Swiftech H2O 120 Compact

Manufacturer:
Price:	£90 inc VAT
Reviewer:	James Gorbold
Review Date:	Sep 2007
Cooling	42/50	84%
Design	23/25	92%
Value	20/25	80%
Overall	85%

Verdict: Ideal for an overclocked quad-core CPU; overkill for anything less.

Despite the huge popularity of overclocking, water cooling has taken a back seat to the humble HSF in recent years. A £30 Tunic Tower 120 can keep a heavily overvolted dual-core CPU incredibly cool, while also remaining quiet, so why spend three times more on a water-cooling setup?

The advent of quad-core CPUs has produced an increasing need for better cooling. For example, while HSFs such as the Tunic Tower 120 can cool a quad-core CPU, a water-cooling kit can do the job more efficiently and with less noise. However, water-cooling a PC is very tricky and you run the risk of royally borking your PC if a leak occurs.

It's therefore not surprising that several companies have tried to make water-cooling kits that can cool effectively and quietly without putting the fear of God (or possibly Poseidon) into you. However, producing a successful water-cooling kit requires not only good cooling hardware, but also a low price. Previous efforts have been embarrassingly rubbish, and usually made from such low-quality materials that they break down after a few months.

High-end water-cooling kit maker Swiftech is therefore taking quite a risk with this low-cost, all-in-one kit. However, unlike other manufacturers, Swiftech has taken a very different approach to designing its first n00b-friendly kit, the H2O 120 Compact. Instead of using low-cost, unreliable fish-tank parts, the H2O 120 Compact comprises several high-quality components moulded together. As a result, it has just two separate parts: the combined waterblock/pump and the combined radiator/reservoir.

The waterblock/pump assembly is known as the Apogee Drive, and is heavily based on the popular Apogee waterblock. Mounted directly on the waterblock is the extremely compact MCP350 pump, renowned for its quiet operation and great reliability. As the waterblock and pump are directly connected to each other, there's no need for external tubing between them, as there is in a traditional water-cooling kit. The waterblock is pre-fitted for LGA775 sockets, a change from the previous practice, when all waterblocks were set up for AMD CPUs. This is huge praise for the Core microarchitecture, as it implies that enthusiasts shouldn't care about AMD at the moment. If you have a hot-running FX-series chip that needs quiet and powerful cooling, though, you can change the mounting to a recent AMD standard.

Unlike most waterblocks, the Apogee Drive is incredibly easy to install for LGA775 sockets. There's no messing about with bolts, washers, sprockets, spring-loaded screws or other plumbing paraphernalia. Instead, the Apogee Drive screws into the supplied backplate as a conventional HSF might do. For AMD CPUs, you need to disassemble the mounting mechanism to fit the alternative attachment, but once this is done, the waterblock screws into the standard plastic frame found on most motherboards. The only modern CPUs with which the Apogee Drive isn't compatible are LGA771 Xeons.

The combined radiator/reservoir, called the MCR120-Res, combines the functions of a 120mm fan radiator with those of a small reservoir, and is filled through a small cap in the roof. Due to its compact dimensions, the MCR120-Res will fit in almost any case with a spare 120mm fan mount.

As the H2O 120 Compact needs just two tubes to connect the two parts, it took us just a few minutes to get up and running on an LGA775 motherboard. As we've come to expect from Swiftech, the H2O 120 Compact has an excellent manual, which clearly explains how to install the kit. Plus, with only four connections, the kit has fewer points of potential failure, making it safer than conventional kits that have four tubes and eight connections.

It's also good to see the use of expensive Norprene tubing. Norprene is around four to five times less porous than Neoprene, so you shouldn't have to refill the H2O 120 Compact very often. Swiftech claims that this is only necessary every five years, as opposed to the once or twice a year required by kit that uses Neoprene tubing.

In our standard LGA775 thermal test rig, which comprises an overclocked quad-core Xeon X3210 overvolted to 1.4125V, the H2O 120 Compact cooled the CPU to 6C below the reference Intel HSF with the fan running at 7V, and 10C below when running at 12V. That might not sound much better than the Tuniq Tower 120, which managed to cool the same chip by a further 1C at its minimum fan speed.

However, a PC with the Tuniq Tower 120 requires another fan to exhaust hot air from the case, which makes this kit much more efficient (and quieter). As the radiator never became hot, we'd feel confident about adding a GPU block to the setup at a later date too. It also looks cooler than the Tuniq Tower 120.

Conclusion

At 7V, the fan is practically silent, and can successfully cool a heavily overclocked and overvolted quad-core CPU. This is overkill for a dual-core CPU, so the £30 Tuniq Tower 120 is a better bet, unless you simply fancy having water cooling. The H2O 120 Compact is definitely worth considering for an overclocked quad-core CPU, however, as it's quieter than any high-performance HSF. It's also far easier to install than most water-cooling kits, and noticeably cheaper, too.