Print this article

Asetek WaterChill KT12A-12VX


Date
: 03/12/06 – 03:28:22 AM

Author
:

Category
: Cooling

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer: Asetek Inc.
Price:

If you are an enthusiast/gamer or overclocker, and I am assuming you are, then you no doubt know who Asetek is and what they are about. For those that don't know what Asetek does or their role in the marketplace listen up. Asetek has been the industry leader in extreme cooling since 1997 with the first inception of the VapoChill cooling unit. It took less than 2 years for this Denmark based innovation expert to become incorporated and begin growing rapidly.

Fast forward to 2003, the Ohio State Buckeyes are national champions after a thrilling Fiesta Bowl victory and Bush has pulled his 6-shooter from the holster pointing it directly at Iraq. With numerous awards under their belt for their refined VapoChill cooling systems Asetek decided it was time to dip their toe in the water cooling pool and developed the now world famous, WaterChill line. Within a year, the WaterChill line expanded to 20+ products. In that time Asetek won more awards for their WaterChill systems than Dick Cheney had "minor" heart attacks.

Today I will have the anticipated pleasure of reviewing the cream of the Asetek crop plucked fresh from the fields of that beautiful nordic country. The WaterChill KT12A-12VX 1/2" is from the XTREME KITS isle of the impressive WaterChill line of products. This complete cooling system incorporates CPU, north bridge, and GPU water blocks, a monstrous triple 120mm radiator, and an integrated pump/reservoir with built-in monitoring and control software. There is plenty to look at so let's get this horse and pony show on the road.

Page 2 : Package & Contents

When I received the big package from Asetek I was quite surprised to not see it double boxed. The corrugated package that the kit comes in was simply wrapped in black plastic shipping wrap with the shipping labels tagged to it.

It is not fancy or exciting unless you know what is inside and if youre buying this kit you will know what is inside. There is nothing else on any sides of the package or the bottom aside from the WaterChill and Asetek logos so this will be the only photo of the package. With a specialty premium package like the WaterChill KT12A-12VX/½", it isn't necessary for a flashy package just something that will protect the amazing hardware inside. As I said above, I was surprised that the package was not double boxed for the long journey from Denmark to Canada. That is, until I opened it.

As soon as the lid was up it was easy to see why there was no need for double boxing it. Thick foam padded the top and bottom with another layer of foam separating the hose from the rest of the contents. On the left we get a good idea of how well everything is packed in here and the game tetris immediately comes to mind.

Once the length of 1/2" OD tubing and the foam piece protecting it are removed, we can see that the Tetris like packing extends throughout the interior of the package. Nothing is going to be moving around and no single part risks any kind of damage when sandwiched neatly together like this. Asetek is confident in their packaging and they should be. Everything arrived at my house in the exact spot that it was in when it left the factory.

The first thing out of the box is the stack of 120mm fans that are included with this kit. Supplying a kit with 6 120mm quality fans is certainly one of the reasons for the relatively high cost of the kit. A good 120mm fan costs about $13 or more up here in Canada from a local retailer. That is around $75 worth of fans right there.

Asetek doesn't try to hide the fan part number by branding it with their own sticker. The original ADDA label gives us all the information we need about the fan. The ADDA AD1212MS-A73GL is a popular fan with power supplies for its good performance at a cost of very little noise. At 12V the fan pushes just over 80CFM at around 2000RPM. That is a good amount of air for that speed and should be quite tolerable when looking for top performance. Full details about the fans can be found on the next page with the rest of the specifications.

The next pile of goodies out of the box is the accessory bag full of everything we will need to get the kit up and running. Because the KT12A-12VX/½ inch kit is just pieced together individual components, it makes sense there is no group packaging. The individual bags along the bottom are for the three included water blocks and the mounting hardware for the six fans. Along the top from left to right is the thermal sensors, a Y fitting for the CPU block, the feet and base for the reservoir/pump, and the power connections for the fans. The syringe at the 9 o'clock position is obviously an anti fungal water wetter solution. To give you an idea of just how complete this kit is, that little green wire by the rubber feet is actually to jumper our power supply for when we are filling the system, there is absolutely nothing missing that could prevent Asetek from calling this a comprehensively complete kit.

