Cooler Master Aquagate Viva

Verdict: Easy water cooling for your CPU

Cooler Master has been producing CPU water-cooling products for some time, and several of its Aquagate coolers have previously passed through the hallowed halls of the CPC labs.

The Aquagate series is supposed to make installing water cooling as simple and safe as installing a normal HSF. Like many all-in-one water cooling kits we've seen, Aquagate coolers have been a breeze to install, but have struggled to outperform decent HSFs. They also tended to be noisy, especially with the fans running at full speed to optimise their cooling ability.

Cooler Master's latest Aquagate, the Viva, is entirely focused on cooling graphics cards rather than CPUs.

The main unit uses smaller fans than those of the original Aquagate. However, as they're temperature-controlled, its two 70mm models are surprisingly quiet, even when spinning at top speed.

Sticking to small fans means that the radiator to which they're attached is compact and a lot easier to install inside the case than a dual 80mm unit. The Viva's radiator slots comfortably into either a 3.5in drive bay or, with a supplied expansion bracket, a 5.25in drive bay. If your case's drive bays are filled with disks or aren't that well ventilated, then using a supplied kit, you can install the radiator into a spare PCI slot in your motherboard, much like the water cooling unit for Sapphire's Toxic graphics cards. For maximum cooling, you can't beat mounting the radiator vertically at the front of the case - although if you do that it will take up around five 5.25in drive bays worth of space.

As well as the radiator and fan unit, there's a single waterblock to fit. The business end of this block has been machine-ground to a lovely satin finish, using none of the cheap polishing tricks seen on the bases of some heatsinks. As with the Aquagate Mini, the Viva's pump is mounted on the waterblock to save space. The pump has two drawbacks: when you turn off your computer, air can sometimes collect in it, making it choke, rattle and gurgle until you cycle the power to purge said air bubbles. While this air build-up is annoying, you can at least solve the problem. What can't be easily solved is the whine it makes. This noise starts as soon as the gurgle of the air in the pump stops. The pitch of the tone is incredibly high, so if your hearing is a bit dodgy, it may be out of your audible range. Nearby dogs and cats won't be so lucky, however. There's an alarm system, though, so if anything does actually go wrong with the pump, you should soon know about it.

The mounting mechanism allows you to bolt the waterblock securely onto any of ATi's X800 or X1000-series cards, or any Nvidia graphics card. There's an alternative plate that allows you to mount the block onto a CPU but, given the Viva's GPU focus and our previous experience with Aquagate CPU coolers, we wouldn't recommend using it for a powerful CPU. It does boast a wide range of socket support options though, including Intel's Socket 478 and LGA775, plus AMD's Socket 939, 940 and AM2.

Mounting the block to a graphics card is reassuringly simple. Bolts simply screw into a mounting plate, which clamps the graphics card to the waterblock. Installation of the rest of the system is relatively easy, since the loop is supplied pre-assembled and pre-filled, and is basically ready to go. The system uses 3/8in silicon tubing to connect the components, making the pipes very flexible and easy to route inside the case. Connecting the fans and pump to your computer's power supply is similarly easy; you can opt to connect each of the four 3-pin plugs to your fan controller or motherboard, or use the supplied Molex splitter.

We tested the Viva using an ATi Radeon X1900XTX, one of the hottest-running graphics cards out there, and compared the results to those of Arctic Cooling's Accelero X2 HSF, which we tested using the same card.

With the Accelero X2, the GPU's idle temperature was 52ûC, rising to 76ûC when under load. With the Viva, the idle temperature was a frosty 37ûC, rising under load to 41ûC. All-in-one kits might not be able to cope with hot-running multicore CPUs, but point them at a GPU and they're overkill of the best kind. While using the Viva didn't allow us to increase the maximum overclock, it enabled us to run higher voltages on the GPU. Unfortunately, the Viva doesn't provide cooling for the card's memory, so you'll need to buy additional RAM heatsinks.

CONCLUSION

The Viva is a highly effective graphics card cooler and, at just over £50, it isn't horrendously expensive. It's easy to install, although the whining pump is a pain, as it lingers, whistling, at the edge of your hearing.

However, if you plan to seriously overclock your graphics card, and even volt-mod the GPU, but don't want the hassle of installing a proper multiblock water-cooling system, then the Viva is definitely worth a look.