Back to all articles The Asetek 690LX-PN Liquid Cooler Socket 3647 is a Serious Step Above the AIO Competition Published:
Water cooling has come a long way and this monster from Asetek is the pinnacle of plug-and-play water cooling for professional computing applications. If you’ve got a hot Xeon W, this is just the chilling upgrade you need to make the most of it.
We remember a time when liquid cooling in the PC industry was something crazy people did with nothing to lose. Repurposed car radiators and medical tubing were just some of the components early pioneers of desktop liquid cooling used to push their systems to the limit.
Just a few years later and PC liquid cooling is a highly-standardized industry. You can buy reservoirs, tubing, heatsinks and everything else you need from various manufacturers and be assured that they will work together. The actual design and construction of a full-on liquid cooling setup is now also easy enough that most moderately tech-savvy users can do it.
Still, custom liquid cooling is hardly mainstream, but thanks to the rise of AIO (all-in-one) water cooling,it’s as easy as installing any normal air-cooler. We use man gaming-grade AIO coolers in our builds, with the Corsair Hydro products being particularly good. Things could be better though and there aren’t any truly professional grade AIO options out there. At least not until now, with the Asetek 690LX-PN.
Asetek Doesn’t Lose Its Cool Asetek may not be a household name for most people reading this, but their coolers are no joke. This particular AIO was actually co-developed with Intel for use with the Xeon W-3175X. In case you didn’t know, that’s a 28-core 3.1Ghz - 3.8Ghz demon, with a TDP of 255W.
To handle such a CPU furnace, Asetek have built a cooler with a 360mm copper radiator and three 120mm fans to suck the heat out of it. In fact, copper is used generously throughout the cooler, which is one of the main reasons it commands a premium price.
The heatsink place is also made from this amazingly-conductive metal and that makes this cooler insanely good at moving heat out of the CPU die and into the outside world. That 255W TDP is nothing to the 690LC-PN, which is designed to handle up to 500W of energy. Remember, this is a plug-and-play solution. You never have to fill it or do any maintenance.
So sure are Asetek that this cooler will go the distance, that they have backed it with a 2-year warranty. Compared to a custom liquid cooling solution this is cheaper, simpler and more compact. Allowing for professional grade machines that are smaller and quieter, without the labor costs and maintenance regime and with nearly as much cooling performance. Asetek have produced a game-changer here and every professional computer user should sit up and take notice.
