by Sergey Lepilov
02/12/2008 | 12:45 PM
The Aquagate liquid-cooling systems lineup from Cooler Master is currently represented by 6 different models. Three of these systems have already been tested in our labs, and the reviews of two of them have been posted.
Today we are going to talk about one more liquid-cooling system for the CPU called Aquagate S1. Frankly speaking, mass-production liquid-cooling systems from this manufacturer have never been the quietest or the most efficient out there, however, they have always stood out against their competitors due to low price and simple installation procedure. So, how successful the current solution turned out? Our today’s article will get in all the details about it to answer this question for you.
Cooler Master Aquagate S1 liquid-cooling system comes in a pretty large vertical box with a plastic carry handle:
There is a small cut out window in the front panel of the box that is shaped up to match the main unit of the cooling system. You can see part of the cooling fan on Aquagate S1 heatsink and the heatsink itself through this window. The complete list of processors supported by Aquagate S1 is given on the sides of the box. The back side of the box tells about all the key features and peculiarities of this cooling system alongside with its detailed technical specifications:
The liquid-cooling system itself sits in transparent plastic casing with a small box with accessories right beneath it:
Among the bundled accessories we can find:
This is a pretty modest set of accessories, but the reason for that is very simple: Aquagate S1 doesn’t need anything else.
Cooler Master Aquagate S1 is a pre-assembled ready to be installed liquid-cooling system that consists of a main water block with a heatsink and fan and a processor water block combined with a pump:
The components are connected with one another using flexible tubing, no longer than 0.5m and 3/8 of an inch in diameter.
The main block with a heatsink and fan measures 158mm x 128mm x 88mm and weighs 348g:
The whole thing sits inside a casing with a wire mesh, so that you can see a 120-mm fan with 9 aggressively bent blades through it. The fan rotation speed can be adjusted manually in the interval from ~800RPM to ~2500RPM and with 92.8CFM airflow. The minimal level of generated noise equals 20dBA, as for the maximum, the manufacturer doesn’t mention it anywhere unfortunately. In addition, the fan is also equipped with four blue LEDs.
The system radiator is made of aluminum with metal panels on the sides:
The remarkable peculiarity of this casing is that it can accommodate a second fan that will oust the warm air outside:
However, the accessories bundle doesn’t include additional long screws that you will need to install a second fan, so you will have to find some on your own, or you will have to use short ones on the opposite side. This is pretty much all we can say about the radiator unit, so let’s move on to the water block and pump.
In fact, water block combined with pump doesn’t really boast anything outstanding about its design. It consists of a round copper unit 40mm in diameter with a small pump sitting above it:
All in all, the water block measures 58mm x 58mm x 24.5mm that is why we were really surprised how the manufacturer managed to also fit the pump in there.
According to the specification, the pump’s performance is 200 l/h at 21dBA noise level and 50,000 hours MTBF of its rotor ceramic bearing (about 5.7 years). According to the technical specifications, the pump rotor rotation speed should be 2600~3100RPM, however, our monitoring tools report ~5260RPM (the pump has a common three-pin plug for the corresponding mainboard connector).
The base of the water block is covered with removable film protecting it from scratches:
When you remove the film, you see pretty well finished and remarkably even base surface:
The nozzles coming out of the pump are designed to be connected to 3/8 inch tubes, although in case of Aquagate S1 everything is already pre-connected, tightened up and filled.
Now we should say a few words about the installation procedure, namely the installation of the water block onto mainboard and then of the entire liquid-cooling system into the system case.
Installation of Cooler Master Aquagate S1 is described in detail in the corresponding manual (PDF-file, 1.84MB), however, you can really install it absolutely intuitively. You will have to remove the mainboard from the system case first. This is necessary because you need to insert four spindles into the corresponding holes around the processor socket (in case of a Socket 754/939/940 mainboard there will be only two of them) and tighten then up with washers and screws. The water block will sit on these spindles. There is no backplate bundled with the cooler that is why the PCB may get a little bent. After that we install the mainboard back into the system case. The water block is installed on top of the processor heat-spreader covered with a thin layer of thermal grease and then pressed firmly against the CPU with a universal retention bracket.
This is what the whole thing looks like when assembled:
The retention is very sturdy and reliable and plastic inserts between the water block and the retention bracket prevent the block from rotating on top of the CPU heat-spreader.
Now all we need to do is fasten the unit with a fan and a radiator to the case rear panel, right where the 120mm fan is supposed to be:
Of course, it is essential that your case has a spot for this fan available.
If your case doesn’t have a 120mm fan on the rear panel (or a spot for it), then the manufacturer suggests that you install Aquagate S1 onto the case side panel. In this situation you should keep in mind that you need a window on the side panel of your system case that can accommodate a 120mm fan and be ready to experience some difficulties when taking the side panel off.
After that all you need to do is attach the power cable and fan rotation speed monitoring cable to the corresponding mainboard connector and install fan rotation speed controller onto the case rear panel bracket (or into any other convenient spot):
If everything is done the right way, once the system is powered on Aquagate S1 will welcome you with blue lighting of the fans and corresponding blue glowing of the tubes:
If you notice that there are some air bubbles in the tubes, then you need to add some distilled water to the system using the included syringe. There is a sticker with a corresponding warning message on one of the tubes:
The list of technical specifications winds up our Closer Look section.
