by Sergey Lepilov
06/12/2008 | 06:57 PM
Not so long ago Cooler Master added a new solution to their Aquagate family of CPU liquid-cooling systems called Aquagate Max (RL-HUB-KBU1-GP). According to the manufacturer, the new system is capable of dissipating 600W of total heat generated by the computer system components.
<%BANNER[article]%>Bearing in mind that contemporary processors rarely dissipate more than 200W even during overclocking, statements like that have a really impressive effect. That is why we couldn’t pass by the new Cooler Master solution and today are glad to offer you our detailed review of the “max” liquid-cooling system.
The new Cooler Master system ships in a large cardboard box with dominating black color in the design and a few green and gray elements:
The plastic handle in the center of the box will certainly ease the transportation of the pretty heavy system. The sides of the package bear small photographs of the main system components and list the detailed technical specifications of Aquagte Max:
Inside you find an internal box made of polyurethane foam with sections cut out for each system component:
So, the risk of damaging any of the components during shipping or transportation is minimal.
Now let’s see what we get among the included accessories:
The bundle contains the following items:
Two thermal sensors for the liquid that should be installed in-between two halves of the tubing are in a separate section of the box:
I would like to specifically mention the detailed installation manual:
The set also includes coolant concentrate:
The main component of the vivid-green coolant solution is ethylene-glycol. It should work without losing any of its efficiency for 2 years guaranteed. And according to the info on the bottle, its freezing point starts only at 33ºC. The bottle contains 260ml of this solution.
The last item included with the Cooler Master Aquagate Max system is 3 meters of flexible tubing with internal diameter of 9.5mm made of vinyl chloride polymer.
Now let’s move on to the main system components and their functionality.
The first thing we are going to talk about will be the main block of the liquid-cooling system. It looks like a relatively small box to fit into two 5-inch bays of an ATX system case. The front panel has two transparent windows in somewhat crudely designed silver frame. The large window allows controlling the coolant level, while the small one helps monitoring its movement inside the system:
There is a multi-functional emergency indicator in the lower right corner. It performs two functions: goes off when the liquid coolant inside the system reaches critical temperature of 70ºC and signals when the coolant level in the expansion tank is low.
There is not much at the top of the block: the expansion tank lid and four retention screws holding this lid in place:
There is nothing on the side panels of the block, too. The only thing you see there are the four retention holes for fastening the block in the 5-inch case bays:
The rear panel, on the contrary, has a lot to show:
There are two connecting pipes (the incoming and the outgoing), the power supply connector, two four-pin fan connectors with pulse-width modulation fan rotation speed control, USB cable connector and five ports for thermal sensors.
Once the top lid has been removed, we can examine the internal structure of the main water block:
Inside you can see a transparent expansion tank that can hold 260ml of liquid. There is a short tube connecting it to the pump and a pump itself:
The pump made by some unknown manufacturer performs at 450l/h rate and has the head of 2m. Very good specifications for a liquid-cooling system of this class. According to the specs, the ceramic bearing of this pump should function flawlessly for 50,000 hours and the generated shouldn’t be higher than the claimed 23dBA. True: you don’t even hear this pump working against the background noise from the system case.
There is a small board on inside of the main block rear panel. It carries control elements and connectors:
However, one of the connectors that looked very similar to the USB connector wasn’t utilized for some reason.
Radiator and fans will be the next components we are going to discuss.
Despite our expectations that originate from the experience we had with mainstream liquid-cooling solutions so far, Cooler Master didn’t try to save a buck on their Aquagate Max radiator: they made it big enough for two120-mm fans instead of a typical single fan. The unit measures 300 x 142 x 71mm and weighs 708g when empty (without the coolant).
Unfortunately, Cooler Master’s generosity ended there: the radiator is made of aluminum:
There are threaded retention holes at the back of the radiator for two additional exhaust fans. The retention stands for the radiator itself are screwed on to the sides:
Two fittings 9.5mm in diameter with shaped chromium-plated nuts are inserted into one side of the radiator:
The radiator is topped with a pair of 12-mm 9-blade fans. They are marked as Cooler Master A12025-24-RB-4BP-F1 fans:
We didn’t find a fan with this marking among Cooler Master products. It must be made exclusively for the Aquagate Max system. This fans use rifle bearings that guarantee up to 40,000h MTBF (over 4.5 years of non-stop operation). If you take another look at Aquagate Max specifications, you will see that the fan rotation speed should be adjusted automatically by the main block. It should vary in the interval from ~850RPM to ~2400RPM creating a joint airflow of 143.62CFM and generating 22dBA of noise. The latter is claimed to be lower as it actually is, which has already become Cooler Master’s habit.
There are green decorative LEDs in the corners of these fans:
As you can see from the same photo, these fans support PWM control thanks to the four-pin cables. The fans are attached to the radiator with eight long screws. As for another eight screws for the additional two fans on the back of the radiator, you will have to find them on your own, since they are not included into the retention sets bundled with the system. It is really a pity, as such a small thing could really make users’ life a lot easier.
