VaporPhaze 360

this year at QuakeCon, Zac Glander won the Scratch Build category of the case mod contest with a mod that is not only interesting to look at, but is also an extremely impressive bit of engineering. Glander named his mod “VaporPhaze 360” because it uses a very unique form of cooling, and because the case gives you a full 360-degree view of the components inside. “I have been inspired by this technology since 2000, when I learned about liquid-immersion cooling,” Glander says. “The concept had been rattling around in my head for 10 years before I decided to start bringing those thoughts to life in 2010. From a very young age, I have had a knack for building computers. I was always wanting to know why and how they worked. At age 12, I was given my first hand-medown computer, a 486 that I took apart just to put back together. From that point on, I have been building, repairing, and maintaining computer systems of all types. I now run my own IT services business, so as you can see, I have always had a passion for computers and all that they entail.” Glander says he mods anywhere he can find space, including at home, at his office, and in friends’ shops. Once the ideas that led to VaporPhaze 360 began to fully jell in his mind, he spent approximately a year and a half designing and building the system as time allowed. He says the rig turned out exactly the way he imagined it, but not without plenty of revisions and tinkering. “I built my first system to prove that the concept could actually be made to work, and to prove to myself that I could build a working system,” Glander says. “The system is not a mod, so to speak, as it has never been done on this level. True enough, I used off-the-shelf hardware, but the rest of the computer was possible only through imagination. Thank god for computeraided drafting!”

Science 
“The system in general proves that liquid-immersion technology is relevant and a viable solution as an alternative to direct air, or any of other form of cooling,” says Glander. “I have always been a stickler for a neat computer to allow for better air flow, thus making the system perform optimally. So, to get the most cooling possible, I decided to put the computer directly into 3M Novec 7000, which phase-changes at the low temperature of 34 degrees Celsius, meaning that the fluid changes from a liquid to a gas. “During the phase change, heat energy gets transferred away from the hardware into its gas phase, where it is condensed back into a liquid in the radiator, in a closed-loop cycle. One of the best analogies that comes to mind is when you have a cut and you use rubbing alcohol to clean it. When you blow on the cut, the alcohol goes from a liquid on your skin to a gas, which makes your skin feel cold. I am able to use this exact effect that you can feel to cool computer equipment. Using this technology also allows me to cool the entire hardware package using only one 200mm fan drawing air through the radiator.” Glander says the process is not without its charms, and it has practical applications, too. “The bubbles are one of the more aesthetic effects in the system; this is the fluid actually boiling, just like a pot of water on the stove, only at a lower temperature,” he says. “This system does fill a particular need in terms of being proof of concept, to be applied to servers in the near future. A producible gaming model is also in the works, which fulfills the extreme computing needs of gamers.”

Design 
Glander custom-designed the radiator where the magic happens, and says it’s the world’s first cylindrical radiator with vertical tubes that he’s aware of. He also custom designed the cylindrical glass container that makes up the body of the case. It was built on a mandrel at 5mm thick and is guaranteed to withstand 50psi of internal pressure. The support structure inside consists fully of laser-cut aluminum with tolerances in the .0001 range. Glander hand-tapped every screw hole in the build and did the finish work for the entire structure using a Bridgeport milling machine from the 1930s. “The devices that look like small heatsinks on the components are specially designed boiling enhancement units,” Glander says. “They are heatsinks with a proprietary nano-copper coating that makes the phase change occur in more places on the surface of the units.” The rig’s lighting is brought to you by about 500 LEDs of various colors.

Tech 
In addition to its sophisticated housing, VaporPhaze 360 is an Intel Core i7-3930K, an ASRock X79 Extreme4-M motherboard, 16GB of Crucial Ballistix Tactical Tracer memory, dual ZOTAC GTX 680 graphics cards in SLI, a SeaSonic X-Series 1250-watt power supply, two Crucial M4 128GB SSDs in RAID 0, and of course the aforementioned single 200mm Cooler Master LED fan. Glander says his next rig will be even more powerful, with dual Xeon 2690 v2 CPUs, 64GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA TITAN Z graphics card. You can probably guess how he intends to keep all of this gear cool. “All of this will be in my newly designed liquid immersion system,” Glander says.

