by Vasily Melnik
02/14/2006 | 12:04 PM
If you know something of water-based PC cooling, then you should certainly know the Asetek brand. This company has long been acknowledged by PC enthusiasts as the best manufacturer of water coolers. Using only high-quality components and providing customizable system configurations, the company enjoys technical superiority as well as admiration of loyal users. The opportunity to customize the system puts Asetek’s apart from now-popular entry-level water-cooling systems: the user can choose the water-block for a particular platform, the type of the radiator, the performance and type of the pump, the fans, etc. And of course each component is head above components employed in entry-level systems in terms of quality. However, the market of enthusiasts-targeted cooling solutions is rather small, and Asetek just couldn’t keep quiet seeing how many other firms were turning out water-cooling systems at $150 and less, which enjoy great demand despite all of their drawbacks. So, Asetek came up with an Entry Level Kit which is kind of a pass into the world of PC enthusiasts for users who are not satisfied with cheap and deficient systems but can’t afford a full-fledged top-end one.
The WaterChill Entry Level Kit is a regular product from Asetek, but with a minimum of functionality. The user can choose the water-block type for a particular platform, but the radiator and the pump are constant and cannot be changed. Well, the user can choose another model of the pump, but there’s no guarantee the result will fit into the $130-150 range.
We are really glad to see an affordable water-cooling solution from a famous brand as the users get a high-quality product and Asetek opens a new market for itself. There’s only one question – how does this affordability affect the performance of the product? It’s all clear with top-end products from Asetek – they can only be challenged by the best samples of homemade systems and exclusive products from a couple of small firms that often ask more money for them than Asetek does. The Entry Level Kit, on the contrary, enters a tough-competition market sector where there are dozens of models available.
So let’s try to clear out what exactly Asetek is offering to us and is it consumable? We took a top-end system from the WaterChill series to see the performance and functionality difference between a top-end and low-end product of the company and to find out if it is possible to upgrade the entry-level kit using Asetek’s parts of a higher level. The results of our tests are going to show if such an upgrade makes any sense at all.
This is the heavy artillery from Asetek, and quite literally so. The sheer size of the box is impressive:
The plastic box with the company and product logo is large and hefty, leaving no doubt there really is a high-end system inside. The model name can be found on a side of the box:
Inside the box, two foam-rubber pads envelop the following:
The snapshot was made after the system had been in use for some time. This explains the mess inside the box and the cut pipe. The most conspicuous component of the kit is the radiator, of course:
It has two 120mm fan and is designed in the best way for cooling the liquid:
Surely there is no aluminum, only copper.
The radiator is blown through with two ADDA fans:
The user can vary the speed of the fans from 1650 to 3300rpm (see below). Like all products from Asetek, the radiator is equipped with crimp push-on fittings:
These fittings make system assembly and reconfiguration much easier than with classical “herringbone” fittings. There’s no need for clamps or other things typical of low-end cooling systems.
Well, this is only the beginning. The real star of the kit is the pump:
This pump has appeared just recently in stores, but has already got enough popularity. Priced at $100 it provides extended functionality and is already the topic of hot discussion among PC enthusiasts. First of all, the pump is large:
This is one of the largest pumps to be used in an off-the-shelf water-cooling system, but the size is justifiable here. The pump is a single whole with an expansion tank and system control unit. It has a special stand for easy placement:
You can attach four suction cups on the stand if necessary:
The intake opening of the reservoir is located right between the pump’s fittings:
As a result, the attached pipes may get in your way as you are trying to fill up the system after assembly.
The rear panel of the pump is what draws our attention:
Besides a power connector, there are connectors for two fans and a USB cable at the bottom. At the top of the panel there is a big connector for an LCD display (which is not included into our sample of the kit) and a group of connectors for thermal sensors and a system operation indicator.
The water-block should be familiar to all loyal users of Asetek’s products. It is the 03-L-2010 model with LGA775 fastening:
This is an excellent and time-tested design few other products can challenge in terms of performance. The base of the water-block suits all the existing platforms, but the cap is to be ordered separately for each particular platform. The fasteners are easy to work with:
You don’t need any screwdrivers. The system is assembled in a few minutes and with no problems at all. The kit also includes a USB cable, two thermo-sensors, a splitter for the water-block pipes, two stickers to fix down some elements of the system, and a syringe with special liquid you are recommended to add into the water.
