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The starboard side of the Reactor features one six-pin FireWire, two Gigabit Ethernet,
and fi ve USB 2.0 ports.WORKING FOR IT
Pulling the core out of the Reactor is similar to pulling an engine block. Just back out 20
hex screws, open two chambers, ease the core out a few inches, disconnect the cables,
then lift!DOES NOT ACCEPT COINS
A small pop-up door on the top of the case
conceals a CMOS reset button and easy-
access coin-cell battery.reference to the famed-but-failed stainless-
steel gull-winged cars of the 1980s. “We’re
backed by very good funding sources.”
Funding aside, we still have some pressing
questions. To prove that the Reactor is not just
a 3D render, Hardcore delivered a prepro-
duction machine sporting a QX9770 CPU, a
custom-designed Tyan motherboard using an
nForce 790i Ultra SLI chipset and an integrated
Creative X-Fi chip, and three GeForce GTX 280
cards—pretty much top of the line. However,
it soon became clear that the box still needed
some work: The PC suffered from overclocking
issues at 4GHz, which the company attributed
to a faulty liquid-metal pad between the CPU
and the water block. We also inadvertently
broke off three SATA ports when replacing the
top of the machine; Hardcore said a last-min-
ute cable change was to blame and it would
be corrected before shipping. A replacement
machine ran at a stable 4GHz, except for oc-
casional hard locks in Crysis, but ran louder
than some of the loudest air-cooled machines
we’ve tested. Hardcore said this was the result
of a faulty preproduction fan-controller board.
In other words, the bugs are clearly still being
worked out.
MUCH ADO ABOUT OIL
So why go the oil route? Oil is a far better
conductor of heat than air is. By dunking the
guts of the Reactor in 4.5 gallons of dielectric
(nonconducting) oil that is circulated through a
radiator, Hardcore said the machine is capable
of keeping not just the CPU and GPUs cool but
also the RAM, the voltage regulators, and the
motherboard itself. Ideally, those components
will never get more than a few degrees hotter
than the ambient room temperature. The CPU,
GPU, and chipset require more direct cooling,
so blocks and hoses help shoot oil over those
components at higher velocities. The oil isn’t
pumped back in through an inlet as it is in a
traditional setup; it’s simply emptied into
the open tank, where it’s circulated up into
the radiator.
Technically, the spot cooling on the CPU and
GPU cores isn’t any more eff ective than the use
of conventional liquid-cooling blocks and
hoses—but those parts don’t cool any other
components. Hardcore has plans for a Peltier
block to get temps to even frostier levels. The
submersion scheme actually helps eliminate the
major problem with Peltier cooling: condensa-
tion and sweating. The company is also toying
with the idea of building an auxiliary refrigera-
tion block that would sit near the machine to
lower temps more.
One final note on the submersion tech-
nique: Theoretically, it should be very quiet.