Asetek WaterChill CPU Power Kit (KT03A-L3)

Installing a water-cooling kit in a computer chassis can be a time-consuming project, and the level of difficulty may vary extensively depending on the chassis.  This review will not touch on any installation-specific issues beyond mere assembly of the kit’s various components.  Asetek recommends a system assembly allowing water to flow in the following order:

Here’s a schematic from Asetek.

Direction of flow

A tip along the way is to mount the pump as low as possible.  The pump is of centrifugal type and has no direct drawing-ability to speak of, especially not if there is air caught in the system.  Hence the reservoir should be placed above the pump.  Another thing worth keeping in mind is the radiator and the amount of warm air it produces – it should be mounted in a manner expelling air.   Once matters of how and where everything should sit in the case it’s time to mount all components to their respective places.

Detailed instructions for mounting the CPU-block are included in the manual, which thoroughly describes the installation-process for all supported platforms.  The water block is mounted on spacers attached from the motherboard’s backside, and held in place from the front by spring-loaded thumbscrews mounted onto the spacers.  The thumbscrews are of larger model and there is no trouble tightening them sufficiently.  As the second picture shows, the springs provide enough tension to make the whole motherboard warp, which indicates a nice and thorough pressure against the CPU.

Mounting socket 478

Thanks to the push-in connectors, attaching a tube is easily done with a good push.  Before attaching the last tube we tested the system by blowing in the one end and holding the other, thus checking for leaks.  Luckily, this way we discovered we had a loose connection on the water block.  Once fixed the system was perfectly sealed.  Next to be plugged in is the Chill Control Unit, basically consisting of a relay telling the pump to start with the computer.  The CCU is in part fed with 230V via a cable running through a PCI IO-shield, along with 12V and 5V from the power supply.  Even the radiator-fans can be connected directly to the CCU, which supplies them with either 12V or 7V, depending on a jumper setting.

The system is now ready to be filled up and put through a trial run.  We filled the system through pouring as much water as possible into the reservoir and then starting the pump, by means of hotwiring the power supply.  As the pump filled the system with water we kept adding more until full.  Letting it all run for a few hours allowed all air to find it’s way out of the radiator and water block.  Everything should be rigged and ready for testing!

Mounting and installation of the various components were effortless endeavors.  All steps are thoroughly explained in the included manuals.  Everything possibly essential for installing this water-cooling package into virtually any computer is included in the kit.  Thanks to the Chill Control Unit no additional steps are required to start the pump, and day-to-day usage is no more troublesome than with that of an air-cooled system.  A minus for the mounting of the reservoir though – we would have liked to see a solution allowing the reservoir to be screw-mounted directly to the included mounting-bracket.

Test system
Hardware
Mainboard:	Abit IC7-G, BIOS 26
Processor:	Intel P4 3.2E (Prescott)
RAM:	Kingston HyperX 3500 2x256Mb
Power supply unit:	Antec TruePower 430W
Test cooling:	Asetek CPU Power Kit
Reference cooling:	Zalman CNPS 7000Cu
Software
Operating system:	Windows XP (SP2)
Monitoring program:	Motherboard Monitor 5.3.7.0
Stress program:	Prime95 22.12.1

Our test system is based on Intel’s socket 478-platform with Intel’s latest processor generation. We chose a Prescott processor for this test since it is famous for emitting a lot of heat. As you can see in the test results, this particular processor was no exception. We chose Zalman’s CNPS 7000cu as reference cooling. The Zalman is a massive copper heatsink which we have reviewed earlier on our Swedish speaking site. That review can be found here.

Double instances of Prime95 have shown to be very effective in the search for stability. The reason for why we are running double instances is that the processor has HT-support. Only running one instance means that the processor only gets a 50% workload.

It is important to comment on the measuring of temperatures for this test. We have chosen to rely on the internal temperature reporting from the processor. It is widely known that different mainboard manufactures use different methods to calculate this signal from the processor and thereby report different temperatures. The general opinion is that the manufacturer Abit generally report higher temperatures than other manufacturers. We want to point out that one should note the difference in temperatures rather then the temperatures themselves.

[Editor’s note: diagram is not to scale]
Intel P4 3.2E @ 3200MHz, 1.3875 vcore.
	Idle	Load
Zalman 7000Cu	47	67
WaterChill Power CPU Kit, 3 fans @ 12V	43	50
WaterChill Power CPU Kit, 3 fans @ 7V	44	51
WaterChill Power CPU Kit, 1 fan @ 7V	44	54

The absolutely most striking is the difference in temperatures between the air cooling and the water cooling. No matter how we configured the cooler with the fans it had no problem in beating the air cooling. We can see that the radiator’s large surface area makes it possible for the water cooling to perform acceptable without having a lot of airflow through the radiator. Worth mentioning is that we had the radiator mounted in an open environment which means that the temperatures would have been a bit higher if the radiator had been mounted inside the case.

