Asetek WaterChill KT12
As good a place as any to start is the formal kit specification. This is just a straight copy and edit from the Asetek website, for the most part.- WaterChill CPU cooler block supporting Intel P4 S478, AMD Socket A, AMD S754/S940 (AMD64)
- WaterChill VGA cooler block supporting NVIDIA GeForce and ATI Radeon AGP cards
- WaterChill Chipset cooler block supporting Intel, AMD, SIS and VIA chipsets
- Black Ice Pro Radiator with push on fittings
- 120mm Low Noise Sunon Fan
- 700l/hr Hydor Pump with push on fittings
- WaterChill Plexiglass Reservoir
- WaterChill Tube Set (3.0 metres)
- ALL fittings and mounting accessories are included
- Anti Algae Fluid - 25ml bottle
- Heat Conduction Compound - 2ml tube
- Installation Manual
Packaging
The packaging is worth talking about, if only to let you know that it's good. A large, sturdy cardboard box contains two pieces of interlocking foam, which all your components sit between. The smaller individual components are all individually bagged, but the larger components, like the radiator and reservoir are all naked inside the foam. If I have any criticism of the packing method, it's that the larger items should be wrapped individually too, should they bang together during transit. It's rare that they would, but nonetheless, it'd be nice to see, just in case.Waterblocks
The waterblocks are all constructed the same way, 10mm acrylic lids, screwed down onto CNC machined copper bases, with the push-fit connectors screwed into the acrylic. Rubber seal gaskets are used to ensure a good fit between acrylic and copper, creating an air and water pressure resistant seal.
The CPU block shot above lets me talk a bit more about the blocks in general. The block design is engineered to take maximum advantage of the flow rate of the Hydor pump, along with the usual waterblock checklist of points. A large surface area for water contact and channels to ensure low turbulance in the flow are the design highlights. Massive flow rate doesn't always equate to massive cooling performance. A balanced design seems to work best, meaning you can get good performance out of a system that uses a comparatively low flow rate.
As you can see with the CPU block, the screws used to seal the sandwich of materials have Allen bolt heads. Asetek provide the required key to enable you to take the acrylic lid off the copper part, to swap the acrylic lid for another type and also to perform block maintenance, usually cleaning. The advantage of user replaceable lids (and therefore the mounting hardware) is that you can upgrade the block to fit new, unreleased, hardware, without buying entirely new blocks. Asetek supply you with swappable CPU block lids with the KT12-L20, should the standard universal mount not fit your hardware. As you can see in the picture, the standard universal mount uses a 10-hole system, able to support 4 seperate socket platforms and mounting mechanisms, motherboard permitting.
Socket 478 and Socket 754/940 should be almost universal in their compatibility with the WaterChill block, since they provide a well specified socket area and heatsink mounting hardware that all manufacturers must adhere to. Obviously there are exceptions to the rule, as you'll find out later in the review, but Socket A is definitely the most troublesome platform to find compatibility with WaterChill.
The push fittings work exceptionally well in my experience. While they initially look strange, especially if you haven't used them before, they do indeed provide a more than adequate seal for the system. I prefer the hand tightening style of fittings that Gainward utilise in their CoolFX products, but the push fittings are good on their own merit. They do bring a limitation to the table however, the required usage of stiff tubing. I'll talk about that a bit more later.
Here's a picture of the GPU, along with a couple of clickable links to other pictures, before I talk about the rest of the bundle.
Click here for chipset block picture (~67KB)
Click here for Socket A replacement acrylic lid picture (~67KB)