Of course, you also get a little over 1.5 meters of the good old Asetek pipe:
This pipe doesn’t bend in two even if you twist it at a very sharp angle.
And here’s one more surprise to you:
It is something to get a CD with drivers and software for a water-cooling system! I guess the old joke about a mouse pad driver won’t be a joke anymore if things go this way – and mouse pads are already attached to a USB port! So, this disc stores less than 10 megabytes of data, half of which is software and the other half, the description. There are no drivers here as such. The pump is identified by the system as a standard USB device and the user only has to install the software.
You install and launch the enclosed software to find two small temperature indicators in the system tray (they will appear only if you’ve connected the included thermal sensors):
Clicking on them makes the main program window appear:
The program is very informative and functional. In the left part of the window there are sliders to adjust the speed of the fans, the speed of the pump, the highlighting intensity and contrast of the LCD display (if such is connected) and the program window transparency level. The settings can be saved in a profile to be invoked in the context menu of the system tray icon:
It’s quite handy: instead of adjusting all the settings each time you need to do so, you can create profiles for maximum performance and for quietest operation, for example, and switch between them as necessary. The graph in the right part of the window illustrates how the parameters are changing over time. If you double-click it, this window will remain on the Desktop:
It reports the system status to you and nothing more.
So Asetek has managed to create a near-ideal pump for enthusiasts and our thanks go to the developer for that. On the other hand, only true enthusiasts will find this product appealing as ordinary users are unlikely to shell out about $100 for a pump with a small expansion tank and a software speed control & monitoring system.
Unlike the senior model, this system comes in a plain cardboard box without any markings:
A humble sticker on a side of the box is the single sign that the contents have something to do with Asetek:
These things are parceled inside:
It is a mail parcel indeed because all products from Asetek are usually shipped by mail. The company has no retail shops. The box contains the bare minimum of parts a low-end water-cooling system should consist of, according to Asetek:
Here they are: a radiator, pump, water-block, a piece of pipe, and fasteners. Each component differs from the above-described top-end kit.
The radiator is smaller and has a different diameter of the fittings:
The radiator is supposed to carry one 120mm fan which is not included into the kit for the sake of economy. This economy is justifiable to some extent as quite a number of advanced system cases come today with a preinstalled 120mm exhaust fan and there’s no need for an extra one. But if you do need a 120mm fan, you can order it separately for $10-15 extra. The fittings are similar to the fittings of the WaterChill Antarctica KT03A-12VX 1/2 inch kit in design, but are considerably smaller:
The included pipe is smaller in diameter, too:
This proved to be an advantage eventually as you’ll see below.
The manufacturer’s cost-saving policy affected the pump, too:
This is an ordinary 220V aquarium pump.
It’s cheaper, to be sure, but this method of connecting the pump to power is rather too troublesome. You’ll have to get used to this if you’ve dealt only with PC-oriented pumps before. Soon you’ll learn to avoid typical mistakes like forgetting to turn the pump off after shutting down the PC and letting the pump work all day long after that. Or you can forget to turn the pump on and the computer shuts down on its own due to CPU overheat. Ideally, the user needs a relay to automatically turn such a pump on and off or a highlighted button on the front panel of the system case in order not to forget about the pump. You should also keep it in mind that there are no electric sockets inside the PC case and you have nothing to connect the pump to if you want to place it inside the computer.
A good feature of this kit is that it permits to replace the standard fittings with bigger ones:
You can see a threaded connection on the pump, so the fittings can be replaced. Otherwise, it is just an excellent external pump. It is cute-looking, small, quiet and high-performing. It comes from a renowned manufacturer and is easy to install. There are fasteners for suctions cups (included in the kit) on the pump’s bottom to suppress the vibration the device produces at work.
The water-block is far inferior to the senior model:
And its design is very simple:
The water comes into the center of the block along a special groove and goes out into the output fitting. This design doesn’t look promising, but the manufacturer managed to get quite an acceptable performance out of a very primitive design (primitive in terms of production complexity).
The fasteners are absolutely the same as enclosed with the 03-L-2010 [1/2”] block – they didn’t economize on that.
So, that’s the end of the description and we can proceed to the tests section of the review.