The manual, or should I say manuals, are much like the hardware they are designated for. Each water block has its own individual booklet we can see laid out along the top with the radiator getting the larger one to the left. The monitoring/controlling software comes on the CD and then there are just a couple other various information booklets that Asetek has included.

This is just a quick photo of the VGA water block installation instructions. Like everything else, the manuals for each water block are very complete with plenty of diagrams and have instructions in what appears to be four different languages. Installation looks like it should be as easy as Asetek advertises.

I won't be going into detail about the last few components here but will do so in another section a couple clicks away. Being a complete system we received three water blocks. There is one for the processor, video card, and chipset. There is also another top piece that makes the CPU block completely universal with the ability to mount to socket 462, 754, 939, 478, and 775.

The largest of the components is the massive 357mm x 134mm x 43mm radiator that will house the six 120mm fans and do the important job of keeping the liquid cool. Like the water blocks, more information and photos will be had in a section a couple stops up the road.

The last of the components out of the box is the heart and soul of any water cooling system, the new WaterChill Xtreme Integrated Pump/Reservoir that runs off of 12v power. This all in one solution not only handles the pumping duties but houses a circuit board capable of everything from fan control to powering an optional LCD display. The features list on this pump is quite extensive so I will be saving those for the specifications page which we will be looking at right now.

Page 3 : Specifications

With this kit incorporating many components this specifications section will be quite large. I will break it down into sections and we'll start with the Adda fans and go from there.

The Adda AD1212MS-A73GL model can be deciphered to read as a high speed 120mm fan with a thickness of 25mm. It utilizes a sleeve bearing and is considered a 'Low Noise' version as opposed to the 'Great Performance'. At 2050RPM +/- 10% the fan pushes a solid 80CFM staying under 40 dBA. Once we get all 6 of them up and running it will be interesting to see how much noise they do make. Here is a full list of specs I could dig up:

The pump that comes with this kit is of the best that Asetek offers incorporating more than just a pump and reservoir. The
Xtreme [12V] integrated Pump/Reservoir
provides complete software control of all of its functions including two fan connectors offering adjustment of fan speeds on up to six fans, pump speed regulation, temperature monitoring of onboard thermo probes, savable profiles for easy mode switching, and much more.

Specifications listed on the Asetek web site:

This is what Asetek has to say about this exciting new pump/reservoir:

There is no real specifications about the blocks, but here is the info I could grab from the Asetek web site:

CPU Cooler Antarctica CPU01/A

VGA Cooler VGA02/P1
:

MB Chipset Cooler NB01/P1

As you can see this is more of a feature list and not specifications. The important notes are that all the blocks use a pure copper base, they are machined perfectly flat and smooth, and are optimized for flow. The push on fittings and thumbscrew mounts also result in a simple installation.

The final component we have a gander at before heading to the geek pr0n section is the world famous Black Ice Xtreme III w/ 1/2" fittings. It's big. It's black. It can keep a Hyundai cool on the autobahn, okay so maybe not but you get the idea. All information, again, has been plucked from the pages of Asetek.com

With the boring stuff out of the way, we can no move on to some more eye candy before getting the water flowing.

Page 4 : Contents Continued

This section has been split up into three sections, one for each of the major components included in the Asetek WaterChill KT12A-12VX/½ inch kit. We start with the most important, the integrated pump/reservoir.

The Pump/Reservoir

It would be rather large for a pump, but this is not just a pump. It is an integrated pump/reservoir with a circuit board for software control to boot. The reservoir is on the right with the pump housing to the left. All the connections for software and the USB connection to the computer are to the left at the end with the inlet and outlet on top on either side of the fill port.

The push fittings should provide a quick and easy install as these fittings are used throughout the kit. The fill port requires just a simple twist and lift to get out. It is kind of small but a funnel should take care of any issues while filling. I also found that the fill cap was rather tough to remove because the seal was very good. This may have been a by-product of my fat sausage fingers but I resorted to using pliers eventually because my finger tips couldn't do it anymore.

