Water-cooling is nothing new to top-end desktop PCs. Where normal PCs are air-cooled by noisy fans (blue LEDs optional), water-cooled PCs pipe water (or coolant, to be accurate) across a PC’s hot-running components. Theoretically, at least, this means more efficient, quieter cooling.
Meep meepIt also means PC manufacturers can go mad and make all kinds of tweaks to a PC’s hardware. So, while the AMD processor in the Water Dragon
should run at 2.8GHz, YoYoTech has set it to run much faster, at 3.6GHz. There’s also 4GB of RAM and the latest high-end graphics card from ATI.
If that all makes the Water Dragon sound far more powerful than its silly name suggests, it’s because it is. It doesn’t really matter what you want to do with this PC: it will handle it. We played
Crysis, for instance, at very high quality settings and it barely broke a sweat. We ran high-end Adobe video and image editing software that causes other PCs to crunch to painful-looking halts and the Water Dragon barely blinked.
The great entertainerIt doesn’t come with a screen, and you’ll need to attach something decent to this monster, as it’s perfect for home entertainment: the hard disk weighs in at a high-def-friendly 750GB, and there’s a Blu-ray reader as well.
Those happy wielding screwdrivers will also appreciate the space inside the Dragon’s formidable-looking case. New hard disks, hardware upgrades – the DIY-inclined will have no problem. There’s also a touching amount of care been put into how tidy the case is inside: even the wires are bundled together and tucked neatly away.
Shameless plugsThe outside of the case is just as flexible: ten USB ports in total, plus FireWire mean lots of space for external peripherals. It’s not a stunning looker, and we’re not happy about the prospect of having
anything with a red strip-light in a place people might see it, but these are sacrifices we’re prepared to make.
The damage for all this power? £869. That sounds like a lot, but compared to the likes of the Cyberpower Gamer Ultra Stealth, which costs £1399, it’s a bargain, even without a screen. It’s faster, costs over £400 less, and, to its credit, doesn’t look like it’s trying to impersonate the Bat Mobile. Water-cooling might sound like the scary domain of the incurable nerd, but in this case it works beautifully.
Author:Dave Stevenson
Copyright 2009 Dennis Publishing All Rights Reserved.
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