The Phenom II series, especially processors with the TDP of 95W, is really power efficient. On the one hand, there is no real need to replace the stock cooler in the typical mode, because it copes with its task at the lowest noise level. On the other hand, you have an opportunity for various experiments with low-noise and even passive cooling. Or you can overclock the system to impressive frequencies, and cooler selection still won't be a headache. However, we've already noted that installing more powerful air coolers (or liquid coolers) in the overclocked mode does not pursue the goal of lowering temperatures to recommended (acceptable) values, for it does not require any drastic measures. It's done to get temperatures below the recommended values. It often helps to expand the overclocking potential significantly -- overclock a Phenom II to 4GHz and higher, for example. But that's another story that has to do with overclocking sports (that has interesting peculiarities, by the way). For example, if you have a powerful cooling system, it makes more sense to buy a top processor from the 900 series with the TDP of 125W instead of a 95W CPU. The former won't be much hotter in practice, but it will better respond to raising voltage above 1.5V -- by improving its overclocking potential.

“The Thermaltake micro refrigeration cooling system makes sense both from a technology standpoint and from a need to continually introduce advances in computer cooling,” said Dr. Gamal Refai-Ahmed, AMD Fellow and lead thermal architect, Graphics Products Group, AMD. “By moving beyond the limits of air cooling, we potentially open up a whole new level of performance for graphics technology.”

The water boils, moves down the tube, hits a cool spot, and then condenses. The heat is transferred by the vapor from the hot spot, usually a CPU or a GPU, to the cool spot, the fins or heatsink. Simple so far, but how does the water get back from the cool spot where it condenses to the hot spot where it is needed? If you are thinking gravity, you are only partially right, it can work via gravity, but that is a minor portion of the flow. Also, if you rely on gravity, make sure the geek installing your heatpipe doesn't angle the computer wrong or things get very ugly.

Utilizing the Multiwick and Boiling-enhanced technologies (belonging to its own holding company, Convergence Technologies Limited), the GVC-1 was co-developed with Dr. Gamal Refai-Ahmed, an AMD fellow and Chief Thermal Architect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architect . The new GVC-1 is nearly half the footprint of the stock-cooler for the ATI ati Radeon HD4870. During testing, the GVC-1 outperformed the stock cooler by nearly 15 percent, translating into advantages for overclocking and acoustic noise.