This is the business end with the pump being housed here as well as the circuit board that acts as the brain of the pump. This is what really sets the pump apart from others as a simple USB cable connection to the motherboard will allow full control of the pump RPM as well as fans that are connected to the circuit board back here.

The power for the pump comes via the 4-pin molex connection in the lower right. The two fan connections and USB connection are located just above the molex connection. The pump can control up to 6 fans or 24W via the use of the split cables that are provided. The top connections are for two supplied temperature probes, and a led connection should you choose to light the reservoir up. The big connection on the left is for the optional LCD display that you can get from Asetek.

This shot from underneath shows how the pump retrieves water from the reservoir on the left. The pump is also EMI shielded so it is safe to use in the case. The green wire that can barely be seen in the upper left hand corner is a ground wire to ensure complete EMI protection.

Due to unfortunate circumstances that resulted in a cracked reservoir, I got to change reservoirs so we get to see photos of the pump/reservoir separated and a better look at the pump itself. The large opening in the photo above is obviously where the pump bridges with the reservoir to draw water from and the small hole underneath is where the optional LED can mount to give the reservoir a glow.

Here is a shot of the pump disassembled to expose the innards. Changing the reservoir is quite easy and only takes a couple minutes to 'pop' it off. The installation is just a matter of sliding the new one on.

The Radiator

The largest component that makes up this kit is the Triple Black Ice Xtreme rad designed specifically for water-cooling computers. It can handle six 120mm fans to be mounted to it for aiding in cooling the water that makes its way through the 2-pass low pressure drop design.

The radiator is a very impressive looking unit when you first pull it from the package. A glossy black finish sets it off and combined with the sheer size the radiator screams tough and heavy duty. The Black Ice Xtreme III core features flat tubes and high-density copper fins to ensure maximum heat transfer.

The connections are angled push fittings that keep the common theme of an easy install with the rest of the components in the kit. The radiator can come with either 3/8" or 1/2" fittings and in the case of this kit they are the larger 1/2" OD ones.

The push fittings are labeled with their size on top with raised letters for easy identification. There is no set inlet or outlet for the radiator so for installation it will just depend on which provides the best tube routing.

The edge of the radiator is for mounting the fans to the unit with the provided self-tapping screws. We can see that the fans are raised slightly off the surface of the radiator. This helps to reduce turbulence of the airflow from the fans and also cuts down on noise by giving the air from the fans some room until hitting and passing through the fins. A little more of a gap would be nice but it is understandable that there isn't because once fans get mounted on each side, the size of the radiator will be thick enough as it is.

Coming out of the box, the radiator is absolutely stunning. The acrylic black finish really sets off the appearance and gives the radiator the name it possesses. The craftsmanship is top notch and it shows. Not only should this radiator perform well but it also looks great. Mounting it in or to a case might be a challenge in itself but the performance will heavily outweigh the size.

The Water Blocks

The interface between the CPU, NB, GPU, and the water cooling system is the water block. In this system we have all three water blocks where some kits only come with two and possibly only one. Asetek has tried and tested water block designs that have been proven to be good performers.

We start with the Antarctica CPU water block. The design has been around for quite some time without change and despite its age is still a very solid water block compared to others on the market. It features a 1 inlet and 2 outlet design that has the hottest part of the CPU receiving the majority of the flow before it gets dispersed to the outside and exits the block to continue its journey.

The base is a thick all copper piece that rather large. This allows the Antarctica to be used with any relatively new socket from Intel and AMD. The top part of the copper block is precision machined with STREAM CHANNELS that provide a fast escape for the newly heated water. This is a very good design for flow and is the basis to its excellent heat dissipating capabilities.

I received an additional top plate that is used for mounting the Antarctica to socket T CPUs. With the photo above we can see just how the inlet works. There is a small slit which directs the water directly down onto the CPU center. This will also create a very fast flow of the water over the CPU center with the reduction in size from the 3/8" ID tube size. Rubber o-rings at the push connectors and the rubber seal between the top plate and copper block keep all the water inside.

