NEC PC's chills are multiplying

Your car has a water-cooled radiator, and now the latest desktop PC from NEC does too.

The Japanese PC maker recently took the wraps off its Valuestar G Type C, a new desktop PC that has a radiator embedded in the water cooler unit built into the back of the chassis. The company says the added refrigeration will let you overwork the included Intel Celeron processor but keep the PC running at 30 decibels, which is whisper-loud. PC noise is increasingly a concern as more powerful computers require stronger and often louder cooling systems.

As processors and other components have become more electricity-hungry, they've required bigger and faster fans to keep them from burning to a crisp. Game enthusiasts have tricked out their PCs with custom-made, liquid-cooled radiators for years, but this is the first time NEC has included one in a consumer design.

The low-end version of the Valuestar PC costs $925 (£515; UK prices weren't available) in the US and runs on a dual-core Celeron D Processor 341, which is paired with the Intel 945G Express chipset. The desktop also features 256MB of main memory and an 80GB hard drive, and runs Windows XP Home Edition with ServicePack2.

The Type C has a wide range of customisation options available, including Nvidia's GeForce 6200 with TurboCache. The PC is currently only available on NEC's direct sales Web site.

Liquid cooling dates back to mainframes in the '70s and '80s, when manufacturers had to cool bipolar chips, which were manufactured differently to standard silicon chips.

Apple put a liquid-filled heatsink in recent versions of its PowerMac, a feature that Apple and its fans touted as an engineering advance. It added about $50 to manufacturing costs, estimated VLSI Research CEO Dan Hutcheson. Fed up with chips that ran too hot at slower-than-expected speeds, Apple subsequently announced it would shift from IBM to Intel processors.

Still, liquid can cool. NanoCoolers, a start-up in Texas, has devised a heatsink filled with liquid metal, while Cooligy is flogging a pump for PCs that circulates water. Researchers at Purdue University and elsewhere, meanwhile, are also looking at systems that rely on a minimum of water. The UK-based Holly Computers does a range of power-gaming computers that feature water-cooling to protect their high-spec overclocked components.