Print this article

Cooler Master Aquagate


Date
: 08/14/04 – 02:48:11 PM

Author
:

Category
: Cooling

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer
: Cooler Master USA

Price
: $199

Cooler Master is a company that has been known for their high-quality computer cases and air cooling solutions. With the once cottage industry of watercooling now turning into a burgeoning market of premade kits, Cooler Master has decided to make their foray into this field with their Aquagate Liquid Cooling System. Today, well take a look at this unit and see how it stacks up to the competition.

Page 2 : Package

Now, I get a lot of packages here and usually Im not phased by it, but this one was special. When I saw the size of it and how heavy it was, I started tearing open the box like a child on Christmas day. I was surprised at the shear number of parts inside. As you will see from this list, Cooler Master really took their time with the packaging.

Whats included in the box (as stated in the manual):

Page 3 : Quick Specifications

Page 4 : Preliminary Evaluation

This is what Cooler Master likes to call the Liquid Cooling Unit. On the front is the LCD, which allows you to view temperatures and set thresholds. Ill talk more about setting thresholds later in the review. To the right is where the intake fan sucks air over the radiator. The entire unit is housed in a sleek brushed-aluminum casing with grooves on the top to help dissipate heat.

Heres the rear of the unit. Its well ventilated to allow the fan at the front of the unit to expel air out the back. To the right you will see the inlet and outlet for the hoses, the DB-25 connection for the relay card, and the 110-volt power connection underneath. It should also be noted that those hose connectors you see are the quick-disconnect type, allowing you to quickly disconnect the hoses without leaking. In my experience, only a few drop of coolant escaped whenever I disconnected the hoses.

This is the fill cap for the reservoir. You will notice its just the right size to be opened with a standard US Quarter or similar coin. This makes for an easy coolant refill in any location since most people have spare change in their pocket.

With the cap off, you can see there is a gap between the casing and the top of the reservoir. This presented a problem when filling the system because the tip of the bottle would sometimes squirt coolant inside. To clean it up required me to unscrew the casing in order to soak up the coolant. A solution to this would be for Cooler Master to provide a funnel so you can pour the coolant faster without having any spills.

This is the guts of the Liquid Cooling Unit. Here you will find the fan, radiator, reservoir, pump, and control logic. The reservoir is welded to the radiator, which would theoretically provide greater water flow than if they made the same connection with hosing. At the top of the reservoir you will see the wires that are responsible for reading the temperature of the water. This is a feature that a similar products, such as the Koolance Exos, does not have.

Here we can see the heater core of the Aquagate. The fan in the front blows cool air over the fins, which dissipate the heat from the water inside. This method has proved itself as being an effective way to cool water.

The Aquagate comes with an 80mm Cooler Master branded rifle bearing fan. Rifle bearings are said to be the quietist of all the bearing types, but at 4600 RPM, there was nothing somniferous about this. Thankfully, the Aquagate allows you to select three different speeds, with the slowest being a pleasing 2000 RPM.

Another ingenious design concept by Cooler Master is the modular LCD display, which allows you to actually take the LCD out of the Aquagate and mount it anywhere in your case with the included extension cable. This is useful if you are mounting the Aquagate in your secondary PSU bay but still want to have access to the LCD at the front of your case.

The waterblock features a copper base and an acrylic top. This high-quality block is reminiscent of the products you would find from makers like Danger Den. The ridges you see help improve the thermal conductivity of the water flowing over it by increasing the surface area and the turbulence.

With the left compression fitting off, you can see where the hose fits in snuggly. To make a connection, all you have to do is slide the compression fitting on top of the hose and screw it tightly into place.

As you can see, there is a very nice finish on this waterblock. However, I always find it customary to lap any base with 1000 grit sandpaper and then clean it with rubbing alcohol just in case.

Of course, the Aquagate would be useless without the power connections. To the left you will see the 220-volt power transformer, which is to be used in European countries. Personally it would make more sense just to ship two different package kits (one for Europe and one for North America). To the top right is the 110-volt pass-through power connector meant for North America. This pass-through connector makes it so you only need to plug in one cord to your power strip. To the lower right is the DB25 D-BUS connector, which can be used either internally or externally and acts as both a power source to the 12-volt fan inside the Aquagate and also as a relay to tell the Aquagates pump when to turn on.