The base of the copper block is perfectly flat, finished very well and polished to an almost mirror finish. We can see a few machining marks on the base but the finish is perfectly smooth and will make great contact on all CPUs.

Like all other fittings in this kit, the north bridge water block uses push fittings to secure the tubing and sports an acrylic top mated to a thick copper base. The path between the inlet and outlet is a simple channel that covers almost the entire base. This should be plenty of cooling for the hard working nForce 4 chipset that will be used in testing.

The copper base is also a very smooth surface void of any defects but shows some minor machining marks and a near mirror finish. The northbridge block will be mounted via the two arms with a set of screws, springs and washers on the DFI nForce 4 motherboard.

The VGA water block is very similar in design to the north bridge block with one major exception and that is the inlet and outlet orientation. The VGA inlet/outlets lay flat so it is much easier to route the tubing to and from it. The best part about the Asetek water blocks is that they come all assembled and ready to go. The push fittings are threaded and sealed to the blocks which makes this kit very simple to setup for anyone at all.

I showed the bottom of the other water blocks so I might as well show this one too. Like the others, there is a slight evidence of machining but the surface is very flat and tremendously smooth. The toonie also shows up rather well and there should be no issues with this guy sucking heat out of the video cards I will be testing with. Before testing though, we will have to do some installation so let's get to that.

Page 5 : Installation

A water-cooling kit installation is a little bit more involving than most installs I do in reviews because the risks and consequences of a poor install are far greater. With any water cooling system, it is generally accepted to setup the water loop and leak test before running the machine or even installing onto the motherboard if possible. I will be conducting the testing outside of a case so I will be completely setting up the system for leak testing then mounting the water blocks to the motherboard for thermal testing.

I will start out by going over the various block mountings without any tubing hooked up so it will be easy to see what is involved. We must start with a clean canvas for this so my DFI Ultra-D has been stripped of all components aside from the CPU that will be used for testing.

The CPU water block is amazingly easy to install. Start with securing the mounting poles from underneath with the screws and plastic protective washers from underneath. This will be what our water block secures to the motherboard with and with the AMD64 (Socket 939) only two of the four provided are needed.

The block simply slides down the poles and is then secured by these two thumbscrews and springs that apply the tension. There is nothing to it and can literally take 2 minutes once the motherboard is prepped for install with the stock retention bracket removed. There is also no guesswork as the springs put the pressure on the block and all we have to do is turn the thumbscrews all the way down.

With the CPU easily installed, the northbridge will be the next on the list and it is a bit trickier than the CPU mount. I start with a quick photo of the hardware that we are supplied with for this mount. The long screws come up from underneath the motherboard with the large thumbscrews on the top to tighten down the water block. Washers are again provided with this water block to ensure the motherboard does not get damaged. The cable ties are for setups that do not have mounting holes but rather the little loops that secure the stock chipset coolers.

This is a photo of the block mounted and it only takes a couple minutes like the CPU block, but wasn't quite as easy. You essentially have to hold the screw from underneath while lining up the mounting tabs and then securing the thumbscrews with the spring in-between. It wasn't too difficult but compared to the very simple CPU install this one seemed tough.

Now I know what you are thinking. That water block is completely blocking off the top PCI-E video card slot and I will never get one installed. This is true, the chipset location on this motherboard is far from ideal and this is not Aseteks fault, rather DFIs. The bottom slot will be used for testing but not with the 7800GT as it is just the slightest bit blocked from being able to mount correctly.

The recently reviewed PowerColor X1300Pro fits perfectly though so I will be using this for the NB testing. I will then pull the chipset water block and replace it with the stock unit again and hook up the video card water block for that testing. Unfortunately there is just no way with this motherboard to test the loop with all three installed so two at a time will have to do. You hear me DFI, the AM2 boards you put out better have this rectified.

