Thermaltake used to be the company that made nice looking, under-par performing HSFs. They’ve come a long way since then and now offer a full line of cooling products, and have even forayed into watercooling. The Thermaltake Aquarius II is their first stab at this (there was never an Aquarius I). Tt claims that it’s universally compatible, easy to set up, easy to use, low maintenance and silent to boot. Let’s see if they have the bite to back up their bark.
I’d like to thank Hardcore Cooling for sending the Aquarius II. Without them, this review would not be here today for you all to not read and just look at the pictures. ;) If you need a cooling related item, chances are that they have it, have something like it, or just have something that will catch your attention long enough to forget what you wanted in the first place.
A watercooling system is compromised of many separate interdependent components, and Thermaltake lists specifications for each other their product page here. If you’re familiar with watercooling and can understand their bad English, you’ll notice that the Aquarius II seems horribly underpowered. A 90L an hour pump in the watercooling world is like asking a chipmunk to pull an ox-cart. In comparison, my Via Aqua 1300 inline pump pushes a max of 1380 L/h.
The kit comes in a small blue box, not much more than a foot in width and half so for length and height. Box art shows the Aquarius II installed in a Xaser II case computer system (minus all the cables), and small frames showing the waterblock on AMD S462, Intel S478 and AMD K8 systems, as well as some shots of the pump, tubing and radiator. At the back, you see explanations and specifications on each of the parts. Thermaltake product packaging would not be complete without the chibi-firefighter Tt calls their mascot, and you get to see him on the side of the box in his one and only pose.
Upon opening the package you should find:
- 300cm of ¼” diameter tubing
- The 43 page instruction manual
- Copper waterblock
- Copper radiator with 80mm fan installed
- Mini pump/reservoir
- “Back up Receiver”, a great product with a stupid name
- Five springs to insert into the tubing, 50cm in length each
- Smaller box
And inside the smaller box you get:
- Universal Retention Brackets
- Foam to go with the bracket
- Watercooling additive
- A pair of tweezers
- Steel Plates, in case your chassis is aluminum
- “Performance” 3M tape, for the steel plates
- a PCI slot cover with cut-outs for tubing
- Generic white thermal compound
- Even smaller box
And inside the even smaller box:
- Eight super-strong magnets
- Parts to assemble a waterblock hold down clamp
- Nuts and bolts to fasten the universal waterblock brackets
- Ten tube end clamps
Well, I think that’s about it. Tt certainly put some thought into making this box compact. The size of the components sort of disappointed me, as the system uses miniscule ¼” tubing. The waterblock, pump, radiator and “back up receiver” naturally also use ¼” barbs. This makes upgrading the system (without use of adapters) very hard, and the only performance part I know of which uses ¼” is the HWLabs Black Ice Micro. We’ll see later on just how this affects performance.
