Having an absolute beast of a PC is all well and good, until you need to keep it cool. There’s a price to pay for all that power, and often that price comes in the form of heat. In fact, power and heat are synonymous thanks to the laws of physics, and this will unfortunately always be the downfall of overclocking enthusiasts. As much as they like to produce heat, the sensitive components in your PC can only handle so much of it. Keeping a PC cool is serious business for the health and longevity of any machine, and that’s why I can’t help but appreciate this incredibly serious effort from Bykski.
Prolific Twitter source Momomo_ US (opens in new tab) spotted the new Bykski external water cooled unit (opens in new tab) (via Tom’s Hardware (opens in new tab)) for sale in Japan going for the equivalent of $525 USD (opens in new tab). That price seemed about right as it’s now up for preorder on the Bykski website (opens in new tab) for $559.99 USD. Given the price ticket, you’d be hoping for some very impressive cooling unlike some other coolers (opens in new tab) we’ve heard about recently, and given this cooler may well be bigger than your PC, it might just manage it.
Rather than fit the cooling unit inside the case with the rest of the components this unit sits outside of the main case, potentially eclipsing it as it pulls heat away from your PC into its own cooling setup. The case measures 419 mm high, so it’s not that huge for a tall PC case but it is on the taller side of a middie which is pretty large when it’s only cooling.
Despite looking pretty intimidating, the Bykski B-1080-CEC-X shouldn’t be too difficult to set up. It’s rocking three easy plumb-and-go G1/4 fittings that should attach to most liquid cooling loops that you’d use with your PC. From there it uses an integrated pump, radiator and reservoir system, complete with 120mm fans in a 3×3 configuration all packed into a 419 (H) x 488 (D) x 138mm (W) case. Yes, this is absolutely overkill, and I really want one.
The unit claims to be capable of dealing with up to 2,000W of generated heat and when you consider even high-end modern gaming units aren’t even pushing out 1,000W, this puppy is clearly built for bigger things. But that doesn’t mean it has to be used for them.
The Bykski B-1080-CEC-X would be right at home in a server situation, keeping all those drives nice and icy under pressure. Alternatively, if you have a few different machines in reach you could likely divert your cooling for all of them to the one box. It’s also just a nice way of potentially separating your kit. Allowing for what would look like an incredibly sleek mini build by keeping all that beautifully excessive cooling in a separate case.
Again, this epic cooling station isn’t going to be for everyone, and we have plenty of suggestions (opens in new tab) to keep your situation nice and chilly that won’t break the bank quite like this monolith. But if you do have a use case that requires some serious cooling, this could be just what you’re hot mess of a situation is looking for.