The last of the water block test mounts will be for the BFG 7800GT from the NVIDIA family. It mounts exactly as the northbridge does but is much easier on the small PCB of the video card. It is a simple matter of getting the mounting screws through the backside, securing the water block and within a few minutes it was ready for action. Mounting the water block to the X800GTO that was used for testing was a little tougher because of the pin alignment but secured to the card quite well.

Once I know all the water blocks will mount without issue it is time to get the loop setup and start leak testing. The most important part of the setup is the hoses and secure connections in all the push fittings. This requires perfectly flat cuts and getting the tubes pressed all the way in. I did my measuring and cutting ahead of time and have started fixing the tubes to the various components starting with the Y connection on the CPU water block. A few minutes later and the lines were all secure and ready to go. The push fittings seem to be easy enough to get setup but when doing it you want to make sure that the tubes are all the way in. I can see how it would be easy to think they are in but I still have 3mm to go. With a reservoir it is easy to fill the system, simply fill the reservoir with water and force as much water into the system then close the lid and fire up the pump. As soon as the reservoir drops down to the pick up point of the pump stop, rinse, and repeat. A funnel is nice to have on hand because the reservoir fill hole is rather small and a bit tough to get at in-between the inlet and outlet.

Asetek provides us with a shielded jumper wire for getting the PSU to run to allow for the system to be filled and tested without a motherboard in sight. The suction feet on the base of the pump/reservoir were excellent and do a good job of holding the pump in place on my glass top desk.

I filled the system with water and I could start working any air out of the loop. It literally only took 10 minutes to rid the system of any air by way of shaking out the radiator. The included water wetter/anti algae formula was added during the filling period. This setup was left to run over night to ensure there were no leaks and all would be well when we power up the motherboard. In the morning no water was present anywhere so I deemed it safe to mount and get some testing done. As I had done test fitting already the mounting to the motherboard went rather smoothly and the machine was up and running in no time. Clearly I was only able to do the CPU and North bridge testing first then a rebuild of the loop with the GPU and CPU would be next. Before testing though, we will take a look at the software that controls the system VIA the USB cable we can see in the photo above.

Page 6 : Software

Obviously software is not a usual section in a water-cooling kit review but the Asetek WaterChill KT12A-12VX is not an ordinary water-cooling kit. The software is an important feature and integral part of this WaterChill system that is necessary to utilize the software based controls that are offered with the new pump/reservoir.

Like most small Windows programs, the install really takes no effort on our part and does everything itself with the only option we can change being the installation directory. Other than that, it takes care of itself.

Once installation is done the main screen is accessed by a shortcut on the desktop or from the start menu and we are presented with the main control page as seen above. On the right hand side we have the chart which plots the temperature readings from two thermal probes, and both fans. I only have one temperature probe plugged in and it is reading room temperature of 22.9C. There is also fan monitoring from the looks of it but I couldn't get the fan speeds to register.

The sliders on the left are where we can manipulate the fan speed, pump speed, and LCD characteristics should you have gone for that option. It is pretty straight forward process and the reactions are instant. I did some basic testing and no change in pump speed made any difference in temperatures. The check boxes under the sliders are again for the optional LCD display that did not come with my kit. The last of the options seen here are the transparency setting and the ability to save profiles.

The notification area houses both temperatures when the WaterChill software is open or minimized. Right-clicking gets us this menu. The options are for choosing specific profiles without even un-minimizing the software as well as a couple other options like the
System Info…

Here is a quick screenshot of the System Info while I had the Asetek WaterChill hooked up to another machine. The motherboard model, a hint as to what my next motherboard review will be. This about sums up the extent of the software and we will now move on to testing the thermal performance of the WaterChill KT12A-12VX kit.

