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Review: Koolance Exos-Al

by Tarinder Sandhu on 30 September 2004, 00:00

Tags: Koolance

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qa3k

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Taking a closer look



Popping the lightweight aluminium bottom is just a case of removing a handful of holding screws. The large radiator, interestingly, is also hewn from aluminium. The general setup of an external liquid-cooling system is usually to have the combined reservoir/pump push out liquid to a either a single or series of blocks. The liquid absorbs the heat from each and is then pumped back into the Exos-Al system and into the radiator. Liquid is thus cooled and fed back into the reservoir/pump to begin the cooling process again.



A close-up shot of the upside-down left-hand side shows the combined reservoir/pump section in greater detail. Koolance has also opted for safety by using two submersible pumps instead of the usual single, providing redundancy should one fail. The dual pumps, according to Koolance, provide a flow-rate of around 1030cc/min.



As you can see, the reservoir is filled from the upper side. Its see-through nature allows you to see just how much liquid is currently held. My only concern here is that the reservoir/pump combination, unlike the screwed-in radiator, is free to move about. It's no big deal, really.



Tubing is simply screwed into the nozzles via a clamp. The beauty of the quick-connect fittings on the rear of the EXOS-Al chassis is just how easy it is to engage and disengage the nozzles.



Simply push on the metal plate above the nozzles to disengage and push to engage. It can't be any simpler than that, can it?. It's a shame that thick blue-coloured tubing has been used. The Koolance-supplied liquid has a funky blue/green colour that would have looked good when flowing through clear tubing.