The specs of Cooler Master Aquagate S1 liquid-cooling system are given in the table below:
The new Cooler Master Aquagate S1 cooling system and its opponents were tested in the following system:
The quad-core Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2400MHz) processor with polished-off heat-spreader was overclocked to its maximum frequency with the today’s tested liquid-cooling system running in the quietest fan mode. The resulting frequency was 3308MHz at core voltage increased to 1.45V. According to monitoring data from CPU-Z, SpeedFan and Everest, processor Vcore equaled 1.425V. Vdimm was increased to 2.15V, and other mainboard voltages remained default. CPU Voltage Reference parameter was set at 0.63x in the mainboard BIOS, and CPU Voltage Damper set to Enabled. The automatic fan rotation speed control system (Q-Fan) was disabled in the mainboard BIOS.
All tests are performed in Windows XP Professional Edition Service Pack 2. SpeedFan version 4.34 Beta 37 was used to monitor the temperature of the CPU, reading it from the CPU core sensor. The data reported by the new version of this utility matched the readings from Core Tempt v0.96 utility. The thermal throttling of our test CPU activated at 100 ºC (determined empirically). For our Intel Core 2 Quad processor it was controlled with RightMark CPU Clock Utility version 2.30. The CPU was heated up with OverClock Checking Tool version 1.1.1b in a 60-minute test with maximum CPU utilization, during which the system remained idle in the first and last 4 minutes:
I performed at least two cycles of tests and waited for ~20 minutes for the temperature inside the system case to stabilize during each test cycle. Since Cooler Master Aquagate S1 can only be installed into a system case, we didn’t run any tests in an open testbed. The maximum temperature of the hottest CPU core in the two test cycles was considered as the final result (if the difference was not bigger than 1°C – otherwise the test was performed at least once again). Despite the stabilization period, the result of the second cycle was usually 0.5-1°C higher.
The noise level of each cooling system was measured according to our traditional method described in the previous articles. The subjectively comfortable level of 36dBA is marked with a dotted line in the diagram; the ambient noise from the system case, without the CPU cooler, didn’t exceed 33.4dBA when measured from a 1m distance.
The ambient temperature was monitored with an electronic thermometer that allows monitoring the temperature changes over the past 6 hours. During our test session room temperatures stabilized at around ~25°C. It is used as a staring point on the diagrams. Note that the fan rotation speeds for the liquid-cooling system and the processor cooler are shown in the diagrams as the average readings reported by SpeedFan, and not as the official claimed fan specifications.
One of the testing participants competing against Cooler Master Aquagate S1 will be Cooler Master Hyper TX2, a very efficient and inexpensive cooling solution selling for only $22:
Besides, we also included the results for Ice Hammer IH-4400 A, which is also very affordable, but offers remarkable efficiency for this price. This super cooler was tested with one Noctua NF-P12 fan (120 x 120 x 25mm, 1380RPM rotation speed).
First come the results of our processor temperature measurements taken for the CPU cooled with a liquid-cooling solution and with the participating air coolers:
As we can see, the mass production liquid-cooling system once again turned out weaker than the air cooling solutions. In case of Cooler Master Aquagate S1 we would like to say that with only one single fan for air exhaust, or when the rotation speed of the default fan is increased to its maximum of ~2400RPM, the system becomes much more efficient (its performance improves by 10ºC or more). It indicates primarily that Aquagate S1 is highly dependent on the efficiency of its radiator cooling and that its pump and water unit are powerful enough to ensure proper cooling of a single CPU. Nevertheless, even at maximum capacity Aquagate S1 still loses to the air cooler selling for half the price.
And in conclusion let’s check out the level of noise generated by the liquid-cooling system and its today’s competitors:
With the default fan rotating at ~1250RPM Aquagate S1 is extremely quiet. In fact, at 1250RPM the noise generated by the fan dissolves in the noise generated by the pump. In other words, the water block pump is extremely quiet, which is a definite advantage of the new liquid-cooling system. A second fan ousting the air out at the same rotation speed added to the cooler (we used another 9-blade Scythe Minebea fan) hardly affects the noise readings. However, once the default Aquagate S1 fan is sped up to the maximum ~2400RPM, the whole system becomes very loud. Well, I guess this is the price you have to pay for the maximum efficiency of your liquid-cooling system these days.
Before we make any final conclusions about the efficiency of Cooler Master Aquagate S1 system, let’s recall how efficient the previous model, Aquagate VIVA, was. If you read our review, you should remember, that this system lost about 9ºC to Cooler Master Hyper TX on a dual-core CPU with very high level of generated noise. Since Hyper TX and its universal modification called Hyper TX2 do not really differ from the constructive standpoint, we can actually compare Aquagate S1 and Aquagate VIVA with one another as well. So, it turns out that the new cooling system is a tremendous move forward compared with the previous one, because today it yielded only 2ºC to Hyper TX2 although working on a much hotter quad-core processor and having generated considerably less noise during operation. Moreover, if you modify your system by simply adding another exhaust fan, it will leave the competitor behind in no time. However, it is true only if we compare Aquagate S1 against Hyper TX2.
Overall, the new cooling system will hardly be a very attractive buy for overclocking fans and some regular users as well. The mere fact that it loses to an air cooler makes it really hard for Aquagate S1 to make it to the favorites list. The only possible modification is the installation of an additional fan, because Aquagate S1 doesn’t allow adding any more water blocks, which is in most cases a primary advantage of any liquid-cooling solution. So, if you want to modify it any further you will have to be really creative. Among indisputable advantages of this solution we should definitely mention extremely low price point, universal design, simple installation and assembly procedure and compact size.
Highs:
Lows: