Installation
Before I get into the installation proper, I'd like to explain why we'll be doing all the things we'll be doing. We've already talked about how the Vapochill's big advantage is its ability to cool below room temperature. As it happens, that is also results in a key disadvantage: the potential for condensation. No, not the condensation of refrigerant that occurs in the condenser, but the condensation of water molecules out of the air. Think of a can of Coke, straight out of the fridge, sweating on a coaster.

Keeping condensed water off your coffee table is easy enough, but things get a bit trickier when you're trying to keep water from condensing around your cold CPU. Imagine if water spontaneously appeared on the back of the motherboard, or under the processor, or even in the holes of the processor socket.

Bad things, man, bad things.

So it's not enough simply to install the motherboard, screw down the CPU kit, and fire the thing up. Condensation must be prevented from forming, and that is done by filling any empty space in the neighborhood of the CPU with something else. With what, you ask? Why, foam and goo, of course!

Uhh, never mind, you'll see when we get there.

I should also state for the record that the Vapochill comes with an excellent spiral-bound manual which is broken up into several sections, including separate sections for Socket 478 and Socket 370/A installations. Each of the install sections has twenty-six pages with photographs and diagrams, and they thoroughly document the install process.

The first step is to bend the tubing leading to the CPU kit so that the CPU kit itself is properly aligned with the processor socket. In order to do this, you first have to mount the motherboard. Fortunately, the Vapochill enclosure has a motherboard tray that is only two screws away from popping right out. Asetek supplies plastic clips that push into pre-drilled holes on the tray. After clipping the mobo on to the tray, you'll have to put the tray back into the enclosure, so you can align the CPU kit. When you're done, the CPU kit will be in line with the processor while just dangling free, and it'll look something like this:

So, now that you've got the motherboard all nicely mounted in the case, it's time to... remove the motherboard tray, and then remove the motherboard from the tray. I'm not sure why Asetek has you do the alignment at this point. It seems to me it could be done later on, eliminating the step of installing the motherboard, removing it, then installing it again.

Anyway, now that the motherboard is back off the tray, it's time to do some reconstructive surgery, starting with removing the heatsink retention bracket from the board. Once bracket is removed, it's time to break out the Vapochill's pre-cut pieces of foam. You'll fit one of these pieces of foam insulation on the bottom of the bracket, so when the bracket is reinstalled, the foam will be sandwiched between the bracket and the motherboard. The foam cutouts are so exact that they even take the ZIF socket lever into account, but they require proper orientation in order to fit. Once the foam is oriented properly, you'll have to mount the heatsink bracket again.

Then it's time to break out the goo. Remember the large tube of heatsink paste I told you about? Don't expect any leftovers.

If you're worried about smearing this stuff all over your CPU and motherboard, don't be. The heatsink paste included in the kit is completely non-conductive. However, if you ever decide to switch processors, I'd strongly advise against the use of Arctic Silver for this job. :-)

You have to apply goo all over the socket, smearing it into the holes (Asetek includes a pipe cleaner) and into the gap at the center of the socket. What you're doing here is filling up all the empty spaces around the CPU, because any space left empty would leave room for condensation to form. Another piece of pre-cut foam and goes down into the hole in the center of the socket. The final product looks like so:

Here's a wider shot that shows the foam around the socket as well as the socket itself:

You'll use more heatsink paste to fill in the center area of the back of the CPU, covering all the transistors. When you're done, the back of your precious P4 will look like this:

You'll need to install one of the heating elements from the kit onto the back of the motherboard, like this:

Now it's time for another piece of foam. This one has adhesive backing like the heater element, and applies directly over the element itself.

Okay, back to the top of the board, where the processor should be nestled comfortably into its goo-filled socket. Another piece of pre-cut foam insulation goes on top of the socket, then the top heating element goes over the foam. You'll then have to install the Vapochill unit's retention bars. A picture of the finished product:

With the foam-and-goo stage complete, the motherboard goes back onto the tray, and the tray goes back into the enclosure. The final stage of the installation involves fine tuning the alignment and securing the evaporator assembly using the retetion bars.

The power supply is an optional item on the Vapochill. Our test unit didn't come with a one. When selecting a power supply, keep in mind that it needs to have enough juice to run not only all the normal system components, but the Vapochill as well.

The Vapochill comes with a special ATX extension cable. One end of the cable connects to the power supply's ATX plug, while the other end connects to the motherboard. A separate connector block that is part of the extension cable plugs into the ChillControl board to power it and the compressor. There are also separate contingencies for the 4-lead ATX12V connector, but I'll go over that in more detail later.