Now it is time for us to check out the processor water block:
This water block measures 50 x 50 x 42.5mm and weighs 137g. The base of this water block is made of nickel-plated copper. The plastic top pad already has the LGA 775 retention brackets attached. You will have to remove them and replace with different retention brackets (included with the accessories) for AMD K8 processors.
The internal diameter of the fittings and other tubing used in Aquagate Max system equals 9.5mm:
The base of the water block is covered with protective film warning the user that it needs to be removed before installation. The base finish quality is more or less satisfactory. Despite visible radial machine marks the surface is pretty smooth:
You can easily remove four screws at the bottom of the water block to find out that its top is made of aluminum:
However, the base is solid copper. Although it has very primitive internal structure: thin 4mm ribs are soldered to the base at ~0.5mm distance from one another:
It’s a pity that Cooler Master engineers didn’t take the trouble to design something constructively better and more efficient. They could have at least cur out micro-grooves in a solid plate instead of soldering the plates to the base. I cannot recall any other water block manufacturers who would be using such primitive internal design. Running a few steps forward, I have to admit that processor water block is the weakest spot of the entire Aquagate Max system.
You can download the detailed assembly and installation manual from the official company web-site (1.9MB file). Overall, the procedure is pretty simple and requires minimal efforts. At first you have to determine the location of the cooling system. If you read our Aquagate Review attentively enough, you should have noticed that there were no retentions for the radiator to be installed outside the system case. Yes, the new liquid-cooling system is designed to be placed inside the system case in a way like the illustration from the manual suggests:
So, the power supply unit should be located at the bottom and there should be enough room at the top inside your system case for the radiator of this size to fit in. computer case makers have been offering solutions with this particular internal structure lately. For example, Cooler Master COSMOS case is exactly the case like that:
If you have a case with different internal organization than the one on the picture above, then you will have to think of a way of attaching the radiator with the fans outside the system case. Of course, it will take some extra space on your desk or floor and may not look its best this way, but it will certainly improve the cooling efficiency.
And once you have made up your mind about the place for your cooling system main components, you can go ahead and proceed with installing the CPU water block. It needs to be fastened with screws to the backplate on the reverse side of the PCB:
As I have already mentioned above, if you are installing this water block on AMD K8 processors, you should use a different pair of retention brackets, however, the installation principle remains the same. Water block screw fastening provides highly secure contact with the CPU. The block will never shift or rotate on the processor heat-spreader.
When all the components are in place, you can start connecting the tubing. The vinyl chloride polymer tubing included with the Aquagate Max system is long enough to satisfy all your needs. Actually, we had over 1.5m of tubing left when we completed connecting the components. As you may have already understood, I didn’t have the case with the necessary internal structure available, and I didn’t have the chance to buy an expensive COSMOS. So, all the components were placed the following primitive way:
Yeah, I don’t think I could put up with this mess for a long time, but for testing purposes, it was quite OK. The case side panel remained open for Aquagate Max as well as its only opponent during the entire test session. Also, take a look at the thermal sensors inserted into the tubing. They should allow the main block of the cooling system to control the coolant temperature and adjust the rotation speed of the radiator fans accordingly. However, in reality, nothing like that ever happened, even though I checked multiple times the connection of the thermal sensors with the main block, as well as the fans. The fans were always running at their maximum rotation speed of ~2400RPM. It is hard to tell whether it was a strange defect or peculiarity of this cooling system sample.
Now that all system components are connected with the tubes we can fill the system with cooling solution. To make this solution you have to mix the coolant concentrate with distilled water as 1:3 and pour the solution into the main water block:
Strange as it might seem, but they didn’t include such cheap and useful accessory as a funnel with Aquagate Max, so I had to use a third-party funnel. I hope folks from Cooler master will not be offended :)
After filling the system, checking the connections containment and plugging in all the cables - including the USB one – to the mainboard, we can get started. Aquagate Max turns on automatically, when you power on your system case – this is what the USB cable is for. The system comes with no additional software, and there is also no software monitoring of any kind. If you assembled the system without any problems, then you will see green highlighting of the coolant level control window and coolant movement indicator:
The fans will also glow green:
The tubes and coolant inside them glow in UV light, so the system case with Aquagate Max inside should look very attractive and even breath-taking. I would like to add that you will have to turn the system on/off a few times at first, adding coolant solution to the expansion tank every time.
At this point, if I missed any technical details, the next section should definitely make up for that.
The technical specifications of Cooler Master Aquagate Max are summed up in the table below:
The new Cooler Master Aquagate Max cooling system and its today’s competitor were tested in (almost) a system case with the removed side panel. The mainboard was in vertical position.
