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"When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not guilty.'"
- Theodore Roosevelt |
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ThermalTake Aquarius-II
Page 1 - ThermalTake's Water Cooling Solution
What can I say about ThermalTake's Aquarius-II? For an introductory water cooling kit,
it is an easy, store bought, off the shelf solution and it is fairly inexpensive. Some may
not like it because of the small amount of water it moves over the processor, but it
sure is quiet. You cannot even tell your PC is on half the time with the case fully
assembled.
What You Get
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The Radiator
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When my sample arrived, I noticed that the bottom of the water block was pretty
tarnished. It was 'press sealed' to a thick piece of plastic that wasn't even the right
size and had some kind of funky machine oil on it.
The Pump
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Water Reservoir
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The radiator had a pretty nice dent in the fins when I received it. The dent took all of
5 minutes to fix with a fine pair of needle nose pliers and a straight screw driver.
Also, the radiator had 8 screws, 4 sheet metal and 4 machine screws, all of them doing
basically the same thing in holding the 80 mm fan shroud to the radiator its self. Two
of the machine screws were in holes that the threads had been stripped out. It seems
eight sheet metal screws would have been better; maybe ThermalTake ran out.
Top
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Copper Bottom
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Affixed to the front of the radiator is a ThermalTake 80mm fan. The fan has a 3 pin CPU
fan power plug. I felt the fan should have been a little quieter. One thing that puzzled me
was the fact that when you followed the instructions the "Tt" logo on the fan grill is
upside down. It took me about two minutes with a phillips screw driver to fix the dent.
I would have liked a 92 mm fan better so that I could mount it where my chassis fan is
located. However, if you have an 80mm chassis fan, this could be a good thing.
The pump is nice and fairly quiet. It runs on a CPU Fan connector at 12 volts, so
there is no need to blast a hole in your chassis for an extra power plug. The pump moves
29 gallons per hour. Inside is a blue LED to verify power is present and a floating ball
that will rise to show water is being returned from the radiator.
The hose provided with the kit was very flexible, ThermalTake also provided springs to go
inside to deter kinks, very thoughtful. I didn't use it because of the length of the hose
I cut. The expansion tank is made of fairly cheap, flexible plastic. You can see the
line where they took 2 pieces and glued them into one. I did like the shiny cap though.
The kit came with a cheap bag of zinc oxide heat sink grease (the standard white paste)
and a even cheaper bottle of "coolant concentrate" which appeared to be
chlorinated green food coloring.
Installed Clip
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The Other Side
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Installation is very easy, thanks to their manual. Every instruction is started with
"Please" (ahhhh, how nice). Installation requires removing your motherboard if
you have a Pentium 4. If you have a AMD K7 the kit supplies clips instead and you do not
need to pull the motherboard out. On the other hand, the K8 needs will need removal.
Installed Reservoir
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The Block
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The pump, back up receiver, and radiator are secured with little neodymium magnet disks
which, I might add, are very strong. Steel plates are provided in case you have an
aluminum case. You can place them where you want the parts to be located.
The Insides
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Test system:
Soyo P4VDA Motherboard
Intel Celeron 2.0 GHZ .13u SK-478
Dual Sticks of 256MB PC2100 RAM
CPU Temp w/ Aquarius II
Idle (Fahrenheit)
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| Celeron @ 2.10 GHz |
| Celeron @ 2.32 GHz |
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 96 |
| 97 |
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0 | |
17 | |
34 | |
51 | |
68 | |
85 | |
102 |
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CPU Temp w/ Aquarius II
Load (Fahrenheit)
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| Celeron @ 2.10 GHz |
| Celeron @ 2.32 GHz |
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| 139 |
| 165 |
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0 | |
28 | |
56 | |
84 | |
112 | |
140 | |
168 |
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The best thing is that the kit is beyond quiet and it did a decent job of cooling. In my
opinion it is great for your mom or dad's computer; but, if you're into serious overclocking
then you might be better off with a more expensive solution.
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3.5 out of 5 Weird Blue Faces
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