Impact
Site Admin Joined: 01 May 2004 Posts: 3257 Location: Pinecrest, FL	Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 2:23 pm    Post subject: CoolerMaster AquaGate-Mini Review   CoolerMaster was kind enough to send us a review sample of their latest water-cooling system, the AuqaGate-Mini. The Mini comes in two sizes, and both of them use the same pump and waterblock, but you have the option of a 80mm radiator and fan or a 120mm radiator and fan and boasts a low pricetag ($89 MSRP), but can it stand up against a larger system? Hardware: Athlon XP2100+ Abit NF7-S (revision 2) Radeon 7000 All-in-Wonder PCI 128mb Kingston PC3200 20gb Maxtor 5400rpm Ultra 600w PSU Generic CD-RW drive Software: Windows XP Home (SP1) PCMark04 Motherboard Monitor 5 DirectX 9.0c Windows Media Player 10 Windows Media Encoder 9 Latest ATI Drivers NF7-S Drivers (from CD) Note: This computer was never connected to the internet to ensure security and cleanliness. Introduction: When I first opened the box, my initial reaction was "That’s it?" It seemed like I was missing something. The box contained a rather large waterblock (reservoir and pump inside it), a radiator (attached to the waterblock via two hoses), the fan, and a box of screws and assorted brackets, but that's everything. Included: It is convenient that the waterblock, pump, and radiator all come pre-connected via hoses. The package also comes with an 80mm fan (they sent me the 80mm version), and a box of brackets. The fan has a nice potentiomer (aka "knob" or "variable resistor") attached to it, which is used to vary the speed of the fan. The white box contained all sorts of other gadgets such as brackets for fitting the block to many different chipsets (LGA775, K8, Xeon, P4, and K7 to be exact), some thermal grease, and a PCI slot cover that can be used to attach the fan knob to a PCI slot. Quote: All the parts that came with it! Quote: All the different brackets to mount the CPU block to your CPU. These allow for different types of chips (AMD64, Athlons, P4s, etc). Quote: A closeup of the potentiometer on the fan. This allows the fan speed to be controlled by a knob on a PCI slot. [page] Installation: Many people are concerned with the difficulty of seting up water cooling systems. The simple question, "How hard is this going to be to set up?" keeps many people away from using a water cooler instead of the standard CPU heatsink and fan combo. While the setup could have been a bit easier (the directions at some points are a little confusing), it was by no means difficult. If you're installing a water cooling system, you most likely have a fair idea of how computer hardware attaches, and can probably complete the installation process in an hour. Note: The installation steps are summarized below, however Absolute Insight recommends consulting the AquaGate-Mini Installation Guide when installing the system. The first order of business is to remove the protective film on the bottom of the water block. The film is there to keep it from getting scratched which lowers performance, but if you forget to pull it off you'll most likely end up destroying your chip (melted plastic is no good!). Next, consult the manual to find the right bracket type for your chipset. There are plenty included, so find the right one for your chipset and screw it onto the bottom of the water block. Note: Some of the brackets could fit on the block multiple ways, so you might want to eyeball the way it should fit on your motherboard and take that into consideration. Attaching the water block to the board depends on your chipset (each has holes in different places), some use the back plate to have something to buckle to while others use rubber washers. The AthlonXP doesn't use the back plate, just rubber washers on both sides of the 4 screws. Note: Due to the way these screws are tightened (from the bottom of the motherboard) they are backwards when you screw them into the bracket holes. This could be confusing. You'll notice, on the NF7-S motherboard, the waterblock comes extremely close to 4 capacitors. Mine didn't want to fit without a little "convincing". To get mine on, I had to give the capacitors a bit of pushing, just a warning to you guys. CoolerMaster was thinking ahead when they packaged this system. When tightening the nuts down on the back of the motherboard, you may find yourself wondering, "Where did I leave my wrench/needle-nosed pliers?" Inside the box there is a nifty contraption that has a hex-nut side, and a Phillips screwdriver side. You can quickly put this over the nut (using the hex-nut side of course), and put your screwdriver in the other to tighten the nuts down. Although the installation handbook doesn't say anything about how tight to make the nuts, I suggest making them pretty tight. I had to re-tighten them when I found out that the system wasn't cooling properly since they weren't tight enough. Note: A good way to tell where "tight enough" is when the rubber washers start "smushing" against the board under then nuts. That's the hint that they're probably tight enough. Once the water block is