Zalman passive radiator

silvervarg · Post by **silvervarg** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 11:55 am

I happened to stumble on a shop that annouced they will start selling this passive radiator tower from Zalman in a few days (16:th of march).
The price is set to 1995 SEK (roughly 250 USD).
I could not see any info on Zalman site, but at the Swedish webshop Webhallen you can see a nice picture.

I am not into watercooling, but from Zalmans good reputations I expect that it will work quite well. Has anyone seen a review yet?
Look at the 2 screenshot images to see some details.

Pjotor · Post by **Pjotor** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 1:21 pm

I looked at the pictures (wow!) and noticed something interesting: In the picture of a mounted cooler, I can't see a pump. On the other image, a switch of somekind is shown. THIS MAY INDICATE THE PUMP IS INCLUDED, which would be both good (all in one nice handy package) and bad (might be difficult to swap the pump).

Release date says March 16. I guess we'll have to wait another couple of weeks and see.

marc999 · Post by **marc999** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 1:46 pm

Wow!! This is most exciting!! I was researching watercooling a few weeks ago but scraped the project because of various issues. Anyway, one of the issues was having to make my own external radiator, which I'm just not handy enough to do. I can already cool pretty quietly a non OC'd processor though, so in order for me to consider buying it, it would have to have to be able to cool an OC'd processor quietly. However, it does look pretty big so it may just do that!!

lenny · Post by **lenny** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 1:47 pm

Google turned this up:

http://www.voidedwarranty.com/modules.p ... e&sid=1223

chylld · Post by **chylld** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 1:54 pm

As a watercooling person here are my opinion:

1) it is way too tall. The effort required to pump water up it's length is going to have a nasty effect on flow rates.
2) it is suited to small diameter tubing (1/2" OD by the looks of it). Significant gains in watercooling are commonly had by using larger (1/2" ID tubing) tubing and trying to mix this in with a 1/2" ID system is going to be nasty.
3) if the pump is included, that's a bad thing because we don't know how good Zalman are at making pumps, and if the pump in the radiator fails, then what do we do?
3b) also, having the pump in the radiator means that the heat from the pump will also contribute to the heat in the radiator.
4) it's kinda inconvenient. Innovatek make big flat passive radiators as well but they can easily be affixed to the side panel - this one is a big, tall and probably very heavy thing to lug around.

having said that, it looks interesting and i too am looking forward to a review of it

chylld · Post by **chylld** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 2:01 pm

interesting... looking at this picture:

it seems as though it may possibly be just a big reservoir - I can't see any indication of any tubing anywhere looking at that diagram. Granted, that diagram doesn't say much but if it is indeed designed just as a water container then it isn't going to be anywhere near as effective as a heatercore or decent rad.

From my above post, I'll take point #3 back since it appears you can have the pump separate. Point #3b still stands though.

HammerSandwich · Post by **HammerSandwich** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 10:04 am

chylld wrote:1) it is way too tall. The effort required to pump water up it's length is going to have a nasty effect on flow rates.

That's not an issue for a closed-loop system, where the trip up is balanced by the trip down. The only work the pump does in such a system is to overcome friction. If this is unclear, think about siphoning water: you can run the hose as high as you want, so long as the exit is lower than the inlet.