Once the system was installed, and the computer was powered on, the noise level of the system was predictably, but also surprisingly, low. The water pump and reservoir combination initially looked slightly intimidating, from the sheer size of the pump. After all the "plumbing" was complete, power cycling the unit to fill it with water was easy and painless. Within one hour, including planning and installation, the system was working wonderfully!
The system was tested for a few hours with a series of different scenarios. The first scenario was to unplug the 120mm radiator fan, to see what kind of heat is dissipated by the radiator alone. With the fan disconnected, the radiator was still able to bring the CPU temperature down over two degrees Celsius from the temperatures measured using the noisy conventional heatsink and fan. The second scenario involved running the 120mm fan again, but putting the CPU and GPU through some heavy benchmarking, to really get the system's heat output up, in order to put the cooling system to a serious test under heavy load. Even after playing a few processors intensive games or running a loop of the 3dMark benchmarks, the WaterChill system kept the water below 90° F at all times. With the OEM heatsink/fan, the CPU ran at 97° F idle and up to 125° F under load. Comparing the numbers between a conventional heatsink/fan and the WaterChill system, the WaterChill system unmistakable offers a superior solution for cooling.