Now it’s time to increase the frequencies a bit. We noticed quite quickly that Zalman’s heatsink just couldn’t cope with an increased voltage to the processor. We did although manage to reach 3550MHz stable with the Zalman heatsink, so let us see how WaterChill performs at that frequency. Since overclockers probably will be most intrested in the maximum cooling performance we choose to only perform the tests with all fans at full speed.

[Editor’s note: diagram is not to scale]
Intel P4 3.2E @ 3550MHz, 1.3875 vcore.
	Idle	Load
Zalman 7000Cu	49	69
WaterChill Power CPU Kit, 3 fans @ 12V	44	52

We can see that the increase meant more strain for the both cooling devices. This was the absolute limit for our processor with air cooling and we are getting dangerously close to the temperature limit when the processor starts to throttle. The WaterChill kit had no difficulties what so ever with this overclocking. A few quick tests showed that there was no danger in running the fans at 7 volts either.

Now we will abandon the Zalman heatsink and see how high, stable frequency we can achieve with the WaterChill kit. After some adjusting and an increased voltage to the processor we ended up with a stable frequency of 3820MHz. The following table shows how the WaterChill kit performs in this test.

[Editor’s note: diagram is not to scale]
Intel P4 3.2E @ 3820MHz, 1.4875 vcore.
	Idle	Load
WaterChill Power CPU Kit	45	56

We can see that the temperatures are a bit higher than the previous results, but still not a problem for WaterChill to cope with. 3820MHz is by all means a respectable result for water cooling. This is as mentioned with double instances of Prime which is known for its capability to really stress processors.

In our opinion, Asetek has managed to produce an impressive assembly of components
for this package. from the beginning, their sights have been set on pure performance.
With the word ‘pure’ you also get the feeling of quality and design with which
Asetek has created this package. In other words, it’s not only a matter of
hard core performance as esthetics have been part of the plan since the early
stages.

Installing a water-cooling system will never be quite as easy as installing an air-cooling system, but Asetek surely has done their utmost to ensure that it goes as smoothly as possible. More or less the only adjustment needed in the case is mounting the cooler. Mounting the pump and connecting the power supply can be done completely without modifications. Another positive aspect is the convenient push-in connections which make it possible to simply cut the tubes and push them into the connections. We were curious as to how tight this solution was and tried to get the system to start leaking by bending and pulling the tubes, but we could not cause any leakage this way.

Performance-wise, the product is just right in its category, and resembles/matches other packages with CPU blocks of the WhiteWater design. The cooler is over-dimensioned in the positive sense, and will probably handle additions of both graphics and north bridge blocks without any problems. We dare even believe that this system could master a decent peltier setup.

After a few days of tinkering with Asetek’s full-blood of a water-cooling system one can summarize the package in the following way: Very good, but not perfect. What causes this package to not get a top score are a few small but still important details. Mounting the tank is something we’d gladly seen done in a different way. The tank, in other respects, has the inlet and outlet right next to each other which causes the air bubbles to not get caught in the tank, and a large part of them continue back into the system. This problem will eventually be solved on its own, but it will take longer than necessary. The pump’s noise drowns that of the fans and both 7V and 12V, and can be perceived as disturbing by some. Our pump produced some form of vibrations that were clearly noticed.

However, we have been provided with a link to Asetek’s forum which can provide explanation and tips on how to solve the issue with the pump noise level.The link to Asetek’s WaterChill FAQ with information about noisy pumps can be found here.

In general, however, we are very satisfied with the package, and the only thing one must consider as a customer is whether one is prepared to spend that much money on a water-cooling system.

The performance is present, no doubt, and so is the feeling of quality, but a price tag of almost 2500SEK for a water-cooling system is a hefty investment. Asetek Power Kit KT03-L30 is in our view for those enthusiasts who are interested in really serious cooling, but don’t feel like taking the step up to solutions based on phase change technology. For beginners there are both cheaper and less cumbersome packages, especially from Asetek themselves, that would be better suited.

But for those that have the money, we highly recommend this kit, which is one of the most powerful water-cooling packages on the market today.

Asetek WaterChill CPU Power Kit KT03A-L30

Pros: + Cooling capacity + Sturdy mounting of water block + 12V/7V option for the fans + Room for upgrades Cons: – Mounting of the tank – Internal design of the tank – Pump noise level – High price