![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Tuesday , August 15, 2006
- Author:
- Justin Diduch
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Corsair Nautilus 500 External Water Cooling Kit
Can Corsair’s new all-in-one water cooling solution really keep your processor cool for under $160? We take it out for a spin to give you our test results and impressions.
Inside
Inside we find a double pass aluminum radiator, ABS plastic reservoir, a rather untidy bunch of Molex connections, and a little gem of a pump.
A surprise at this price level is the use of a Laing DDC pump. While it is unfortunately the older 10W pump not the 18W DDC+, it is still a great pump with 4m (13.05ft) of head and a maximum flow rate of 350LPH (92.4 GPH). It is also worth noting that this pump has a 50,000 hour mean time before failure. That works out to just under 6 years! With this pump you could add additional components such as more cooling blocks or radiators without worry as it has plenty of power to get the job done. In fact it is the same pump I use in my personal gaming machine with dual 120mm radiators and coolers on the CPU, GPU, and chipset.
The wiring is a bit messy but it is out of sight and functional so I cannot really complain. I think my only gripe here is that the seam for the ABS reservoir goes through the fill hole. It just seems like a bad idea to screw a fill plug directly into an obvious weak point. Over-tightening or application of too much pressure might cause the reservoir to crack. I doubt this will happen to many users but it is worth noting.
Correction: Erick Armelin of Coolingworks (maker of several components in the Nautilus 500) contacted [H]Enthusiast with some information regarding the reservoir. Apparently it is not made from ABS as I had thought. Here is a quote from Erick himself: “The Reservoir is made of High Density Polyethylene not ABS and will not crack it by over tightening the fill cap. You can play baseball with it and not crack it.” It seems that what was a minor concern is now a non-issue.
The fan is a 120mm Vette Corp model A1225L 12D rated at 74.4CFM and 32dB at 1800RPM. This fan is held in place with four very tiny star head screws which may make replacing it a pain for you guys that don’t have the proper tool. Another thing to note is that the fan has a female rather than a typical male Molex connection so you will need to change that on any fan you wish to use.