Whenever the summer sun has the temperatures rising, the common overclockers craving for lower temperatures push their way to the surface. Besides the typical and in the meantime wide-spread Peltier-with-watercooling-combinations, cooling systems that gain their performance from a compressor/evaporator combination get more and more affordable and therefore gain in popularity. The so-called "EVA" has left the limit up high, only for the Danish manufacturer Chip-Con and their "Prometeia" to try to push it just a little further and being crowned the new king of cpu-cooling - so far for their plan. In the following review we will present the Prometeia system and will show how to make the hottest cpus rim with frost.

If you're from Austria, Germany or Switzerland you might enjoy reading our German Language Version of the review.

The Prometeia Cooling System

The Prometeia Cooling System

The Prometeia Cooling System is different to the competitor Vapochill and on the other hand somewhat more like the aforementioned "EVA", just that there's a perfectly fitting but yet easily replaceable PC-case supplied as well. On top of the Compressor housing we find a rather standard Midi-Tower, which however contains some valuable features, like dismountable HD/FD-“cage” drawer and CD-Rom Drawer sliding system as well as a preinstalled 80mm Fan. Especially the do-it-yourself people will favour the motherboard-plate, which can be taken out of the case to install the system components. For all those, who don't like Chip-Con’s choice of a Midi-Tower, there's also good news: the Prometeia Cooling System can be separated from the tower PC-Case without much effort. Just loosen a couple of bolts and put the whole thing under your favourite case to create the combination of your “cold nights' dreams”.

In the lower case we not only find the compressor (which is powered totally independent from the computers PSU) and the condensor as well as the controlling device. The machine is vented by two 120mm Sunon fans, that are throttled after the start-up procedure of the compressor and thus do their job in a silent enough manner, not to disturb the sensitive ear; which is definitely more silent than some of Chip-Con's competitors' power-coolers do. The Danes specify the noise level during the start-up as being 42 db(A), followed by 36 db(A) when the fans are throttled. The temperature display in the front bezel of the case shows the temperature of the evaporator and is also in charge of control: up to four different values controlling the fans and the start-up procedure can be manipulated here.


As many already know: the weight of the Prometeia System is enourmous: the scale stop at 27kg without the PSU and any other PC-components installed. This makes the case a somewhat heavy partner when going to LAN-Parties. When unpacking the Prometeia, remember to dismount the green steel barren on the bottom of the case: this only helps to secure the compressor during transport and has to be removed before use.
A hose leads through a hole between the cooling unit and the case, on its end the so-called "Microfreezer" is attached, which is the actual cooling head and evaporator in the system. We are glad to mention, that Chip-Con ships the Prometeia with kits for socket-A/370/7 or alternatively socket-478 CPUs (or both) - this and the very open concept makes the system usable for both present and future CPUs. For example: for upgrading the upcoming Hammer-CPU you just have to get (by that time hopefully) a new Hammer-installation kit (if the current Socket A kit cannot be used). With some other systems you would have to throw away the cooling system as a whole.

It seemed to us that Chip-Con could have spent a bit more time on the finish of the Microfreezer: the copper-head that would go on the DIE (or the heat-spreader on the Pentium IV) was a bit rough and somewhat faded. Maybe a protecting foil made of plastic could help keep the copper-head clean during shipping.