What happened to external radiators?

[Crowt]

Real question. My first attempt at water cooling years ago was the Zalman Resorator1, which was a large external tower with inbuilt pump. Easiest damn thing to work with. The large volume of liquid plus surface area seemed solid as well. 

 

Now, you don't see anything at all like that. I mean, nothing. Outside of Koolance, does anyone make any sort of external radiator product in that model any longer? 

[Jurrunio]

In the era of downsizing and "everything in a beautiful (subjective) box", none.

[RejZoR]

8 minutes ago, Crowt said:

Real question. My first attempt at water cooling years ago was the Zalman Resorator1, which was a large external tower with inbuilt pump. Easiest damn thing to work with. The large volume of liquid plus surface area seemed solid as well. 

 

Now, you don't see anything at all like that. I mean, nothing. Outside of Koolance, does anyone make any sort of external radiator product in that model any longer? 

Just imagine Reserator RGB. A massive phallic feature that pulses and throbs in full RGB glory. Zalman is really missing out on the RGB craze with this one. And for the rest of us, we'd just turn off the silly RGB and have a silent cooling. If I remember correctly Reserator was actually passive solution and only moving part in/on it was the pump.

 

Technically you could take 2x or 3x "360" radiators and stack them in a box shape with some gap between them and use them in a similar way as Reserator and let air convection do the job instead of fans. But it would be a custom loop, not an AiO design like it used to be. Also cost and probably wouldn't look as nice.

[SolarNova]

There really is nothing stopping people from going this route. people just dont , usually because of space.

[For Science!]

It doesnt have a pump, but MORA3 would be my goto external radiator. I believe alphacool also have aomethung even with a pump

[Zando_]

Watercool still makes them. Imma plug @Den-Fi's rig here, using a MO-RA3 420x420mm external rad: 

 

[AnonymousGuy]

Alphacool Eiswand.

 

My main house-loop radiator is a "generic" air to water heat exchanger that I got off ebay.  It just takes a little bit of soldering to go from 1" copper to 5/8" barb.  The Watercool and Alphacool stuff is directly g1/4.

 

There's also nothing stopping you from buying a radiator stand kit and building your own external radiator from an internal radiator.

 

And yeah, external radiators are underutilized.  Much better cooling at lower cost when you're not constrained trying to fit something in a case.