Starting from the bottom left is the dummy PCI card, which for starters acts as a pass-through connector for the hoses when mounting the Aquagate externally. It also has a female DB-25 connection on both sides (for either internal or external installation). Above the PCI card is Cooler Master branded thermal paste. To the right is the 5.25 LCD holder with a faux insert incase you want to mount the LCD remotely. Below that is the secondary PSU holder incase you want to mount your Aquagate in a secondary PSU bay. Overall I think you would have to agree that Cooler Master has put a lot of thought into this.

Starting from the far left is the LCD extension cable, to be used if you decide to take the LCD out of the Aquagate. Next to it is a 4-pin Molex Y-cable used for the PCI card. To the right of that is the temperature probe, used to monitor your CPU temperature or any other surface you like. And to the far right is the shutdown cable that connects to your motherboard and will power down your system in the event of overheating. Note: Installing the shutdown cable is optional and the Aquagate will run without it installed.

Cooler Master has included mounting kits for every major processor type (Pentium 4, Athlon XP, Athlon 64). By far the easiest processor to mount would be the Socket A Athlon XP, which only requires the retention clip you see at the top. Cooler Master provides detailed instructions on how to install each type.

This is what Cooler Master calls the Thermal Conductivity Fluid. It provides corrosion protection for your system so you dont start growing little organisms inside your hoses. Cooler Master states that this fluid can be used for up to three years as long as the system is air-tight. Although it looks like there is a lot of fluid in this bottle, you can easily use it all up if your hoses are long enough. After I was done cutting my hoses and filling the entire system, I was only left with about 100 ml of fluid in the bottle (out of the original 500 ml).

The Aquagate comes with two 6.5mm by 10mm (more commonly known as 3/8 OD) PVC hoses. Its generally an accepted fact in the watercooling community that having a larger diameter hose will help reduce temperatures, but Cooler Master had to keep in mind that this hose would have to slip through the PCI slots in an external application. Therefore, 3/8 OD is the best choice of hose to use. In the picture you can see I have demonstrated how a piece of tube looks with the pipe plug and hose clamp in place.

Page 5 : Installation

Setup was very straightforward. In fact, you could probably get away without reading the instructions. Before installing the waterblock in your system, its always recommended that you do a leak-test beforehand (even though the Aquagate manual doesnt state this). Being the idiot that I am, I leak tested the system before I cut the hoses. But its no big deal since after I cut them I leak tested it again and everything ran fine.

This shows how effective the quick-disconnect fittings were. They are virtually leak-proof. As I mentioned earlier, only a few drops of coolant will remain inside the fittings, which can easily be cleaned out with a cotton swab.

After I installed the PCI relay card I realized that the lid of my briefcase was covering the pass-through slots for the hoses. It was time to break out the Dremel and fabricate my own pass-through PCI cover.

Some quick measurements and a few cut-off wheels later, I had myself a hole that was large enough for two 3/8 OD hoses. By the way, that picture is before I deburred the edges. Even without deburring, those edges arent sharp enough to puncture the hose since the walls are pretty thick.

Fits like a glove. Now were ready to turn it on.

Works like a charm. I must say the sound of water being pumped is very therapeutic. Actually, I should mention now that this didnt work the first time I powered it up. From my best guess, it seems that when I installed the provided thermal probe underneath the CPU die, it went too far in and therefore the waterblock wasnt making proper contact with the die. Upon turning on my computer (on a motherboard without CPU overheating protection) I now had a fried Athlon XP. The next time I attempted it I didnt bother with installing the thermal probe under the CPU (instead, opting to install it on my GPU). My second hypothesis was that I could have installed the retention clip backwards, but when I tested this theory with my new motherboard that had C.O.P, I found out it doesnt make a difference.

So, $250 later I was up and running with a new processor and motherboard. I first checked the temps briefly in the BIOS to see if everything was alright before I booted into Windows.

Heres a shot of the LCD display in action. As you can see, the water is almost hot enough to cook spaghetti (well, maybe 100 degrees more and it can). In order to prevent the Aquagate from alarming, I had to raise the threshold. This is done by hitting the S button until the Tank setting is flashing. Then you hit either the up arrow or down arrow to set the threshold in 1/10th of a degree increments. This would theoretically mean that if you wanted to raise the threshold by 10 degrees, you would have to hit the button 100 times. In my opinion, it would be easier if the buttons were in one degree increments. By the way, the last button (T) allows you to switch between Celsius and Fahrenheit.

