The conclusion.

Well, if you look at the tests, you can see a number of things. First off all: the SLK-800 is way better then these water-cooling kits at low wattage output. If I did some overclocking and add some additional watts, the Poseidon had to leave the battleground, tail between it's legs. When I added almost as much wattage as I could, the real power of a decent water-cooling is shown. At low wattages it isn't hard to keep something cool, but the closer you come to room temperature, the harder it becomes to make it even cooler. Eventually, these kits can never go under room temperature because they use the air in the room to cool down (introducing Peltiers into the water-cooling mix can however make it possible to have temperatures below that of the room).

But when high wattage outputs are reached, the water-cooling kits take the lead, because water can take an enormous amount of heat before its temperature goes up. (Approximately a 10 to 1 ratio between water and every metal)

Here are good and bad points of each contestant starting from the bottom up:

4th place: Poseidon

cheap water-cooling
easy installation
bad performance


3rd place: SLK-800

high-end air-cooling
good performance at lower outputs
expensive for air-cooling


2nd place: Thermaltake Aquarius 2

quite cheap
good performance
easy installation
lousy fan (replacing it with a better one instantly improves the performance)
kept together by magnets


1st place: Colorcase Cool Sprinter

big radiator but..
it could have been better
not a very complete kit as it borrows parts from the Poseidon kit.



What to do, what to buy?

I think that when you are starting out with water-cooling you're going to have the most fun with the Thermaltake Aquarius kit. It's cheap, well performing, small and easy to install. The Cool Sprinter kit is for more advanced users, because it requires some skills to install and most people don't have enough space to fit the whole radiator in their case (120mmx140mmx120mm) , so modifying your case can be necessary!

I hope this roundup was useful, I would like to thank Colorcasefor lending me all the material, check out their site, they have these kits on the product list at competitive prices!

Any questions / comments can be dropped @ this thread on the forums (no registration required)

DUR0N out!