X-bit labs

Cooler Master Aquagate Viva Liquid Cooling System Review (page 8)

Category: Coolers

by Sergey Lepilov

[ 02/02/2007 | 09:40 AM ]

Conclusion

Trying to kill two birds with one stone, Cooler Master hit neither. The new cooling system has two good points: universality (it supports all the modern CPUs and GPUs) and low price. The rest are all drawbacks that outweigh the mentioned advantages by a large margin.

The failure of the Aquagate Viva comes from its design that implies that its heatsink and fans must be placed inside the PC case. Abandoning an expansion tank to make the system compact, the manufacturer endowed it with one more defect, a very small amount of coolant. The heatsink is small to achieve the compactness and, probably, to provide for several variants of installation and is also made of aluminum to reduce the cost. As a result, the two roaring 70mm fans can’t cool it efficiently and provide performance that would be at least acceptable for overclocking.

So, it’s good the Christmas holidays are already behind – no one is likely to present you the Aquagate Viva as a gift!