securely fastened, choose a spot to mount the fan and radiator. CoolerMaster provides quite a bit of flexibility. The fan can mount to either side of the radiator and can screw into any normal 80mm fan spot. Despite the many options, my test cases had a bit of a problem. The cases I had to test with were the Koolance PC2-601 and a Chieftec Dragon, and unfortunately both of these cases are nearly identical (as are some Antecs). Inside the cases, there are plenty of 80mm fan slots, but all of them are setup with quick-attach/release clips. The clips allow you to pop a fan in or out without the need for screws, and therein lies the problem. Since the radiator is attached to the AquaGate fan, it doesn't fit in a quick-attach 80mm bay. Although not the fault of CoolerMaster, there is ay to screw the radiator/fan into either of my cases without drilling my own holes (I even tried removing the quick-attach brackets). Because of this, for the rest of the test, the radiator and fan sat outside the case, tilted to mimic the direction it would face when buckled to the back of a normal case. Quote: You can see the purple fan clasps on the back of the case in this picture. The green tubing on the side is the Koolance water-cooling system (used to test against the Aquagate-Mini). At this point setup is nearly complete. Plug in the two power connectors, one from the water block, and one from the radiator fan. If you don't have enough fan headers on your board, CoolerMaster included two adapters to go from 3-pin to 4-pin molex. To attach the knob to a PCI slot on the case, screw the knob into the provided PCI bracket, put the cover on it, and install it into whichever PCI slot you wish. This can be used later to easily adjust the fan speed and in turn, the noise. [page] Testing: After installing the AquaGate-Mini, it was time to do some testing. I can't stress this point enough. Don't just boot up, get into BIOS as quickly as possible, and watch your system temperatures. The first time I went to boot up, I hadn't tightened down the screws tight enough to the motherboard, so my CPU temp just kept rising at a rate of about 1 degree Celsius every second or two. I recommend watching the temperature in BIOS for at least a few minutes to make sure that the temperature is hovering around a reasonable value (30 to 50 degrees Celsius). Note: After checking to make sure that the system not going to overheat before reaching the operating system, start up the computer. After booting to Windows I started Motherboard Monitor (MBM5). MBM5 allows you to easily read CPU temps while in Windows. I left the computer on, allowing Windows to idle at the desktop for about 10 minutes to see what happened to the temperature. Although the readings were slightly higher than in the BIOS, it idled at around 35 degrees Celsius (a very nice temperature). After verifying the idling temperature, it was now time to test it. A good way of testing how well a cooling system performs is by running it under a heavy load. Many people use Prime95 for this, I've always had good luck with PCMark04, because it gives a load much closer to that of a user. I ran PCMark04 a few times through the tests while watching the temperature in MBM5. The temperatures quickly rose from 35oC to 44oC, and then hovered around 44 to 46 oC during different parts of the tests. When the fan speed was set as low as low as it would go (using the PCI knob), and did the same set of tests, and the AquaGate-Mini had the Athlon XP2100+ idling at 37 oC, and at 49 oC under load. To give an idea of how well this compares with other cooling systems, the Koolance PC2-601 (cooling system and case) also tested on the same hardware. The Koolance has settings for fan speed; the most basic options are High and Low speeds. When run on low speed the temperatures were around 38-39 oC when idle, and 47 oC max during a few loops through PCMark04. On the high fan speed, the temperatures were around 35-36 oC idle, and 45 oC max using the same test. For comparison purposes, a typical CPU cooled with a heat sink and fan combo runs in from about 45 oC to 50oC when idling, and can reach the 55oC to 60oC range under load. Conclusions: The CoolerMaster AquaGate-Mini is an impressive water cooling system. It was very easy to setup as far as water cooling systems go, very easy to expand to new chipsets due to the multitude of included brackets, and best of all, the AquaGate-Mini cooled the Athlon XP2100+ CPU quite well. Pros: Easy to setup Fits many chipsets Water is self-contained (no need to fill it) Cools well Can be added to an existing case Fan speed knob Quiet (compared to the Koolance and heatsink fan combos) Cheap! ($89-$99 MSRP) Cons: Directions slightly confusing at some points Doesn't fit cases using the quick-attach fan slots in certain cases Overall: A great system for a beginning water cooler. There are systems that out-perform the Aquagate-Mini, but they are far more costly and far more difficult to setup. Last edited by Impact on Thu Apr 21, 2005 10:19 am; edited 1 time in total
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