New Aquagate Max is much closer to “custom” water cooling systems than its older brother. Whole system comes in hefty black box that has all important specifications clearly written on it. Inside the box are: CPU water block, hoses, fans, radiator, thermal probe (sensor) and module that is consisted of reservoir and pump. In package can be also find concentrated coolant that must be diluted with distilled water that doesn’t come in the box (you have to buy/provide it). Cooler Master made a good decision when created dual radiator for Aquagate Max. Thanks to that decision on radiator can be mounted two 120mm fans. Two 120mm fans are also included in package and they are declared at 2400rpm and emit green light when powered on. Drawback of these fans is that they are noisy so they should be slowed down or replaced for quieter models.

Radiator is built out of aluminum and painted in black. Honeycomb of this radiator is very dense which resulted in big dissipation area.  With this system Cooler Master provided great Tigone hoses that are best for this kind of water cooling solution. These hoses have flexibility of silicone and smoothness of plastic hoses which results in perfect water flow and great flexibility. Cooler Master also provided great nickel-plated CPU water block that is made out of copper. Surface that goes on CPU heat spreader isn’t perfectly flat and Cooler Master should paid more attention to this surface during manufacturing process but, this can be easily corrected with adequate application of thermal paste.  Various adapters are provided with CPU water block so it can be mounted on almost all types of sockets. Cooler Master also provided black plate for water block, so achieving of perfect contact with CPU heat spreader shouldn’t be a problem.

Reservoir and pump are also needed for this system to function properly and all that is included in 5.25inch module that can be mounted in any 5.25inch chassis front bay. Circular window dominates front side of this module and it is used as gauge for amount of water coolant. Thanks to this you can always check how much coolant you have in your system. Next to this window is located flow indicator that in case of pump failure triggers alarm. Pump is positioned at the back of the module and it’s declared at 450 L/H. On the back side are connectors for power (4-pin molex), two 4-pin connectors for fans, USB connector for motherboard and thermal probe connectors. In box can be found two little tubes with thermal probes that should be mounted on inward/outward hose for best temperature monitoring results. Hose (pipe) fittings are in 3/8inch format that is standard for retail water cooling systems.


Testing

We compared performances of Cooler Master Aquagate Max with one of our custom water cooling systems. Test configuration was based on Core2 Quad Q6700 CPU that is well-known for its thermal characteristics. We tested both cooling systems on default and overclocked values (best result that can be achieved with both systems). We measured temperatures of system in IDLE, half hour after stress test in Multi Core Prime 95, 5 minutes after same stress test and finally we used IntelBurnTest. All tests were done in room that had 24 degrees Celsius. Our custom water cooling system had four 120mm fans on 900rpm. Interesting fact is that Aquagate Max performed better in all cases except it couldn’t achieve better maximum overclock result (for 80MHz lower). This can only mean that radiator in Aquagate Max cannot deal with Quad CPUs that operate on higher frequencies then 3.45GHz and voltages 1.42-1.43V. Anyway, Cooler Master Aquagate Max has proved to be very good water cooling solution. It can perform better with some Quad made in 45nm manufacturing process or even better with any Dual Core that can reach very high overclock values thanks to this cooling system.