MaximumPC 2005 11

reviewsTESTED. REVIEWED. VERDICTIZED

68 MA XIMUMPC NOVEMBER 2005

W

e all know that water conducts heat

much more efficiently than air, but is it

so effective that a water-cooling kit can run

without any fans? That’s what we wanted to

test with Innovatek’s SET passive water-cool-

ing kit, which foregoes the standard radiator/

fan setup in exchange for a massive external

radiator that can either be bolted to the side

of your case or stand on its own little feet. We

expected the passive cooler to run super hot

and cause instability with our test system, but

we were totally wrong.

As stated previously, the radiator is pas-

sive, meaning it moves heat from the system

and out of its heat exchanger without using

fans. In a typical fan-based setup, water

flows through tiny channels in a radiator and

the heat moves from the water into the cool-

ing fins. A fan blows cool air over the fins in

order to blast heat out of the system. With

smaller radiators, or radiators placed inside

a case, a fan is absolutely necessary in order

to dissipate heat from the radiator, but with

a huge external radiator, a fan isn’t need-

ed—after all, the device isn’t surrounded by

smoldering hardware. External radiators are

also sublimely easy

to set up (just set it

on your desk), don’t

occupy precious

space inside your

case, and operate

in absolute silence

thanks to their fan-

less nature.

Aside from its

beautiful radiator, the rest of the SET kit uses

standard water-cooling parts. The XX-Flow

CPU cooler is ridiculously easy to mount,

though it does require motherboard removal.

We also attached a Micro II hard drive water

block, which mounts below the drive. It kept

our WD Raptor lukewarm, even under a full

load. Unfortunately, the HDD water block will

only mount in a drive cage that doesn’t use

slots for the drives, as it extends below the

allotted drive space.

In our circuit, water flowed from the

pump to the radiator, then to the CPU block,

onto the HDD block, and then back to the

12V pump/reservoir. The instructions call for

the pump to be hard-mounted to the case,

which requires you to drill holes in the bot-

tom of your case. Though time-consuming,

this method insures that the pump won’t

vibrate, shift, or topple over, and it’s better

than using an adhesive pad that will muck

up your case should you decide to remove

the kit some day. The SET kit uses skinny

¼-inch tubing, which sacrifices all-out cool-

ing performance for easier tube routing and

less susceptibility to kinking. Tubes attach

to blocks via screw-on compression fittings

that are simple to operate.

As our benchmarks show, the SET kit

performs impressively. Its full-load temp of

50 C is totally acceptable, and its 13 C delta

from idle to load is fantastic. The kit even goes

toe-to-toe with the $400 Koolance Exos 2

(reviewed in August), which is also an external

unit, though the Exos has an unfair advantage

because it uses two 12cm adjustable-speed

fans to cool a massive radiator. To keep it

fair, we’re only comparing the temps from the

Exos 2 with its fans set to their lowest speed.

Because the SET kit doesn’t support LGA775

sockets, we couldn’t test it on our regular

Intel-based test bed, only on our Athlon 64 rig.

Our only complaint is that while we

had no trouble configuring the kit, a

beginner could be confused by the bewil-

dering instructions; they’re mostly text

with very few photos and diagrams. Its

overclocking performance wasn’t super

impressive, but that’s not the kit’s goal—

it’s to keep your PC cool and quiet, and in

this respect it totally succeeds.

—JOSH NOREM

Innovatek SET Passive

Water-Cooling Kit

Actually, this cooling kit does have fans—us!

Amazingly, Innovatek’s SET kit was able to keep our FX-55 and

WD Raptor hard drive totally cool under full load, without any

fans whatsoever.

This top-down shot of the radiator shows

the cooling fins that shoot out from each

of the convection columns. Because of the

radiator’s massive size and the generous

surface area of the fins, it’s able to radiate

a lot of heat.

$260 (+ $100 for HDD block),

http://www.frozencpu.com

INNOVATEK SET

COPPER BLOCK

Totally silent, great per-

formance, easy to install,

and elegant.

COPPER ON YOUR TAIL^9

Instructions are not

newb-friendly; pricey.

INNOVATEK SET KOOLANCE EXOS 2 STOCK HEATSINK/FAN

A-D &X

55

ID,% (#) 37 36 3

100  ,OAD (#) 50 52 9

O6%2#,O#K%D TO 2.75GHz N/A 2.70GHz

BENCHMARKS

Best scores are bolded. All temperatures were measured from the onboard sensors using the utilities provided by the motherboard manufacturer. Idle tempera-

tures were measured after 30 minutes of inactivity and full-load temps were achieved by running CPU Burn-in for one hour.