Our testbed was identical for all coolers and featured the following configuration:
All tests were performed under Windows XP Professional Edition SP2. SpeedFan 4.34 Beta 44 was used to monitor the temperature of the CPU, reading it directly from the CPU core sensor:
The mainboard’s automatic fan speed management feature was disabled for the time of the tests in the mainboard BIOS. The CPU thermal throttling was controlled with the RightMark CPU Clock Utility version 2.35.0:
The CPU was heated up with OCCT (OverClock Checking Tool) version 2.0.0a in a 30-minute test with maximum CPU utilization, during which the system remained idle in the first 1 and last 4 minutes of the test:
I performed at least two cycles of tests and waited for approximately 20~25 minutes for the temperature inside the system case to stabilize during each test cycle. Despite the stabilization period, the result of the second test cycle was usually 0.5-1°C higher. The maximum temperature of the hottest CPU core of the four in the two test cycles was considered the final result (if the difference was no bigger than 1°C – otherwise the test was performed at least once again).
The ambient temperature was checked next to the system case with an electronic thermometer that allows monitoring the temperature and humidity changes over the past 6 hours. During our test session room temperatures varied between 24.5 ~ 25°C. It is used as a staring point on the diagrams. Note that the fan rotation speeds as shown in the diagrams are the average readings reported by SpeedFan, and not the official claimed fan specifications.
We decided to compare the performance of Aquagate Max against that of ZEROtherm NV120 Premium cooler:
We tested this cooler in two modes: with the fan rotating at ~1360RPM and relatively moderate level of generated noise and at maximum fan rotation speed of ~2760RPM.
As for Aquagate Max, since its fans were always running at maximum ~2400RPM rotation speed, we replaced them with two high-performance 120-mm Scythe SlipStream 120 fans for additional tests in quiet mode:
Since the rotation speed of these fans could be adjusted manually, we tested Aquagate Max at ~1100RPM rotation speed and at maximum ~2630RPM rotation speed. We also tested the new liquid-cooling system with standard fans, but only in one mode (~2400RPM). Besides replacing the fans, we also tested Aquagate Max with Zalman ZM-WB5 water block in order to determine the efficiency of the default water block of this cooling system.
Well, let’s discuss the obtained results.
I would like to say right away that Aquagate Max didn’t limit the overclocking potential of our processor, because even when the radiator fans were working in quiet mode, our quad-core Yorkfield remained stable at 4004MHz frequency with the Vcore set at 1.6V in the mainboard BIOS (~1.57V according to monitoring utilities). All tests were performed with the CPU overclocked to this point. The results turned out pretty interesting:
First of all I would like to comment on the dependence of the Aquagate Max results on the performance of the radiator fans. If we compare identical SilverStone fans with different rotation speeds, we will see that when the rotation speed of both fans increases from ~1100RPM to ~2630RPM, the CPU cooling efficiency improves by 4ºC. I have to admit that this difference is not really impressive considering how dramatic the acoustic difference is between these two operational modes. At the same time we can’t really tell how efficient the original Cooler Master fans are at the same quiet ~1100RPM rotation speed, but at the maximum and loud ~2400RPM the ensured only 2ºC improvement compared with the SilverStone quiet mode.
Now comes the most interesting part: replacing the default water block of Cooler Master Aquagate Max with Zalman ZM-WB5. If we compare these water blocks in identical conditions (i.e. with identical pair of radiator fans), then Zalman solution will show 6-7ºC better results. Not bad, I guess. Moreover, Zalman ZM-WB5 is not one of the best water blocks out there, although it is totally worth the $30 you will have to pay for it.
Note that it was the third-party water block that allowed Aquagate Max to outperform a super-cooler from ZEROtherm in both: quiet mode and at maximum fan rotation speed. Unfortunately, Cooler Master liquid cooling system is as efficient as the air cooler only when its default fans rotate at their maximum speed., while the super air-cooler had its fan running at moderate ~1360RPM.
It turned out pretty hard to draw any definite conclusions today. On the one hand, let’s try to answer the following question: what will potential Aquagate Max users get? A liquid-cooling system as efficient as a good air-cooler, compatible with limited number of system cases, equipped with uncontrollable fans generating tangible noise and featuring a price tag of $229. Doesn’t seem to be very promising, does it?
On the other hand, Aquagate Max has tremendous potential. Just replace the default processor water block, and get an instant 4ºC improvement in quiet mode and 5ºC improvement at maximum fan rotation speed. Besides, we would like to make a few recommendations to Cooler Master that will undoubtedly make this solution a hit: add a universal graphics processor water block into the accessories bundle, give up the thermal sensors and implement manual fan rotation speed adjustment (if they give up the sensors and PWM fans, they could even save a bit), replace the bulky and not very informative front panel indicators with digital ones, make the radiator unit fit for installation outside the system case, add a filling funnel into the bundle. Then, Cooler Master Aquagate Max will be a definite beauty and will win a lot of fans. However, as always, the choice is yours.