Legit Reviews

There is a huge selection of water cooling kits on the market. From small, prepackaged kits and external enclosures to high end advanced setups, just about everything has been done and is available. I spent a lot of time looking for different components and kits, but everywhere I looked and the more I saw, the more I just got confused. I wanted to make a list, basically a lot of good water cooling options, to help others who wanted to take the plunge into exotic cooling. The following lists are in no particular order, and the links take you to the manufacturer’s web sites and/or specs page for their products. This is by no means a complete list..
External Water Cooling Kits
•Thermaltake Aquarius III
http://www.thermaltake.com/coolers/aquarius/a1681.htm

• Koolance Exos and Exos Aluminum
http://www.koolance.com/products/produc ... egory_id=2

•Corsair Hydrocool 200
http://www.corsairmicro.com/corsair/hydrocool.html

•Xice Externalcool Kit
http://www.xice.de/eng/index_e.htm

•Zalman Reserator
http://www.zalmanusa.com/usa/product/vi ... 3&code=021


Drive Bay Kits
•Cooler Master Aquagate
http://www.coolermaster.com/

•Kingwin AWC-1 Arctic Liquid Cooler System
http://www.kingwin.com/pdut_detail.asp?CateID=31&ID=187

•Evercool 201 Water Cooling Kit 5.25"
http://www.evercool.com.tw/index_eng.htm



Internal Kits
•Globalwin Jeti and Silent Stream
http://www.globalwin.com.tw/products/wa ... index.html

•Asetek Waterchill
http://www.asetek.com/default.asp?showP ... myvalue=14&

•Swiftech H2O 8600 P and H2O 22600 Extreme
http://www.swiftnets.com/

•Innovatech Innovacool Rev 3 and XXS Watercooling Kit
http://www.atacom.com/program/print_html_new.cgi?

•Topspeed 3X Watercooling kit
http://www.topspeedtech.com

•Danger Den- various customizable kits
http://www.dangerden.com/mall/kits.asp


Next I will put together a list of components to build your own kit, I will include ideas and places to get the individual parts (i.e. pumps, water blocks, reservoirs, radiators, etc). I think mixing and matching would be the cheapest and best way to go. Different companies have different strengths and weaknesses as far as their products (while one may make good blocks, they might use a bad radiator or pump). I will try to put together a basic list of good components tomorrow..

Do It Yourself Water Cooling Kit
Yesterday I posted a bunch of links directed at those people who wanted to get their feet wet, so to speak, in exotic cooling. Pre-fabricated kits are a good entry level project, very easy, very basic, and come with everything you need, but good enough to provide adequate results for overclocking your system.
Today I am going to try to put together a good guide with links for organizing a very high quality water cooling kit for minimal cost. You can achieve much better results by building your own kit from various parts, and at a better cost than most kits. One thing to keep in mind is that as far as tube diameter, bigger tends to be better (within reason). Systems range from ¼ to ½ inch (inside diameter). The reason that bigger tends to be better is that the whole goal is for the water to move the heat away from the block, the faster it does this, the cooler your system. To maximize the cooling, stick with the same size throughout your system (!/2 I/D tube and 1/2 connectors...etc)
Pumps
From what I can gather the standard on pumps is 300 GPH with 5-6 ft of head pressure, or 150 GPH with at least 11 ft of head pressure. There are a ton of pumps out there, so I will link those that I find having generally good reviews and high usage.

Danner Mag 2 and 3
http://www.marinedepot.com/md_viewItem. ... uct=DN1121

Swiftech mcp600
http://www.swiftnets.com/products/mcp600.asp

Danger Den DD12V-D4
http://www.dangerden.com/mall/Pumps/dd12vd4.asp

Eheim 1250 and 1048
http://www.eheim.com/

Hydor L 20, 25, and 30
http://www.dangerden.com/mall/Pumps/Pump_hydor.asp

AquaXtreme 50Z
http://www.cooltechnica.com/Merchant2/m ... e=AQX-50Z-

CPU Blocks
A lot of very good choices here. A wide variety of designs but all of these are very good performers, not according to reviews, but to the people who use them.
Little River White Water

Chipset Blocks
A lot of people leave their chipset out of the W/C equation. Some feel that the location in reference to the CPU block tends to crimp the tubing (usually only a problem with ½ tubing). My thoughts are if you have good active cooling on your chipset, you might be able to skip the chipset block, but it all depends on your system and your goals.

