Asetek WaterChill: CPU, Chipset, and VGA Water Cooling Kit

Company: Asetek
Product: WaterChill CPU/VGA/Chipset Kit
Street Price: $269 USD
Date Reviewed: October 20, 2003
Reviewed By: Joey Chao

WaterChill Kit and Installation Continued:

The last block that needed to be installed was the GPU cooler. It has a copper base and acrylic top exactly like all of the other blocks in the kit. This waterblock has mounting holes for GeForce 2, GeForce 3, GeForce 4, GeForce FX, Radeon 9700, and Radeon 9800.

After removing the stock heatsink, the block is place on the card and thermal compound is applied. Two screws are placed through the mounting holes of the block going through the back of the card. Then springs and finger screws are used to keep the block in place with the proper amount of tension.

The Hydor L30 has a Qmax of 320 Gph and a Hmax of 6.4 ft. The pump will connect to the reservoir and the radiator. The reservoir is made out of acrylic and has a lid with a with a stopper type style. Asetek also provides an Anti Algae fluid that will be used with distilled water to reduce growth of unwanted algae. We highly recommend using distilled water with the Anti Algae fluid because the blocks and system will require less cleaning in the future.

The last component of the kit is the WaterChill control unit. This is what will power on the pump when the rest of the system is powered on and it will control the fan speeds. You can see from the picture that there is a 4-pin connector on the controller. You must plug in a 4-pin floppy power cable from the PSU. The radiator fan connects to the 3-pin fan header. There is also a jumper on the control unit. You may change the speed of the fans by either setting this jumper to 7V or 12V. Obviously, 7V is going to be quieter but what are the performance gains if any from running at 12V? We will find out in the next portion of this review.

The power cable that would normally go from the wall to the PSU will instead go into hermaphrodite power connecter. Then from there it goes to the PSU and to the control unit. You can see that this has been adapted to a bracket for easy case mounting. There is no drilling or modding require to install the complete system.

Filling and bleeding a system can sometimes be the worst part about water-cooling. Asetek has made it very easy with the WaterChill. All you have to do is take the lid off the reservoir and fill up the loop with as much water as possible. The trick is the filling is not done with a system that has power. The drives and motherboard need to be disconnected. Since the pump would normally start by pressing the PWR on going to the board, you will need to connect pins 13 and 14 on the 20-pin ATX connector of the PSU to get the system "jump started". A wire is included in the kit to be able to connect these pins. This way the pump will run but the motherboard and other components will not power on. Remember that it is always best to test water cooling kits out before trying them on power systems. Once the pump starts running, just keep filling until the loop is filled. Allow the water system to run for a while. After an hour or so, you will notice most of the bubbles in the blocks and lines go to the reservoir instead of the loop. Now we are ready for testing!