There is a new comer to the cooling scene but not what you would expect. This cooling is not by the traditional methods of air or water. This new comer is trying to bring phase cooling back to the front lines of extreme cooling. Extreme cooling is known to most of the PC industry and is sought out by only the few. "Extreme cooling" used to mean bringing the CPU temp as close to ambient as possible. The market is flooded with well-engineered water cooling products and heat-pipe designs that brings temps very close to ambient and are now easily attainable. This leaves the definition of extreme cooling as devices that achieve below ambient temperatures, most of the time below freezing.

If you have been on the PC Apex forums you would have seen the LN2 (Liquid Nitrogen) overclock runs by Cpt. Planet; achieving some incredible negative degrees which lead to some very high overclocks. Cooling with liquid nitrogen can be very expensive and the cost to run this method for any extended amount time would break any bank. An alternative to keep up with the race for sub ambient temps is also achieved using phase change cooling. Phase change cooling was very popular a couple of years ago and was the talk of virtually every PC forum. While the talk has died down a little, phase change cooling is still alive and well and has even been improved with multi-stage phase systems that can reach lower than -100 degrees Celsius. A single-stage phase cooler reaching sub-zero degree temperatures taht is also in a compact design is up for review today; manufactured by Cooler Express. Who? I asked my self the same question and had to do some digging.

Cooler Express is a company out of Taiwan that makes single/multi stage and head systems for experimental and laboratory uses. They even manufacture a chiller system that uses the phase cooler to chill a fluid for cooling. Thanks to FrozenCPU, we have one of their phase change units to have a look at and test out.

Specifications

Here are the specs as taken from the Cooler Express website:

- Strong cooling performance, reaching the maximum cooling effect of the CPU core
- Single Evaporators, of CPU.
- Low power consumption, low noise and   High-performance freezing compressor is used.

1.For computer overclocking.
2.Cooling of Educational computer or Laboratory's computer.

Package

The shipped box arrived in a bruised condition, just another ding on FedEx. After further inspection the unit was in perfect working order. The first thing that I noticed while putting the unit up on the bench for a photo session was the weight; a hefty 20 KGS (44 Lbs). This unit is definitely not meant to be portable; unless maybe they included a dolly in the box?!

After opening the box we get the first sign of the (capillary) line/ head, startup guide, power cable, and the mounting coupling. No sign of a dolly for this thing, either.

With the help of a crane, I lifted the heavy unit out of the box and took inventory.

Typical wrapping of plastic covered the unit. The head was extremely flexible and easy to move around. Not sure how flexible this line was, I took the care not to move it too much. It was nice to see the pre cut foam for both AMD and Intel sockets. The included socket heater is used to counter the condensation build up in the socket. Now that everything is laid out we can look closer at the individual parts.