X-bit labs

Water-Cooling Systems Roundup: 16 Systems Reviewed! (page 9)

Category: Coolers

by Kirill "ALT-F13" Balalin

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

Aucma Coolriver 3

The Aucma Coolriver was one of the first water-cooling systems that could be recommended for purchase without any reservations. Unlike the competing Poseidon series, it featured molded copper water-blocks (as many as three of them!) and a copper radiator. At the time of its release it boasted an excellent performance and was quite affordable, too. The poorly designed fastenings for the chipset and GPU water-blocks were the single drawback of the system, but it couldn’t stop modders who just made their own new fastenings. Those who didn’t, ran a big risk: you could inadvertently hitch a pipe and tear the water-block off the cooled component, damaging the latter.

The system comes with a small water reservoir combined with the pump in a single unit, and a very good radiator with a 120mm fan. The Aucma is shipped preassembled and already filled with coolant. The pump has a rather mediocre performance, about 30 liters per hour. The latest modification of the system includes LGA775 fasteners.

As before, the Coolriver surpasses the showings of the Poseidon systems but cannot match the performance of modern water-cooling kits. However, its efficiency is still on a competitive level as it delivers a good enough performance, producing little noise.

Summary: The best-seller of the past still offers a high enough performance. If you need a three-component water-cooling system and are not afraid of doing some manual work on improving the fasteners, the Aucma Coolriver 3 may suit you fine. A piece of good news is that the price of the system has dropped from $130 to $110.