GPU Blocks
A very important part of the cooling solution, especially considering the stock coolers that usually come with video cards. I personally feel that not only should you use a good cooler for the GPU, but also put some heat sinks on the memory chips. Tweak Monster and OCZ make some very good heat sinks, mixed with some AS Alumina Epoxy, your memory chips should stay adequately cool.

Silverprop
http://www.silverprop.com/watercooling.aspx#waterblocks

Danger Den
http://www.dangerden.com/mall/water_block.asp

Swiftech
http://www.swiftnets.com/products.asp

Koolance
http://www.koolance.com/products/index. ... egory_id=3

Innovatek
http://www.innovatek.de/contentServ/3.0 ... StoryID=94

PolarFlo
http://www.polarflo.com/

Asetek
http://www.Asetek.com

OC Labs
http://www.overclocklabs.com/

D-Tek
http://www.dtekcustoms.com/index.asp?Pa ... tegory=209

Radiators
There is currently a lot of debate in regards to the radiator. A lot of people believe a good radiator is as important as a good pump, a lot of people believe that like pumps, once radiators meet a certain standard, there isn’t much difference in the effect on performance. In the end common sense says the larger the radiator, the better the cooling, but remember that larger radiator size means you’ll need a stronger pump, and a system with as little pressure drop as possible overall.
This is too vague to break down, so I’ll list a couple of links to major distributors of radiators.
Xoxide
http://www.xoxide.com/radiator.html

Danger Den
http://www.dangerden.com/mall/radiators.asp

D-Tek
http://www.dtekcustoms.com/index.asp?Pa ... tegory=205

Frozen CPU
http://www.frozencpu.com/cgi-bin/frozen ... n/se=Water%

Keep in mind that the new trend is to use the heater cores from older cars. I have been told that the heatercores from a 77 Booneville and an 86 chevette work very well, and can be purchased fairly cheap at auto part stores, but both will need some modifications, one barb is ½ inch, the other ¾ or 5/8.

Tubing
Tubing is totally personal preference and ranges from very cheap tubing found at your local hardware store, to very expensive tubing like Tygon. Whatever you choose remember that you want flexibility, but you also want tubing that won’t kink at the slightest turn. I would recommend something like the coolsleeves from Swiftech http://www.swiftnets.com/ These seem to be a great idea to prevent kinks. Also remember that bigger is better…. ½ inch tubing will provide much better results than ¼ or 3/8 inch tubing, just remember to keep the sizes consistent throughout your system, stick with all 1/2 or 3/8 inch to minimize problems such as pressure drop.


Additives
Don’t use Anti-Freeze, unless you are using a water chiller that drops the water temps below freezing. Anti-Freeze is extremely hard on both the pump and tubing.
Two excellent pieces from Overclockers.com
Watercooling chemistry Part 1
http://overclockers.com/articles993/

Watercooling Chemistry Part 2
http://overclockers.com/tips1153/


I really hope these ideas and links help people spend their money wisely. I put a lot of time and thought into this, and though there is really nothing original here, or things that haven’t been said before in several places, I thought of this and did it because I couldn’t find one place that linked everything together. Please feel free to PM me with suggestions or links that I can add to the list.

Some solid info here n00b's take note this man has done the research for you. I expect this list and guide to keep on growing.

