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Swiftech H20-120-P Water Cooling Kit


Date
: 09/27/04 – 10:23:39 PM

Author
:

Category
: Cooling

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer:
Swiftech

Price:
NA

Over the years we've taken multiple looks at
Swiftech
and today we continue this tradition. They're one of the most recognized names in water cooling and have been around for a decade now. While certainly not limited to water cooling, Swiftech has a reputation for quality cooling products that perform to the standards of enthusiasts.

The
Swiftech H20-120-P Water Cooling Kit
we examine today is everything a user needs to jump into water cooling. This kit is made for Socket 478 Pentium 4 users, but most of the material covered should apply well to the other kits using similar parts. We'll be taking a look at how easy it is to setup, the quality of the product, and the cooling performance relative to competing air and water cooling solutions on the same platform.

Page 2 : Package

The
Swiftech H20-120-P Water Cooling Kit
came shipped in a plain box with a printed label as shown below. Inside each component was packed together in their respective sub-kits the same way you would recieve them had you ordered them seperately. The contents of which were:

The radiator shipped to me was the MCR120-FBRB add-on that comes with the Radiator, 120x25mm fan, 1/2" quick-connect adapters, "Radbox" assembly kit, and PCI pass-thru accessories. Most of this was pre-assembled and left only the mounting and connecting of the hoses for me to do.

The fan shipped with the radiator was intended to have a 3-pin connector for it to easily slip through the PCI pass-thru, but was accidently shipped with a four-pin molex connector. Not a big deal, but it was nice that Swiftech emailed me ahead of time to notify me of the mistake. In this picture below you can also see the Coolsleeve coils around the tubing. These sleeves are a very good method of eliminating kinks when needing tubes to make tight bends.

The PCI pass-thru makes is shown below. The larger slit is to allow the 120 mm fan's wiring to easily slip into the case as mentioned above. Like what Zalman includes with their Reserator 1, the PCI pass-thru makes for a cleaner look and un-modified install into cases.

Swiftech includes their MCP650 12 Volt DC industrial pump with this kit. The nice things about this pump: relatively small size, low power consumption, and direct PSU connection by way of a 4-pin molex connector. The pump, like the radiator, was shipped with tubing already connected. The pump natively uses 1/2" tubing and is shipped as seen below with the 1/2" to 3/8" tubes and adapters pre-assembled.

The waterblock included in this kit is intended for use with Pentium 4s, thus the -P suffix on the kit model. What seperates this block from the others are the fasteners that are included for mounting and the bottom of the blocks surface which is completely flat. You can see that the surface is machined with a smooth, reflective finish.

The H20-120 kits are made for in-line operation, so there is no reservoir included with the kit. Instead, what Swiftech does is bundle their fill and bleed kit that makes the process simpler.

The kit comes with 12 ft of 1/2" (OD) tubing and an extra 40" of Coolsleeves. This amount of tubing should be ample for most setups, and if more is needed it can be purchased seperately.

To keep bacteria growth and corrosion down Swiftech includes their own coolant, HydrX, with the kit. It's also UV reactive for anyone into that type of thing.

The last major inclusion to this kit is the installation guide. The guide is very well put together, easy to follow, and has large color illustrations that should help make installation less frustrating.

Page 3 : Specifications

All specifications have been taken from Swiftech's web site:

Lots of information to digest here. The block is completely made of copper for better thermal efficiency while the pump is a powerful one matching the best of what asetek has to offer with their Waterchill line and four times more powerful than the small, but quiet pump used by Zalman in the Reserator 1.

Page 4 : Installation

With large system modifications like a water cooling system you need to be prepared to set aside the proper amount of time to take your time and get the job done right. With this kit it took me somewhere around two hours from start to finish before I was ready to fire things up. Because most of the individual components come pre-assembled it was only a matter of installing one section at a time and consulting the manual to be assured things were being properly setup.

The tubing provided was plenty for this setup and proved to be very easy to work with. I didn't find the need to use the extra Coolsleeves provided, and didn't run into any kinks during setup. I used a gallon of Kroger brand distilled water with about 2/3rds of the HydrX added before filling the system. No leaks were ran into during the pre-fill leak test that Swiftech describes how to perform in the guide nor were there any after a 24 hour running test.

The exact specs of this machine are the following:

Page 5 : Testing

Benchmarking analysis was limited to temperature of the CPU. To gain the results, the system was first put under heavy load by running Folding@Home and RC5-72 clients for a period of one hour and then the peak temperature recorded. The processor would then be allowed another hour to cool to an idle temperature with no user interference. This method was followed in the same order for each cooler and proved to be a consistent way to stress and compare the coolers abilities. Room for error could then be primarily traced back to environment variables such as room temperature and any possible human error in taking the readings.

Measurements were recorded by hand and taken using Abit's monitoring utility for temperature monitoring of the CPU diode. A RadioShack digital indoor/outdoor thermometer for monitoring the room temperature.

As expected, results show a lower CPU temperature for the Swiftech kit. However, these results are a bit misleading. The Swiftech results were obtained from a closed case environment with an ambient room temperature of approximately 77°F. The results for both Zalman coolers are representative for ambient temperatures of 75.6°F and 77.8°F in an open-air environment which could assist cooling somewhat.

What's more is the drop in temperature was enough to afford a small gain in overclock to 3.36 GHz with a voltage of 1.675 and a load temperature of only 48.5°C. In comparison, the Zalman Reserator 1 was never able to handle higher frequencies in testing.

The noise levels demonstrated by the cooling system mostly came from the external fan mounted to the radiator. With a fan controller this could be reduced to ones liking, but I found it to be a bearable noise which wasn't high pitched unlike what a smaller fan would produce. The pump I found to be incredibly silent and definately seems to be an improvement over previous high-performance pumps I've seen used by myself and people I knew.

Page 6 : Conclusion

Swiftech's H20-120-P
water cooling kit is definately a stand-out kit. The compact nature of all the parts and the easy to follow installation guide really make this a great water cooling kit for first time users and enthusiasts looking for a well performing setup they can later customize to meet their needs. What really impresses me everytime with Swiftech parts is the quality of each component, and kit after kit they deliver on that with every part. The pump has gone through many generations and the same can be said for both the waterblock and radiator. What's probably most important though is the performance a kit like this delivers, and Swiftech doesn't fail. The kit was able to lower temperatures on my overclocked 2.4C and nearly bring my net overclock up to one gigahertz.

Advantages

Compact
Well-documented setup
Great performance

Disadvantages

Waterblocks are platform specific
Expensive compared to conventional cooling

In the end this product really impressed me with both performance and design. With all the good this kit has to offer I can say that it deserves not only my recommendation, but also the O² Power Award.

Many thanks to Swiftech for making this great review possible.