City of Industry (CA) – ThermalTake’s Xpressar system is part computer case and part refrigerator, but is it actually better than water cooling? The company claims the system can lower temperatures 20 degrees Celsius more than water cooling and we visited ThermalTake’s US headquarters in the City of Industry to check it out.


The Xpressar system, officially called the RCS100, actually uses fairly old technology, according to Ramsom Koay, Marketing Director of ThermalTake.  “It’s just like a refrigerator or car AC unit,” he told us.  A large compressor sits on the bottom of the case while tubes carry the coolant around to the CPU and radiator on the back of the chassis. Since the cooling system is a sealed unit, users won’t need to periodically fill it – essentially it’s maintenance free.  “It should last five to ten years,” Koay told us.

The tubes carrying the coolant from/to the compressor, processor and radiator are made from solid copper and are surrounded with foam to prevent condensation.  However, Koay told us that condensation shouldn’t even be a problem because the unit never cools to zero degrees Celsius.  In fact, the default setting is approximately 15 Celsius and software prevents the unit from reaching zero.  He added that someone could easily “hack” the software to get the unit to go below freezing.

The compressor is regulated by a green board situated at the bottom of the case.  This board receives signals from the CPU Fan connector and increases coolant flow when the motherboard requests more fan RPM.  In essence, the motherboard is tricked into thinking it’s hooked up to a fan.  The entire cooling system is powered by a DC power connection from the computer PSU and Koay told us the unit draws approximately 50 to 60 watts.

Inside the system was an Asus motherboard with an Intel Wolfdale processor (Socket 775) overclocked to 4.05 GHz from 3 GHz.  The Xpressar is fairly quiet and cool when at no load.  The compressor was barely audible and the CPU temperature was pegged at six degrees Celcius, but of course most people want to know how this thing functions at high load so we cranked up the processor to 100% for more than 40 minutes.  After approximately 20 minutes the temperature hit 50 degrees and ended up hovering between 46 and 50 degrees.  The unit does get quite a bit louder at full load and you can hear that in the video.  Note that the panel was off during most of the shoot.

You’re probably thinking to yourself, “I like it, but I have to buy their case and use specific motherboards.”  But Koay said an improved modular version with flexible tubes will be shown off at next year’s CES.  That model will dock in drive bay area, taking up three 5 and 1/4 –inch bay.  The tubes will be able to connect to multiple processors and the graphics card.  In contrast, the current model doesn’t allow you to cool the video card and only supports one processor.

Koay told us the Xpressar system will be available in approximately 3 weeks for an MSRP of $799.  Buyers will get the case, cooling tubes, radiator, compressor and mounting brackets.  A list of compatible motherboards will also be included.

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