As you might remember from some of my previous posts I mentioned that although Asetek had officially withdrawn from the retail/channel market, it would still be possible to buy Asetek technology as an end user going forward. Well this is what happened last week as Corsair released their new cooler – the Hydro 50…

During the last couple of years we have discussed numerous times how to leverage the strong loyalty and support we have from the enthusiast community without compromising our OEM focus. We decided to look for a partner with a strong brand in the enthusiast market and see if we could find a good fit both from a brand but also a quality and integrity perspective. We were in contact with a few companies, but it quickly became clear that Corsair was the perfect fit. They have a global brand, a global and loyal customer base, a global channel as well as outstanding products that they stay behind.

It turned out pretty soon that Corsair’s management saw things the same way as we did. So far liquid cooling in the channel has either been high performance/bulky/high price OR low performance/small/medium price. Together we wanted to change that – or in other words what was important for Corsair was that we created a cooler that could beat high performance air coolers on performance and still be priced roughly the same. The Hydro 50 is not intended to sell because it is a liquid cooler, but merely because it is a true high performance low cost, reliable, light and small form factor cooler.

During the last years we have constantly been doing research in higher performance and efficiency. We always want better performance but we have been unwilling (and still are) to give up our compact integrated design as well as the low power/low pressure pump. Everyone and his dog can make a decent liquid cooling system if size, cost and power efficiency does not matter. Corsair’s requirements were clear and they were not satisfied with the performance of our standard LCLC but wanted higher performance in order to satisfy even the pickiest enthusiast.

Luckily we had developed a new cold plate technology as well as a new radiator, and Corsair is our first customer to take advantage of these engineering masterpieces as they truly are! These technologies will be deployed with our OEM customers over the year, so if you are not the DIY type of person you will still be able to benefit from these new technologies. I do not wish to disclose how we did, but I am confident enough about the performance that we would challenge any liquid or air cooler out there in apples to apples test! (Equal radiator size and fan).  The Hydro 50 beats any other “integrated” liquid cooling systems out there by a huge margin.

I have read some of the previews out there from the press (which has been great) but also  some comments from the so called self educated “I have to defend my 1 inch garden hose, 18W pump, 3x120mm radiator and $300 liquid cooling setup and therefore I am not open to new technology”  experts that think that bigger hoses and pump automatically means better performance. To you guys I got two things to say:

1. If you knew us in the enthusiast days, you would know that you can generally count on our claims. Our WaterChill and VapoChill products won more 500 international press awards. Chances are that we know what we are doing ;)

2. Wait for the independent press review. This is a fabulous product taken to market and sold by a fabulous company.

I am happy that we have kept our promises to the enthusiast community and that it is now again possible as an end user to take advantage of an Asetek Engineered product.