When you look at the market for water cooling equipment, you’ll notice that it’s broken into two primary categories: silent cooling and extreme cooling. A system that is setup for silent cooling generally would use 3/8” ID (inside diameter) tubing, a low or medium flow CPU block, 80mm radiator, and a pump that generally moves less then 200gph (gallons per hour). We’ve recently looked at 2 products that would fall into that category, the Ahanix Iceberg II water cooling kit and the Zalman ZM-WB1 waterblock.

On the Extreme Cooling end of the spectrum you have systems with ½” ID tubing, CPU blocks with high flow and turbulence, single 120mm or dual 80mm or 120mm radiators, and pumps pushing over 300gph. While these systems will still be quieter than most air cooled setups, they are geared towards keeping a CPU cool under heavy overclocking. This is the category where you’ll find companies like D-Tek, Danger Den, Swiftech, and Polar-Flo.

So today, as the first in a series of high-end CPU waterblock reviews we bring you the latest from “Big Blue”, Swiftech, the MCW5002-P. This is a high flow, high turbulence waterblock for extreme cooling with ½” ID connections and is available for AMD, P4 and XEON chips. So without further delay, let’s dig in!