Digital Transition » Zalman Watercooling

My PC is getting way to noisy. When gaming or listening to music this isn’t that much of a deal, but otherwise it’s too loud!. The noise is mainly coming from the CPU fan (which is the default fan that comes with an Intel PIV) and my GPU fan. The other sources of noise (4 80×80mm fans, 1 40×40mm fan, 5 Hard Disk and a Zalman power supply fan) aren’t as loud, but still contribute.

So there had to be a solution and here are the options:

1. Don’t use the PC unless I’m playing games or listening to music (not really an option)
2. Remove some of the noisy hardware or buy a new heatsink for the processor (these cooling systems are or too heavy, or too expensive to do little)
3. Place the PC in a casing, closet, other room,… (Did that before already, this is doable, and filters away some of the noise at normal operation, but when pushing the CPU piles up heat with results in more noise since the fans have to turn faster)
4. Buy a peltier element to cool the processor. (I already have a powercable shortage in my case as it is, so adding another device that needs juice isn’t going to help that)
5. Buy and install some watercooling (That what I did)

As the watercooling system, I chose the Zalman Resonator 1. The reason? Well, it is a complete system, I’m not planning on overclocking heavily, no compatibility problems with different manufacturers, Zalman has a good reputation in the field of making PCs noiseless, and it looks great too!

Some system temperature stats (CPU = Intel 2.8 Ghz):

	Idle / Normal use	Full load
CPU	29-35°C	37°-46°C
Mainboard	27-34°C	33-38°C

So let’s see what this thing can do to help reduce noise and keep my system cooled.
First the unpacking…

The box the Resonator 1 came in, big box, heavy too.

Getting everything out…

Some bolts and connection pieces.

The flow indicator.

The CPU cool block, man that thing weighs.

Some CPU block connection bits and pieces, ow and a Zalman sticker!!!

So much weight needs to be tightly connected.

In the next post, the testing part…