X-bit labs

Water-Cooling Systems Roundup: 16 Systems Reviewed! (page 31)

Category: Coolers

by Kirill "ALT-F13" Balalin

[ 03/30/2006 | 08:48 AM ]

3RSystem Poseidon WCL-02-120.cu

3RSystem’s Poseidon series was among the earliest water-cooling systems on the market. We’ve got two such kits, WCL-02 and WCL-03, for our today’s tests and are curious to see how they compare with the modern level of performance.

The system comes with opaque pipes of a vivid yellow color.

The simple aluminum radiator is equipped with a 120mm fan. You receive two aluminum water-blocks besides the main CPU one. The additional blocks are meant for the chipset and the graphics card. The pump is the same as in the Aucma Coolriver kit. There’s a bottle of coolant included.

The CPU water-block’s bottom is made of copper; it is milled and finished.

We only tested the CPU water-block on our testbed and were very surprised at the performance of the Poseidon WCL-02. The good old Poseidon is still hale enough to equal our reference air cooler Zalman CNPS-9500LED!

Summary: Contrary to our apprehensions, the system didn’t fail completely in our test, yet you can see that its CPU water-block doesn’t suit to cool a modern processor. We also had an irreparable leakage inside the pump-tank, so the effective performance of the pump, 30 liter per hour, was lower than it might be. The additional aluminum chipset and GPU water-blocks look unconvincing. The fill-up opening is rather inconvenient as you can only fill the system by using the enclosed fill-up bottle. The fittings are poorly designed. The system isn’t worth the $90 you are asked for it.