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Introduction

Asetek WaterChill Watercooling Kit

With escalating CPU clock speeds, the overall wattage output continues to grow. Reductions in manufacturing size and operating voltage have done their best to halt the power requirements, but with modern CPUs consuming more than 60w, the need for better, more efficient cooling has become paramount.

A case in point is the cooler that Intel bundled with their latest 3.0GHz 'C' processor. A meaty, copper-clad base with a 70mm fan, its construction and cooling potential is a testament to the wattage output of Intel's latest processor. 80mm fans are now found on the majority of performance-based aftermarket coolers. With enthusiasts quite content to add 15 - 30% voltage over basic specifications, excellent air cooling is required to keep over-clocked and over-volted CPUs happy.

On the other end of the enthusiast cooling scale are phase-change coolers. Sure, they're the first choice of the die-hard enthusiast, but their price often puts more moderate users off. Between these two lies watercooling. Offering a trade-off between the performances attained by air and phase-change cooling, it has, for some time, been the knowledgeable enthusiasts' cooling of choice. Watercooling also offers ancillary benefits. A potentially quiet system with the ability to cool the graphics card, chipset and CPU, watercooling is the all-in-one solution.

However, much like networking, watercooling has been considered something of a black art by novice users. Which reservoir, pump, radiator, chipset and graphics block to use ?. How to connect them up ? What to know ?. What to do and what not to do ? These are the types questions that put off a potentially large customer base.

We've seen the steady emergence of complete watercooling kits recently. Providing everything you need to get going and guaranteed compatibility between components, these kits have sought to unravel some of the complexities involved in setting them up in your system. Asetek, perhaps better known for the Vapochill line of phase-change coolers, feel that they can apply their all-in-one knowledge gained from producing pre-configured phase-change systems to watercooling kits.

Aptly named the WaterChill, Asetek's watercooling kit is geared up towards the largest possible market. With promise of future chipset and graphics card blocks, it looks promising on paper. Let's have a closer look at the WaterChill KT03 Kit.

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