I was wondering if some water-cooling experts could head to www.ahanix.com and give a quick review of their Iceberg water cooling kit. It looks like a nice kit, has a 150gph pump, and the radiator mounts to an 80mm fan mount in the back. The only drawback I see would be having to run the electrical cord out the back of the case to plug in.

G Money

G-Money, your wish is my command, sorta

I will be getting a content guide from GK tonight so that I can finalize a review of that exact kit.

You will be getting all the good and the bad about this gear and my overall thoughts on it.

Please don't be in a hurry, just hang on a couple of days till it's up and as far as asking for info as to whether it would fit your needs, all you have to do is list what your requirements are and give me a run-down on your current equipment.

Be glad to help

Really hard to give an opinion on gear I have never used.

I have read three reasonably thorough reviews, and I can offer qausi- informed decisions based on what I have read, and what I know from my water cooling experience.

First off, overall I was pretty unimpressed with the kit. It is not what I would choose for any of my systems.

The performance numbers were fair at best, and I would say poor. barely beating out high end air coolers in all three of the reviews.

The waterblock looks like a belt buckle I made in grade ten shop (I am serious) and appears to be cast.....not milled.

The clip mechanism for AMD boards also looks really shoddy.

I liked the small radiator, but the rad is the heart of the system, and small is nice but only if it does the job. I would like to see how the rad performs with a better block.

The reservoir itself looks all right (actually a pretty good design) and the pump is good on paper, but is not one of the familiar brands we see used.

So, would I buy this kit? Absolutely not.

Would I recommend it to you? Maybe.

You see it has strong points.

The most obvious being price. $99 USD is pretty sweet.

Easy install. All three reviews said it was a nice kit to install and they had no leak issues.

So, you need to ask yourself why you are looking at water cooling?

If it is for performance and monster overclocks....consider this kit no further.

If you are looking for a quieter system, and don't really care about performance it may be all right.

If you want a cheap kit to get your feet wet with, and understand that very little of this kit will make it to your next high performance rig (when you are hooked!)........it may be your very best option!

I hope this helps a bit...I look forward to seeing what lcpiper has to say!

Here are the links to the reviews I read:

Tech Report

Overclockers Club

Mod The Box

I'm buying my rig after I get back from my middle east tour in December, plus the prices will drop for the holidays. I plan on buying:

ABIT IT7
P4 2.53MHz
XMS 3500DDR

As the heart of the system, and the Radeon 9700 OEM version for the graphic card. I'm looking at cases by Chieftec right now.

I was also considering the water cooling set by Innovatek, which got good reviews everywhere. I've been building computers for a long time, so I really don't care to start at the beginner level. I am also looking for good HD cooling kits for the 120GB Western Digital Special Edition drive.

As far as the budget goes, I have a good paying gubmint job, no wife or kids, my car is paid off , and I love computers.

Greg

OK then, I can tell you that from what you have said already that the Iceberg isn't what you're going to want.

In a single sentence, the Iceberg kit is an inexpensive kit that performs no better then a good but less expensive HSF, trading less noise for a medium level of risk to system damage.

It isn't hard to install, but if it's easier then some other kits then it's only do to the smaller size of the components.

More will come out in the review.

What I can recommend is Danger Den, Swiftech, Innovatech, and Aqua-Computer. All are good, a word about Innovateck;
don't buy the kits, select individual components - you'll be happier, I'll help you with it if you decide to go with them.

would the Ahanix kit with a different water block make a big difference? maybe the kit doesnt perform that well because of the poor water block.

Really hard to say.

The waterblock is definately the weakest link by appearances.

As I said above the reservoir looks all right.

The radiator and pump are completely novel, and I have only seen them used with this kit.

The only way to know would be an independent review of each component, and that won't likely happen, as the review sites are provided kits to review!

I know what you are thinking, if you could buy the kit and replace the block it would be a decent rig cheap! I thought the same thing!

do pumps make a distinct/loud buzzing noise?

The pumps that I've dealt with for fishtanks (which are like the ones with water rigs), make a small buzzing sound, but nothing as loud as a couple of fans.

I read the earlier post about the water block on the Iceberg kits being replaced with something by Innovatek, Aqua-Computer, or any water block with a good rep. I might try that, because I like the way the radiator mounts to the back of the computer, and I am not going to overclock at all so I think it would be a good setup once the waterblocks are replaced.

not good ones.

the only thing that will make a quality pump load is air bubbles.

I have a roughly 200-300 gph (I don't recall) danner magdrive pump. It is suspended from my bottom drive cage. Between it and the mounting surface are 2 layers of closed cell foam and the holes in the drive cage have rubber grommets.

This pump in this configuration is not audible unless the comp (and fans) are shut down. This means that my loudest fan (120 mm sunon at about 7 volts) is substantially louder than the pump!

The Danner Magdrive and Eheim pumps are very good pumps. You get what you pay for. I bought a Rio thinking I would save some money a while back and it was a POS. Loud and would occassionally freeze up, not good. I will stick with Eheim.

does anybody have couple of sites that sell watercooling equipment at a resonable price?

www.aqua-computer.de has good prices on their equipment IMHO, however, you will need to use a translation program to understand the German. Google has a nice toolbar add-in for your browser that will allow you to right click on the web page then choose the translate option. You will have to navigate between German/English then back to German to order the equipment, because the java gets screwed up in the shopping cart if you use the translated pages. A full setup from them runs about 225 Euros, which is a little under $225 US. That includeds the Cuplex-EVO water block, Enheim pump, MaxXXpert radiator, tubing, resovoir, UV Glow fluid, and I think a HD cooler also. You will have to do a bank wire transfer to them (you can be charged by your bank and theirs for the service), and you may have to wait up 4 weeks to get your goods. They also have kits you can buy. I think the US jacks up the prices on the German water cooling equipment, either to make up for the import fees they pay, or simply to take advantage the fact that most people are leery about ordering from Germany or something. Who knows. I got an e-mail from the Aqua-Computer webmaster, and he says they are working on an English website, so stay tuned!

G Money