I should also mention that in order to get water that hot for the picture I had to turn off the fan in front of the radiator. At no time during normal operation did the water ever get hotter than mid-90s. By default, the Aquagate will shut down if the water reaches 100 degrees Fahrenheit if you have the shutdown cable wired correctly (but like I mentioned earlier, this threshold can be changed so it doesnt shutdown).

Page 6 : Testing

Now for what youve all been waiting for the test results. The start of each idle group was done on different days to allow the water to cool back down to ambient temperature (70 degrees Fahrenheit). The loads were achieved by looping a Counter-Strike demo (CNOTE anyone?) for 30 minutes and then immediately checking the CPU temperature (and if applicable, the water temperature too). The test system is as follows:

AMD Athlon 2200+ XP Thoroughbred
Asustek A7N8X NForce2 Motherboard (w/ passive northbridge cooling)
768MB PC-2700 DDR SDRAM
Radeon 9500 128MB Non-Pro (w/ active heatsink)
Custom-made briefcase enclosure (w/ lid open during all tests)

The cooling units I will be benching against are the Thermalright SLK-900A and the 3R Systems Poseidon WCL-03 waterblock. The 80mm fan on the Thermalright was running at 3,600 RPM. The Poseidon systems came in a 90mm style and a 120mm style with a larger heater core.

With the CPU idle for 30 minutes, the Aquagate comes in last place, even with the fastest fan setting. I would imagine the reason is because once the water is warm, it stays warm. However, as you will see in the tests below, the Aquagate does a good job of getting that excess heat out of there during times of heavy load.

This is the same data table, except converted into Celsius for our Canadian and European readers.

After running the system through its paces, the Aquagate starts to shine in the benchmarks. Even at the lowest fan speed, the Aquagate beats out the Thermalright heatsink. It even almost ties with the Poseidon 120mm when the Aquagate is running at the highest fan speed (and keep in mind the Aquagate has an 80mm fan).

In Celsius.

This is the temperature of the water inside the tank of the Aquagate as measured by the internal probe. The system sat idle for 30 minutes. As you can clearly see, putting the Aquagate on the faster fan setting will have a noticeable impact on the temperature of the water.

At load, the higher fan setting once again proves it will benefit the system. However, at a stentorious 49db, you have to consider if its worth it.

Page 7 : Conclusion

With my own UV dye added to the water (which Cooler Master doesnt recommend you do), the liquid gave off a nice blue glow when coupled with my two UV lights.

Of course, I couldnt help myself from modifying the Aquagate after I was done testing it. I was tired of the dull black fan that came with the Aquagate so I installed my own quad blue LED 80mm fan. This fan is actually quieter than the stock one.

Personally I think they should have included a blue LED fan to begin with since it matches the blue LCD perfectly.

Couple it with the Samsung 172X gaming LCD and this puppy is ready for some intense LAN party action. By the way, that keyboard you see is an electroluminescent keyboard that glows blue when powered. (On a side note, I dont recommend it for gaming since the keys are too small.)

In conclusion, it was a pleasure to review this product. My system ran virtually silent and I was able to work in peace and quiet. Although the Aquagate ate up a motherboard and processor, it was mostly due in part to my own negligence to check for proper contact. Otherwise, the Aquagate was a breeze to setup and install. The ability to be mounted either outside your case, inside your secondary PSU slot, or in two 5.25 bays, plus the ability to remove the LCD and mount it elsewhere, makes this the most versatile Liquid Cooling Device in its class. Cooler Master has put a lot of time and effort into producing a product that is second-to-none, which is exactly why I believe the Aquagate deserves our distinguished
Overclockers Online POWER Award.

Advantages:
Aesthetically pleasing appearance
Lots of extras in the box
Extremely versatile mounting options
High-quality parts used (waterblock, fan, hose)

Disadvantages:
Threshold set in increments of 1/10th of a degree
No funnel included for easy pouring of coolant

Thanks to Cooler Master for making this review possible.