One of the biggest surprises of the Chaintech partner event was the first hand look granted to the attendees of Corsair's all new Hydrocool 200 system. Corsair are a memory manufacturer, so there were also wide sampling of their XMS memory modules on display, but it was the liquid cooling system which grabbed most of the attention.

Faced with more competitive margins in the memory markets, memory companies have been actively seeking to expand into a few extra product segments where margins are better. Crucial for example have begun selling ATI videocards, so it wasn't much of a leap for Corsair to develop their own totally unique self-contained water cooling system. Only time will tell what the ultimate success of each of these ventures will be to the bottom line, but from the outset Corsair at least have originality on their side.

The Corsair Hydrocool 200 is built in conjunction with Delphi Thermal Systems and features a Intel Pentium 4 / AMD AthlonXP compatible nickel plated copper water block. The full package retails for about $200 USD and there are rumors that a northbridge and videocard GPU cooler may be in the works if all goes well with the HC-200.

Corsair demonstrated the HC-200 working away on a Chaintech motherboard in a clear case so it was easy to see how the entire system went together. Watercooling is typically considered fairly complex and expensive to enter into, but Corsair appear to have assembled a fairly well designed system which is pretty easy for users to install themselves.

Cooling fluid is provided with the unit, along with all the tubes, pumps, heat exchangers, and power devices necessary to operate the unit without fear of overheating. The system draws all power from the computer which means there is less worry about turning on the computer and forgetting to turn on the watercooling system.

Corsair of course remains a memory company, and so of you may find it interesting to know that the company tests each and every module for compliance with the rated speeds before shipping it out to consumers. With six layer DIMM PCB's, unbroken ground planes and a 1% failure rate Corsair have worked out a niche market for themselves which is not likely to be lost anytime soon.