Koolance Aquian ICM-505

Posted 08/25/2005 at 4:12pm | by

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The Aquian is a revelation in that it’s an internal water-cooling kit that offers the same level of performance as an external unit without having a big-honkin’ radiator and fan outside your case. And unlike the other internal kit we tested—Cooler Master’s Aquagate Mini (May 2005)—you can add more water blocks to this kit at some future date. We dare say, the Aquian is the answer to our water-cooling prayers.

The Aquian is a self-contained kit that mounts to a 12cm fan mount (your case must have a 12cm mount; an 8cm or 10cm won’t fit). The enclosure contains a 5x10-inch radiator, dual submersible pumps (one pushes water to the CPU block while the other sucks it through the radiator, providing a failsafe in case one pump fails), a blue LED-lit reservoir, and power connections for the kit. Its angular design allows you to mount it inside most cases without touching any components. It can even be adjusted up and down an inch and a half to accommodate different cases and mobos. We didn’t experience any blockage issues with either our AMD or Intel test rigs, though the case interior was very cramped in both setups.

Two 1/4-inch tubes go from the pumps to the CPU water block, which is included and fits all late-model CPUs (Xeons require an additional adapter). Though water-cooling aficionados may scoff at such a skinny tubing diameter (1/2-inch and 3/8-inch are the norm), it’s necessary because the entire apparatus swings out 90 degrees from the case to allow you to fill the reservoir and work in your system. The swing-out design requires a lot of slack in the lines and larger tubing would kink where the skinnier, more flexible tubing doesn’t.

Cooling performance suffers a tad because of the thin tubes, but temperatures and overclocking performance are still excellent.
Once the CPU water block is attached—an easy affair, although it does require motherboard removal on LGA775 rigs—a 3.5-inch LCD system monitor mounts in a free bay and displays the temp reading from the water block (Koolance recommends you use a third-party software utility to monitor your CPU temperature).

Unfortunately, the probe is too far from the core of the water block to give an accurate reading. Fan speed is controlled by the LCD unit, which you can set to Auto or Manual. In auto mode, fan speed varies incrementally depending on the temps reported by the probe. In manual mode you control fan speed with a couple buttons on the panel. We prefer the auto mode; it worked perfectly in our tests, ratcheting fan speed up as the temperature increased.

The system also has a built-in alarm that sounds at 55 C and cranks the fan to 100 percent. If temps increase another 3 C it shuts off the whole system. You can manually adjust alarm and shutdown temperatures.

The Aquian isn’t a perfect 10—its cooling performance isn’t as good as other units we’ve tested. And it can make your case interior very cramped, especially in a mid-tower full of hardware. Still, it’s unbelievably quiet and performs very well—almost as well as the Koolance Exos 2, which costs twice as much and requires a huge external radiator!
—Josh Norem

+ INTERNAL KIT: Easy to install, maintains chilly temps, and can be expanded to suit your PC's evolving needs.
- INTERNAL BLEEDING: Can make a mid-tower very cramped.

VERDICT: 9 Kick Ass
URL: www.koolance.com