Xbox 360 Liquid Cooling to Debut at CES 2006

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Since the Xbox 360’s launch, there have been complaints about overheating … and crashing due to overheating. CES 2006 is right around the corner and CoolIT Systems will be showing off a liquid cooled Xbox 360. If there is enough interest, the company may take the product to retail.

“Basically, the Xbox 360 cooler is an updated and modified version of our Freezone PC coolers,” said (Geoff) Lyon (chief executive of CoolIT Systems).

While the liquid cooled Xbox 360 is a prototype, Lyon told us that it could become a retail product and adds, “At CES we will be gauging interest to see if we can go retail.” Assuming the product goes retail, Lyon says that it may be sold as a retail customer kit, complete with tools and instructions for taking apart the Xbox 360, or as a unit to system integrators. “If we go to market, the cooler will likely take both forms,” says Lyon.

CoolIT’s liquid cooler runs off the existing Xbox 360 power supply. “Our engineers found that liquid cooling lowers the power consumption, however the cooling system does use some of that saved power,” said Lyon. Source: TG Daily

A Freezone CPU Cooler is pictured above.

We Say: Although most liquid cooling kits are built with overclocking in mind, a lot of users would welcome additional cooling to the stock unit, specifically those who have experienced crashes due to overheating (or those concerned about it). On the other hand, Lyon also said he’d be thrilled if the unit was used to overclock the Xbox 360. This could prove very interesting to modders if this unit makes it to retail.