ZOTAC GTX 980 Ti AMP! Extreme Edition

This month, ZOTAC sent us the highest factory overclocked 980 Ti we’ve tested to date, the GTX 980 Ti AMP! Extreme Edition. But before we explore the particulars of this card, let’s recap what NVIDIA brings to the table with its Maxwell-based flagship GPU. This GM200 GPU features 8 billion transistors crammed into a 601 square mm die made using a 28nm process. The 22 streaming multiprocessors in the GTX 980 Ti lend this card 2,816 CUDA cores, 176 texture units, and 96 ROPs. Compared to NVIDIA’s older Kepler architecture, this chip yields double the performance-per-watt. On that topic, this card has a 250-watt TDP and requires a pair of 8-pin PCIe power connectors to run. To enjoy this beast, make sure your PSU can handle at least 600 watts of continuous power. The memory subsystem of the GTX 980 Ti is very capable, even compared to NVIDIA’s other high-end cards currently available (save the 12GB TITAN X). There are 6GB of GDDR5 memory running on a 384-bit memory bus. The quadpiped memory on the stock version of the GTX 980 Ti is clocked at 1,752MHz, but ZOTAC has overclocked it by 53MHz to 1,805MHz. Although that doesn’t sound like much, it’s the highest memory clock we’ve seen yet on the 980 Ti and it’s more than enough to let you enjoy playable framerates in most games running at 4K resolutions. If you plan to run this card while connected to a 4K display, you’ll be able to use any of the three DisplayPort outputs or the HDMI output to do it. There’s also a DVI port on the card for legacy monitors with resolutions up to 2,560 x 1,600. One of the best things about this card is the factory overclock; the stock core and boost clocks are 1,000MHz and 1,075MHz, respectively, but ZOTAC’s card is clocked at 1,253MHz and 1,355MHz, respectively. We already know that it takes two 8-pin PCIe power connectors to supply the power, but ZOTAC’s oversized IceStorm cooler is what enables the GTX 980 Ti AMP! Extreme to hit those impressive core and boost clock numbers. There are a trio of 90mm EKO fans with multi-angle blades, a handful of large-diameter copper heatpipes to rapidly pull heat from the GPU, and a pair of aluminum finned heatsinks under ZOTAC’s signature carbon ExoArmor shroud.

The card measures more than two inches thick and just over 12-inches long. Other things we love about this card are the painted aluminum backplate and the OC Plus power regulation controller, which is an isolated PWM controller that lets you monitor the card’s stats, tweak voltages, and take your overclocking to the next level with the help of ZOTAC’s Firestorm software. There’s a 2-year warranty on this card, but if you register it online, you can get it covered for a third year. As you can see in the benchmarks, this card is the real deal. If you’re looking for a blazing fast GTX 980 Ti, with enough cooling capacity to handle even higher clocks, this is your best bet.

Aerocool VX 700

For the most part, you want a PSU to deliver reliable power, operate quietly, and be unobtrusive inside your case. Aerocool’s VX-700 delivers on those points, thanks to the use of high-quality components and a 120mm thermally controlled fan. Under full load, Aerocool indicates the VX-700 will generate a mere 32.5dBA. The unit itself is almost entirely black, without even a label on the top of the unit to distract from the other components inside your case. As such, it’s ideal for builders who are looking for a nondescript power supply. Aerocool targets the VX-700 at entry-level system builders and prices it accordingly at $69.99, which makes it one of the most affordable 700-watt PSUs around. The VX-700 is designed with one +12V rail that supports a maximum current of 54A, which works out to a maximum wattage of 648W. The +3.3V rail can handle up to 22A, while the +5V rail can pump out 18A. The +3.3V and +5V rails support a combined maximum wattage of 130W. Aerocool designs the VX-700 to work with the C6/C7 power-saving mode of Intel’s Haswell processors, too. Similar to most every entry-level power supply, all of the VX-700’s cables are hardwired to the unit. The connector selection is what you’d expect to power a basic system build. There’s a 20+4-pin main power, one 4+4-pin EPS12V (to power the CPU), and two PCIe 6+2-pin connectors. With the latter, the two PCIe 6+2-pin connectors are wired into a single cable, but Aerocool smartly provides six inches of extension between the first and second PCIe 6+2-pin connectors, so the connectors could be split among two midrange cards that are spaced apart inside a case. Of course, you could also connect both PCIe 6+2-pin connectors to a single high-end card. To power the other devices and fans in your system, the VX-700 provides six SATA connectors, three Molex cables, and one floppy connector. We like that Aerocool provides two SATA and one Molex connector on each peripheral power cable, because the mix of SATA and Molex connectors helps to avoid routing another long cable when you just require one more SATA or Molex connector. The VX-700 includes electrical protections to ensure connected hardware won’t be affected by power fluctuations. Aerocool builds in over-power, over-voltage, under-voltage, and short-circuit protections. In terms of efficiency, Aerocool rates the PSU for a peak efficiency of 81% at 50% load. When under 100% load, the VX- 700’s efficiency is 79%. We tested the VX-700 in a system featuring Intel’s Core i7-6700K and ZOTAC’s GeForce GTX 780 AMP! Extreme Edition. To push the PSU under load, we simultaneously ran Prime 95’s Small FFT test along with the Unigine Heaven 4.0 benchmark at the highest settings and a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600. The VX-700 had no problems handling these tests, and it delivered a maximum wattage of 379W at a power factor of 0.980. At slightly above 50% load, the power factor is what we’d expect. We’ve spent a lot of time with Aerocool’s cases and fans, but this is our first experience with an Aerocool PSU. The VX-700 stays within Aerocool’s budgetfriendly wheelhouse, yet it is capable of supporting midrange builds, assuming you’re not using multiple high-end GPUs. The plain design also makes it a good choice for aesthetically-minded builders who want a PSU to blend in with a dark case. The VX-700 should be available in late September or early October.