Soak It to Me: Inside Liquid-Suspended Gaming PC
: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Looking for a beefy gaming rig, and don’t mind getting your hands a little wet? Hardcore Computer’s Reactor might just be the 100-pound computational monolith for you.
Crafted from 2.5mm-thick aircraft aluminum and packed with powerful hardware, the Reactor is already a fairly striking and competitive machine. But there’s a secret weapon sloshing around in that unassuming tank: four and a half gallons of cooling oil.
PC enthusiasts looking to get the most power out of their machines have often turned to overclocking — pushing key components to perform faster than the manufacturer intended. This generates quite a bit of heat, which is traditionally fought using an array of fans or a maze of tubes pumping cooling fluid to select components.
The Reactor takes the liquid-cooled principle a bit further by submerging everything into a tank of coolant. Of course, this isn’t your average fish tank filled with mineral oil — take a look at the innards of this (relatively) mini-supercomputer.
Left: Behold, Hardcore Computer’s Reactor. Like most gaming PCs, it’s crammed with overclocked, high-performance hardware. But there’s an important difference here: Every single component is submerged in a custom-designed cooling oil, called Core Coolant. Less trouble with heat means a faster, highly stable system. Dunking everything in fluid works surprisingly well, and is more efficient compared with traditional air- or water-cooling methods.
: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
It’s packed to the gills with high-performance, server-grade hardware, including room for a pair of hot-swappable drives so you can switch HDs without ever shutting off your machine. Other goodies include integrated WiFi, up to three solid-state drives, and dual power supplies — just in case one fails in the middle of a World of Warcraft raid.
: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
The Reactor is a fortress: You’ll want to set aside some time to work your way through more than 20 fasteners and screws. Every system ships with removal tools in case you don’t have some on hand. With all of that cooling fluid sloshing around in there, you’ll almost be glad that getting inside it is a chore — we shudder to think of the mess that would result if a 4-year-old could easily pry the lid off.
: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Hardcore Computer’s Core Coolant is a biodegradable, nontoxic cooling oil, and there’s 4.5 gallons of the stuff coursing its way through the tank. An odorless, clear liquid, it’s fairly easy to spill if you’re not careful. Fortunately, it doesn’t conduct electricity — just keep a roll of paper towels handy.
: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Once you’ve removed all of those screws, it’s time to start lifting out the Reactor’s core. Slow and steady is key here; you can keep relatively dry by resting the core on a pair of hooks running near the lid, and letting all of that cooling fluid drain off.
: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
This behemoth weighs in at just over 100 pounds, so you’ll be glad to know that it’s been designed to be opened up and tinkered with from a comfortable seated position, presumably right beside your desk.
: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
The core, in all its glory. Every single component — including the 650-watt power supply — is completely submerged in Core Coolant while tubing pumps the oil about the tank and then back to the radiator.
: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
There were four gigs of RAM in the configuration we tested with room to spare, if you’re feeling power-hungry. In fact, most of the components in the Reactor can be upgraded from off-the-shelf parts, to take advantage of all the overclocking potential. And can you believe that no one had ever trademarked that radioactive symbol? The folks at Hardcore Computer couldn’t either.
: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
While the Core Coolant sports some impressive chilling capabilities, it still needs to dissipate some of the heat picked up from all that overclocked hardware. This radiator works just like the one in your car: Four independently controlled fans blow cool air over the Coolant as it’s pumped through a network of tubes, and then back into the tank.
: Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
All this could be yours, starting at the fairly reasonable price of about $3,700. A fully loaded setup would cost just south of $10,000, but with so many overclocking safeguards in place, a savvy enthusiast could buy slightly cheaper components and still push them well beyond their intended performance levels.