We assembled this testbed to check the efficiency of the water-cooling systems under question:
There were two test modes: Idle and Burn (with two copies of the CPU Burn utility running).
Intel’s Desktop Utilities version 2.1, supplied with the mainboard, was used to read the CPU temperature. The ambient temperature remained constant at 18°C throughout the tests. We used the same thermal paste for all the water-cooling systems and filled them up with ordinary drinking water.
I didn’t check the noise level because the WaterChill KT03-L20 Entry comes without any fan, so there can’t be any talk about noise, and as for the pumps, they can be absolutely quiet in both systems if you install them right. As you’ll see below, the resulting level of noise form the system will actually depend on what the user demands.
The system must be assembled and filled up before the tests. In this case, I only have to connect the components with pieces of pipe. The only more or less difficult procedure is water-block installation. The process can be divided into two steps. First, you should install special poles:
The poles come with nuts that prevent damage to the mainboard. And then you put the water-block down on the poles and fasten the screws:
The screws are all fixed at the same height and the pressure on the water-block comes from the springs the screws press down upon. This is a simple and reliable design. It was more difficult with the water-block from the WaterChill KT03-L20 Entry because it didn’t have fasteners for the test platform.
I had to improvise and spend some time to press the water-block down normally, but without any big troubles. I also used one of the fans included with the Antarctica KT03A-12VX 1/2 inch to blow at the radiator.
And here are the results of the test:
There can be no questions about the performance of the WaterСhill Antarctica KT03A-12VX 1/2 inch, but the WaterChill KT03-L20 Entry is somewhat disappointing. If you refer to our roundup of entry-level water-cooling systems, you will find that its performance corresponds to that of the Gigabyte 3D Galaxy GH-WIU01. Moreover, the room temperature was 2°C lower during the tests of the WaterChill KT03-L20 Entry and there is also a difference in the maximum fan speeds: the WaterChill’s 3300rpm against the 3D Galaxy’s 2500rpm. Not quite good for Asetek. Two components are guilty here: the water-block and the radiator. To prove my point, I replaced the water-block from the KT03-L20 Entry kit with the water-block from the KT03A-12VX 1/2 inch. It was simple as the pipes just fitted one into another quite tightly:
The components from the senior model can thus be attached to the junior model without replacing the fittings. The change of the water-block improved the situation considerably:
And what if we replace the radiator, too? It took 10 minutes to reconfigure the system and add more water… and here’s the outcome:
I guess this diagram illustrates my point well. The two most important components that have the strongest bearing on the performance and differentiate the top-end and entry-level water-cooling systems are the water-block and the radiator. So, there is no miracle in the results. The level of noise is a variable value: the pumps are vibrating rather than making any noise, and the fans are usually bought separately for systems of that kind. In this particular case, the WaterСhill Antarctica KT03A-12VX 1/2 inch was rather quiet at the minimum fan speed and no louder than an ordinary office PC at the max fan speed.
So how appealing can these systems be? It’s all clear with the WaterСhill Antarctica KT03A-12VX 1/2 inch, which is an excellent high-performance water-cooling system at $280 (with the accessories mentioned above and with the shipment costs included). The WaterChill KT03-L20 Entry costs $130 and this is the price of a Gigabyte 3D Galaxy which, unlike the new product from Asetek, includes a fan, a pump that connects to power normally, an expansion tank, and a fan to cool the area around the CPU socket. In other words, the 3D Galaxy is far better in terms of functionality, but delivers almost the same performance. The opportunity of an upgrade by replacing the water-block, radiator, etc. can’t make up for that because you are going to spend more than the price of an Antarctica KT03A-12VX 1/2 inch. You won’t also easily resell the replaced water-block and radiator as we’re talking about a very special product that doesn’t enjoy universal demand, and you’ll have to reduce the price.
So, here’s my verdict. The WaterСhill Antarctica KT03A-12VX 1/2 inch is recommended to purchase if you need a high-performance and functional water-cooling system and you are ready to spend the mentioned money for it. As for the WaterChill KT03-L20 Entry kit, you may want to buy one for image-making, prestige or some other considerations, but the common sense suggests that its price/functionality ratio is far from perfect. Perhaps you’ll find reasonable arguments in favor of this one?