I didn't want to express personal prefernce on some of these kits/parts because I haven't used some of them and don't want to influence people choices by giving them bad information.
As to pre-fabbed kits, they aren't nearly as good as doing it yourself, they are more expensive and tend to be contructed of cheaper and poorer performing parts.
That said, I have heard great things about the Corsair EX-200, both Apop and Bio have used this kit and speak very highly of it, the only drawback I see is the 200W heat transfer limit, which you will probably run into with any kit, this becomes a problem when you have CPUs like a Prescott (90-103W), an Extreme Edition, and try to cool multiple parts like your Chipset, and a Video card.
I'm always here, I am always willing to help, if I can't give you the answer, I'll find it for you. Something I have learned here, unlike other boards, don't be afraid to ask questions or for help, there are alot of very good people here who know their stuff, like any of the Mods and guys like Bio-Hazard, who is in the mmiddle of building an awesome external W/C kit

This is a great wealth of info!!!

http://www.water-cooling.com

also, the koolance exos is a very good piece of equipement...i use the koolance al exos with a innovatek ver 1.0 single side graphic card cooling block...i get (according to the onboard card sensor) around 29-35 deg C...the card is the only thing water cooled...

if you want cooling power and dont care about noise, get a water-coolng kit and add fans like crazy (my current count is 13 fans...3 for water cooling, one in back blowing in, one on side and front blowing out, 3 exuast fans on frount, and 2 in psu, one on sound card, and one very loud and fast tmd fan on cpu...)....you can never have too much cooling...lol

sargentwolf... Great to have you on our forums!! Stick around and you'll see that our little community here has a lot of info to share and we are very helpful. Let us know if there is anything we can do to help ya out. And tell your friends to join too!

And for everyone else, here is the pic of sargentwolf's rig we used in our article:

Hay guys just a reminder . You don't have to use water in your systems . There are non-conductive liquids for that. Be smart be safe!!!!

Most use water because of the cost, its much much less expencive then the alternitives.

I'll take a 50 cent gal of water over a $50 quart of Fluid XP or any of the others anyday of the week. If you know what you're doing normal distilled water is not a problem.........................

Wow...good stuff guys. I have been thinking about going the water cooling route but I'm going to wait until I upgrade my MOBO, CPU, etc and do it all at once. At least now I have comprehensive info.

I've been using the Cooler Master AquaGate mini-120, and have been very impressed with its performance.
The kit comes with mounting hardware for all the major boards (LGA 775, socket 478, socket 939, 754, and A) which makes it an attractive kit for guys who want to O/C on a budget.
Installation is not too hard. I had issues installing it on a DFI NF4 LANParty SLI (because of the heatsinks on the mosfets), but on every other board installation was very simple. Because its a closed loop curcuit there is no way to change the hose placement, and the rubber tubing seems to kink fairly easy. But if installed right (take your time doing to, and plan out your install) its as easy as mosrt air cooled solutions.
As far as performance, I was seeing temps as good as those from my Exos 2 at mid to high fan speeds, and on par with high end air at low fan speed.
Not the very best kit there is (no way to add blocks) but for under $100 its a very nice kit.

The Cooler Master AquaGate mini's are pretty impressive for their size, I ran the Mini-80 a while back on my A64 Abit AV8 system and I was totally impressed with it........................ My only complaint is that you have to remove the MoBo any time you want to remove the cooler or CPU unless you mod the MoBo tray. I mounted the radiator in the bottom of the case because I already had a fan hole there and the radiator with the fan installed was so thick that it got in the way of the stiff ATX power cable of the X-Connect PSU...........................

Do the water cooling guru's here think this thread is out of date? if so, I'll un-sticky this thread... and leave it to someone else to start an updated thread.

Yup, it could use a bit of a update ...................

infinitevalence wrote:Most use water because of the cost, its much much less expencive then the alternitives.

I recommend everyone to use WaterWetter. Not for its superior heat transfer over other additives, but for it's distinctive smell.

It smells like vomit and I've been using it for 2yrs...

Illuminati wrote:Do the water cooling guru's here think this thread is out of date? if so, I'll un-sticky this thread... and leave it to someone else to start an updated thread.

No, keep it, history is a great way to learn things too! We need to post more of the NEWER kits in this forum.

Corsair has had the HydroCool 200, HydroCool 200 EX, the COOL, and soon the Nautilus 500. These should be added to this thread too. ;)