Well as you all know I'm no spring chicken and while I am also an IT guy I never put much thought into cooling my gaming computer. I'm one of those if its blowing smoke there has to be something wrong kind of people who see cooling as something of an afterthought. So naturally I am terrified of watercooling with the solid belief that if it attempted to watercool on my own there is a fair chance I'm going to blow my PC up in a cloud of steam with my badly installed water pipes. CoolerMaster sent over a watercooling kit, the Seidon 120m and immediately I grimaced thinking oh god this is going to be an expensive review but as things progressed I discovered you don't need to be fit for mythbusters to enjoy the cool and quiet benefits of a watercooled computer. So I strapped on my tool belt (I don't actually have one I thought that just sounded impressive) and after doing a couple of benchmarks I decided to kit myself up with my new watercooler and see what happened.

Naturally first up I better give the low down on my computer, it's nothing special just an i7 2600K with an AMD Radeon HD6870, it quite happily plays CS:GO for me which is all I need so first up I loaded into speedfan and took a stock operating temp screenshot. Then I loaded into CS:GO, loaded up on bots, jumped into spec mode and I left my pc for 30 minutes to get a general heat up reading for how my stock Intel cooler was faring under 30 minutes of in game load. The screenies are below, the first is the baseline, this is just the computer on idle, then followed by a screenshot of my CPU temperature after 30 minutes in game on CS:GO.

Idle temperature:



After 30 minutes of CS:GO



Last but not least here is my installed water cooling system, I was pretty impressed with how easy it was, I'm happy with the kit because it's a peace of mind install you can't really get wrong. Everything was installed with ease and the pre set fittings on the hoses meant I didn't have to worry about anything it's all pre-prepared for me and ready for install.

Okay so we have our cooler installed now here are the speedfan temp readings for the idle system:



Relaunching into CS:GO and after 30 minutes game time here is the speedfan temp reading:



As you can see there was an immediate cooling benefit to be had with a general 10% drop overall and of course my computer now runs a lot quieter as I basically have 1 less fan running with the CPU coolers fan out of the picture! Naturally the radiator has its own fan, but as it is rear case mounted it has taken the place of the fan that was already installed there and at 1383 RPM its running at almost a 3rd of the speed of the old CPU fan.

Okay so now we have done our temp readings I'll show a few photos of the installation, there is one missing and it's the bracket, if you're not doing a new system build you do need to remove your motherboard to install the base bracket on the bottom that the unit bolts on to!

Here is the kit:



The only real building involved is screwing down the pump mounting plates to the pump which I have demonstrated below. Just a note, the pump system has got thermal paste on it so of course I managed to get it all over myself connecting the mounting brackets. A good idea here would be to get some more so if you are as clumsy as I am you have some extra to keep a nice even spread of thermal paste on the copper plate before you place it down on the CPU:



And here it is, all installed and ready to go:



It was a pretty quick install which took around 10 minutes and is completed in 7 steps:

1: remove motherboard and install the mounting bracket underneath, secure with double sided nuts
2: reinstall motherboard into the case
3: attach the brackets that suit your socket type to the water pump
4: apply thermal paste to the copper plate of the pump and secure with spring loaded screws
5: attach the radiator to the rear fan mounting with screws provided
6: attach the fan to the radiator (have the flow coming into the case so your drawing air from outside the case through the radiator).
7: connect the pump and fan power cables to power sockets on the motherboard

Overall it was pretty fun really, you don't have to worry about soaking your computer as the pipe fittings are factory done and with the few steps above you have it installed and running. Naturally you also get the cooling and noise benefits and it looks pretty damn cool as well.

Where to buy? No idea! this one is pretty new so I couldn't find a local stockist but I would say stay tuned

that actually looks pretty sick, good to see another contender in the closed water cooling market.

im currently running the Thermaltake Water 2.0 Pro that i won on there facebook lol, might even throw up a review for it too

just noticed we have pretty similar systems too

Edited once, 16/10/12 - 12:56pm.

I'm that kind of guy too, I hate the thought of water cooling. Just going to buy a new case to fix my current problems with a new CPU cooler. Stock cooling is so filthy. Great write up Talnoy, if I was to water cool this would be the easy bet for me. Nothing technical, just simplistic - although even taking my motherboard off is a scare for me!

I've never tried water cooling, always been too scared.

I have 2 PCs, the newer of the two runs very quietly but my older one is extremely loud. I might look at trying this water cooling system once we have a price on it. Looks pretty straight forward and I shouldn't be capable of messing it up.

*fingers crossed*

They are boss. I'm using a Corsair H80 and my 2500K runs on 4.5Ghz around 40 degrees. Their cooling power is amazing and they are very silent. Also most of them come with 3-5 year warranty. I would recommend if you are going to be overclocking

These type of coolers are also good for smaller mATX cases ^^

The pump is small
The heat is exhausted from the fan/rad and not inside the case

what about larger ones grumpy?

All enclosed water kits I've seen so far have been good for mATX (and even mITX) builds!

anyone tried converting one of the closed water loops to cool a GPU? i've seen they can be modded to do it but can't find the link where i saw it.

There's no point. You're better off going with a custom cooling setup instead of mucking around with an all-in-one unit. You'll get better temps for the same amount of effort.

yeah but for how much hundred more?

This is the moment for which all water coolers live.

Talnoy, does it come with thermalpaste? if so any idea what one it is?

Most likely the compound will be from CM themselves: http://www.coolermaster.com/category.php?category_id=68

CM thermal any good?