How do you beat a water-cooled gaming PC? With a full immersion PC, after all, the place you sink your entire elements into a shower of liquid. It’s a way already used for servers, however Thermaltake confirmed off a few full-immersion gaming PC designs at CES 2025, together with a mini-ITX mannequin, and we’re intrigued.
Whereas it could appear to be anathema to immerse a number of grands’ price of digital elements in a case stuffed with liquid, the dielectric coolant utilized in these methods ensures it received’t conduct any electrical energy, and it additionally massively reduces temperatures. In actual fact, Thermaltake says the methods can scale back CPU and GPU temperatures by round 20°C in comparison with utilizing among the best AIO cooler designs.
I’ll admit it was a bit disconcerting seeing these methods on the CES present ground, the place you might see the floor of the liquid coolant wobbling excessive of the graphics card and motherboard, however it does appear to work. It’s fairly a distinct system out of your common water-cooling loop too, as the entire system is bathed in liquid, fairly than being targeted into waterblocks.
Referred to as a single-phase liquid cooling system, it really works on the precept that the liquid within the entrance chamber will soak up the warmth from the hot-running elements, and this coolant is funneled again to a rear chamber that’s full of a big radiator. The coolant, which makes use of biodegradable oils and has a excessive boiling level, is then cycled to and from the radiator by means of tubes, leading to a single-phase warmth trade system. That’s versus dual-phase methods the place the state of the coolant really adjustments because it will get sizzling or chilly, as is the case with warmth pipes.
A full-size ATX mannequin was on show at CES, which wants three 420mm radiators within the rear chamber to maintain its part tub cool. Nonetheless, I used to be additionally intrigued by the Thermaltake IX300 mini-ITX mannequin on show, which has a single GPU, which has a smaller chassis with a pair of 360mm radiators within the rear chamber.
Thermaltake additionally factors to the coolant’s excessive boiling level which means it requires much less in the way in which of standard top-ups and upkeep than different liquid-cooling methods. Nonetheless, we don’t fancy having to empty it for an improve.
Is that this the way forward for PC cooling? Most likely not, however it’s a novel thought that would achieve traction with high-end fans and overclockers, in addition to creators who run workstations with a number of high-end GPUs. I’ve seen a couple of full-immersion experiments with PCs earlier than, normally homebrew creations by fans, however that is essentially the most achieved model I’ve seen. You would probably purchase a full immersion gaming PC ready-made utilizing considered one of these methods.
Should you like your cooling system a bit of tamer, take a look at our information to one of the best CPU cooler, which covers conventional air coolers, in addition to AIO fashions. Should you’re feeling a bit extra adventurous, you may also learn our information on the right way to water cool your PC should you’ve by no means achieved it earlier than, and we’ll offer you a grounding within the fundamentals.
