consultant working for Asetek, shoots me an email saying “Hey, we’ve got this great thing you have to try.” I remembered back to the LCLC write-ups around the time of the Blackbird launch, and I was excited to try it out, so I said “yes, please.” I won’t lie, owning a computer business really does have its perks for a hardware nut like yours truly.

So three days later, a very nondescript box shows up from UPS. This thing is designed for OEMs, so no fancy box to show off “Insanely Good Thermals” or “Ridiculous Overclocks,” which I really appreciated. There’s only so much of that BS you can take in a day. Here’s a picture of what was inside:

Please pardon the very unprofessional photo of the parts on a white sheet. I do what I can...