X-bit labs

Water-Cooling Systems Roundup: 16 Systems Reviewed! (page 6)

Category: Coolers

by Kirill "ALT-F13" Balalin

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

The sole is finely milled but not polished:

We encountered some problems as we were trying to assemble this water-cooling kit because there was no reservoir and the pipe proved to be too short. Although the system can work well without a reservoir, it is not convenient to do the filling and pumping-through. It is especially difficult to drive air bubbles out of the system. The user manual doesn’t offer a helping hand because it is very low quality, like a tenth Xerox copy, and it’s hard to discern anything in the photographs there.

The kit doesn’t include a fan, but it cannot work without one due to the small size of the radiator, so we took the fan from Asetek’s other kit, WaterChill KT03A-12VX, for our test.

We should confess we had greatly underestimated this system’s potential, being somewhat misled by its very simple water-block. But coupled with a high-performance pump (it worked at 180lph in the assembled system) the WaterChill KT03-L20 Entry did better than entry level! The noise was rather loud at that, however, so you may want to use a quieter fan with this kit.

Summary: The WaterChill KT03-L20 Entry is a well-made water-cooling kit, even though somewhat unfinished. It is rather targeted at enthusiasts of water-based PC cooling. If you add a quiet and powerful fan and, optionally, a reservoir, you will get an efficient system capable of handling almost any existing processor. And you can have the legendary Asetek quality for a mere $130!