Page 7 : Performance

In an Overclockers Online review, simply describing a product and taking a bunch of pictures does not cut it. Testing is what you came for and testing is what I will give you. I have taken decisive steps to ensure that the testing is accurate and controlled so the results will provide a good measurement of what this kit is made of. The CPU being used for testing is an Opteron stepping that likes to run hot, real hot. Even at stock voltages this CPU starts to heat up at around 2800MHz that is why I chose to use it for the testing. Here is a complete list of components that will be used for testing:

The testing process will commence as follows. I will boot the system and run Stress Prime 04 for 4 hours. At the end of the 4 hours the temperatures will be recorded then SP04 will be stopped, closed, and the system will be left to idle for 2 hours with nothing more than necessary windows background services running and ITE Safe Guardian for temperature monitoring. The idle values will then be recorded at the end of that time period. All Temperatures were taken from ITE Safe Guardian and the room temperature where the testing took place held a steady 22C-23C as measured by one of the thermal probes through the WaterChill software. The fan speed for testing was kept at 50%, you can read more as to why later on in this section. Here are the results of the thermal testing with the CPU and North Bridge in the loop and mounted:

I will first start off by saying that the stock heatsink and fan could not handle the clocking from this chip. The temperature would get up to the noted 56 degrees and then Prime would promptly fail all within 5 minutes of starting. The WaterChill setup worked really well with the NB chip keeping it easily under 30 degrees while the stock NB cooler would keep the temperature at 37C with the fan at a static 3000RPM. The CPU cooling was not as impressive as I had hoped keeping the CPU at only 43C. Don't get me wrong, 10 degrees is a solid margin over an extraordinary cooler like the Thermalrite XP120 but just not exactly exciting.

At this point I tore down the loop to swap the chipset water block with the VGA water block mounted to an X800GTO for testing in conjunction with the CPU. The length of the card prevented me from being able to run all three water blocks in the loop at the same time so this was the best way I could pull it off. The same testing method was used as above but the GPU values were derived from a 4 hour run scanning for artifacts in ATI Tool with Stress Prime 04 running in the background to keep the CPU working 100%. Both programs were stopped and closed and after 2 hours the Idle results were again taken. Here are the results:

The CPU temperature didn't change much at all with the X800GTO in the loop in place of the north bridge. That is quite a welcoming sign showing that this loop is far from being at its saturation point. This tells me that the temperatures I am seeing are being caused by possibly the IHS and not just the system because the X800GTO is certainly putting out more heat than the chipset was. It might be time for an IHS removal or lapping, pesky warranties aren't good for anything anyway. The X800GTO's temperatures are beyond impressive. After the Tidewater review I didn't think the X800GTO could run any cooler but I was very wrong. This kit is clearly capable of some very impressive cooling on both the GPU and CPU at the same time.

While doing testing I checked to see if the fan or pump speed had any effect on temperatures but was surprised to find that they didn't for the most part. Only until the fans were turned down below 40% did the CPU temperature start to go up marginally. Seeing as the fans are quite acceptable as far as noise goes at 50% or lower I didn't even bother to do results based on fan speed. Perhaps with a warmer ambient temperature the fans would play a larger role.

Page 8 : Conclusion

Asetek is a leader in high-end cooling with a reputation of outstanding performance from their products and kits. The WaterChill KT12A-12VX certainly didn't disappoint with performance that kept one of the hottest processors I have worked with around the 40C mark. The ability to cool the chipset and video card were impressive to say the least again lowering the operating temperature of my X800GTO to temperatures I thought impossible.

There were a couple of snags however. The easy installation was just that, easy but not without its troubles. The GPU block leaked slightly in which I had to rectify by re-threading the push fittings and tightening them myself. Most people would be hesitant to do such a task for fear of cracking the acrylic. The individual booklets lack small amounts of details which won't be important to experienced water-coolers but can miss some important things for amateurs. The last of the issues is the amount of tubing we get with the kit. It is certainly enough but not as ample as I would like to see. With the amount we are given you definitely will need to cut once or run short.

Troubles aside, the WaterChill KT12A-12VX from Asetek lived up to its name and presents itself as an excellent choice for those looking to 'get wet' and cool a complete system with a very robust setup. Just make sure you have the ability to mount that large, amazingly beautiful radiator.

Advantages

• Absolutely complete kit
• Simple installation
• Solid Performance
• Damn that radiator is tough looking

  Disadvantages

• Slightly vague instructions
• Price of this kit is rather high

  Overclockers Online would like to thank Asetek for providing the sample for this review.