Senfu Watercooler Unit

Scope of delivery

Apart from the clips and screws, the Senfu includes a very long clear plastic tube (much longer than required), a plastic jar with thermal compound, a spare o-ring for the "water block", and even a small Philips screwdriver to open the water block.

Also included are two large sheets of thin self-adhesive foam, which you can use for insulation, to prevent condensation if you're using the watercooler together with a Peltier element.

Consequences of using a watercooler

If you replace your CPU fan by a watercooler, then this will improve the cooling of the CPU. However, a CPU fan does more than just cool the CPU core - it allows also the cache chips of the CPU and the north bridge of the chipset to take advantage of a bit of fresh air. During testing, we noticed that the north bridge of the test system (K7M, AMD 751 north bridge) got very hot. However, this did not cause any instabilities at all. Nevertheless, especially if you're also overclocking the bus speed, some additional cooling for the north bridge might make sense if you're using a watercooler. A 40mm fan will perfectly fit the north bridge's heatsink and will cool it very effectively.

If you're using a SECC2 P2 or a "classic" P3, then it is also a good idea to let the cache run cooler by installing small heatsinks on the chips. This is not strictly necessary, but just like a CPU, a cache chip tends to overclock better if it runs cooler. With Athlon, Coppermine P3 and Celeron CPUs, extra cache cooling is not necessary - the Athlon's cache is cooled through the thermal transfer plate, and the Coppermine and Celeron CPUs have the cache on-die.