Vadim Cepheus Q80

Watercooling:

A large portion of the system’s cost is eaten up by the watercooling solution that Vadim has installed. The “Liquocool Antarctic TX Extreme” like shown here will set you back a whopping £750. But it that's not even the best combination you can get: for £850 you get a dual 120mm radiator at the back of the case and for an eye watering £1250 you get the same dual 120mm radiator and a specialist southbridge block as well.

The southbridge is cooled by an up-rated air cooler on the £750 cooling kit works perfectly fine though: we tested IOMeter on a separate SATA disk and it was barely even hot, even with minimal airflow. £1250 is an extreme price (apologies for the pun) to pay for a watercooling kit that offers an extra block and a bigger radiator, the £750 kit seems to be the best cost-to-performance option.

Whilst the cost of components comes nowhere near this and you can buy a very high end watercooling kit for less than £400, sourcing the same components will be difficult since Vadim computers imports the radiators specifically from a company in China that makes them to Vadim’s specifications. This is so that they’re the right size to fit at the bottom and on the side of the case.

Any enthusiast in our extreme cooling forum will tell you that setting up a well-routed watercooling loop takes considerable effort and planning. While the components may not fulfil the cost asked for, the professional installation and warranty for it makes up for a lot of it.

The cooling solution has been carefully thought out and installed professionally, and while extreme cooling purists will inevitably pedantically pick a loop apart, for a box you can buy off the shelf this kit is about as good as you can get.

The watercooling contains the following:

• One single, One double and One triple extreme 45mm thick LiquoCool Radiator;
  
• Swiftech MCP655 pump
  
• Cape Coolplex Reservoir
  
• Swiftech CPU and Northbridge blocks
  
• SilenX VGA waterblocks
  
• 1/2” ID Tubing

The kit is predominantly Swiftech 1/2” based which is no bad thing. The water travels in this order:

Reservoir > Pump > 120.3 Radiator > 120.2 Radiator > CPU block > northbridge block > 120.1 Radiator > VGA waterblocks > returns to the reservoir.

This setup allows the maximum cooling on the water possible before it reaches the CPU and northbridge blocks. The extra radiator after this removes the accumulated heat from CPU and northbridge before the water hits the graphics cards. Whilst the model we have here, the Q80, only has a single radiator before the graphics cards, the new RQ80 has a double radiator at the back before the graphics cards to provide even better cooling.

The coolant is not only green but also UV fluorescent, which reacts to the blue LED fans slightly, but more so from the UV cathodes installed. Despite having almost a dozen fans, the system is exceptionally quiet, with Vadim not only sourcing the right colour LED fans but also ones that work at exceptionally low voltages and speeds as well, to provide the maximum amount of cooling for an overclocked system, with very little noise.

The loudest fan in the system is from the Galaxy 1000W PSU – the rest are entirely temperature controlled with six different temperature sensors dotted around the system. The main fans and radiators are positioned so that they suck air in from one side and push it out the other. Having the unit sitting on the desk to your right (as is often the place), it pushes a slow warm flow of air over the desktop.

The system is set at a high threshold temperature to keep the fans as quiet as possible, which can be a bit worrying to the life of the components, but since they’re overclocked anyway you’re already affecting it negatively, and by the time they actually fail you’ll probably reach the next upgrade cycle anyway.

Another 120mm fan is positioned over the memory, and the southbridge has a whole new air-cooled heatsink and 80mm blue LED fan.

It is the attention to detail that makes this work so well: the jubilee clips are high quality nickel plated that are different widths and lengths so that they fit the size of the barbs exactly without too much run off on the metal end. The tubing is completely covered in anti-kink spiral wrapping, which not only keeps the tubing free flowing, but also keeps the look consistent with the green spiral wrapped cabling from the PSU.