You'll need to connect the two heating elements to the appropriate connectors on the ChillControl and hook up the appropriate motherboard connectors, such as the power switch, reset switch, and power and hard drive LEDs.

Asetek says that the parts used in the installation are typically reusable two or three times. Looking at the procedure, I would expect that just about everything could be reused repeatedly, with the exception of the heating element and adhesive foam that go on the back of the motherboard. The other pieces aren't adhesive mounted (except the second heating element, but there's no need to remove it from the foam it's mounted to) so they should be fine, though you'll probably need some more heatsink paste if you change motherboards more than once.

If you do need additional install parts, Asetek has you covered. They sell kits that contain only the pieces that might need replacing if you change processors or motherboards. In fact, they even sell kits that enable you to convert your Socket 478 Vapochill system to a Socket A system or vice versa. The kits are pretty reasonably priced: The Socket A version is typically $20-25, and the Socket 478 version is around $40-45. Again, Asetek says you can typically apply and remove the various parts two or three times before having to worry about replacing them, so you almost certainly won't need one of these kits every time you upgrade your motherboard.

It's alive!!!
When you finally fire up the Vapochill, you'll find it does... nothing. Well, that's not really fair. It definitely powers up. The power light comes on, you can hear a couple of quiet fans and what sounds like a dorm fridge if you listen closely, and there's a hyphen crawling left to right across the display on the front of the case. But dammit, it won't POST! Your mind ponders how long you spent putting everything together, and the thought of going over everything to look for mistakes makes you cringe.

Well, fear not; this is all perfectly normal. See, if the Vapochill hasn't been on for a few days (or, for example, since it was tested by Asetek prior to shipment) it takes several minutes to start cooling the evaporator effectively. If the system were allowed to POST at this point, the CPU would likely overheat before the evaporator started working. Therefore, the ChillControl computer holds the motherboard's reset line high (the equivalent of holding down the reset button) until the evaporator cools down to -5C. Incidentally, if your system does actually POST when you first turn it on, turn it off and check to make sure the reset line from the case is hooked up correctly. When I assembled everything, I was off by a pin, and going into the BIOS revealed the CPU temperature climbing very high very quickly.

Within five or so minutes, the display on the front of the Vapochill will start counting down from 10. At this point it's actually displaying the temperature of the evaporator in Celsius. When it hits -5, the system will POST. The display will continue to count down until it reaches the target temperature set in the ChillControl computer; by default this is -15C, or 5F.

If you look closely at the (admittedly bad) picture of the display, you'll see four indicators down the right side: TMP1, TMP2, RPM and MHZ. These display evaporator temperature, optional temperature sensor, compressor speed, and CPU speed, respectively. I should note here that the CPU speed is actually set manually. The ChillControl computer which drives the display has no way to tell the processor speed in realtime, so this piece of information is as accurate as you program it to be.

To cycle through the settings, simply tap the reset button on the front of the case. Actually resetting the computer requires you to hold the reset button down for a second or more. Don't worry, the system isn't at all prone to interpreting a tap of the button as "reset my machine now." You can also set the display to cycle between the four pieces of information. Incidentally, if an error of some sort occurs, an error code will be shown on the display to help you troubleshoot the problem. The error codes are well documented in the manual.

I mentioned briefly the ability to program the ChillControl computer, so I'll talk more about that now. The computer circuit board has an RJ12 jack that's accessible by removing one of the side panels. To use it, attach the included cable and plug the other end into the motherboard's serial port, then boot with the included floppy. Using a simple, menu-driven interface, you can set a number of parameters.

• Hold temp at: This setting determines the steady-state evaporator temperature. By default it is -15C, but you can set it as low as -30C.
• Start PC at: This setting determines the temperature at which the ChillControl will allow the motherboard to POST. Default is -5C.
• Warning at: An audible alert will occur if the temperature set here is exceeded.
• Shut down at: If this temperature is exceeded, the system will shut down completely.
• Fan1 speed: Speed of the condenser fan, in percentage of full speed.
• Fan2 speed: Speed of the optional case fan, in percentage of full speed.
• Pin heater load: This regulates the amount of power sent to the heaters installed above and below the CPU socket.
• CPU speed: This lets you set the processor speed which will be shown on the front display.
• Temperature output: You can select whether the temperatures shown on the display are in Celsius or Fahrenheit.
• Default view: Determines which display parameter is shown by default when the system first powers up.

The manual also gives instructions on updating the firmware for the ChillControl computer, so it's possible that Asetek will add functionality to the system as time goes on.