Installation

I won't go through the installation process here, as it is documented very well here and in the guides included with the kit.

I find that this kit was extremely easy to install. Simply mount the hardware, cut the tubing to the correct lengths and push them into the quick connect fittings. Filling and bleeding the kit was pretty easy, but I would have preferred a reservoir over the fill and bleed kit any day. Of course, before you even think about powering on your computer, run the pump overnight to check for any leaks.


There were no leaks at all when installing this kit. Swiftech has done a damn good job building quality components that fit together perfectly. I can't say the same about the other water cooling kits I have tested in the past.

Performance

I tested this kit against the Iceberg 1 and the Crossover Mission 5 on a P4 2.4C. Idle tests were run with the computer running in Windows XP for about an hour to let the temperature stabilize. Load tests were done using Prime95 for an hour. I used the two 80mm fans included with the kit during testing.

The case temperature was within .5*C of 32*C during all testing.

Swiftech H20-8500 Performance
(Show All Graphs) (Collapse Graphs)

Idle

Load

Swiftech w/o GPU

Swiftech w/ GPU

Mission 5

Iceberg 1

Stock P4 Heatsink

35

40

36

38

35

0

Temperature ( °C )

100

 

 

Idle

Load

Swiftech w/o GPU

Swiftech w/ GPU

Mission 5

Iceberg 1

Stock P4 Heatsink

51

55

50

51

55

0

Temperature ( °C )

100

 

 

As you can tell from the graphs, the performance of the H20-8500 wasn't that great at all. I was pretty sure the low performance was due to the small radiator, and as it turned out, I was right. When using a plain 120mm radiator with two 120mm fans in a push/pull configuration, the temperatures drop greatly.

With only one 120mm fan, the temperatures increased roughly 1*C. With an even better radiator, such as the Black Ice Extreme, or the Dtek Pro Core, this kit could kick some serious ass.

The MCW50 GPU water block dropped the temperature of our Geforce 4 Ti4200 by about 10 degrees Celsius from the Vantec Iceberq 4 Pro, without sacrificing the CPU temperature much. With the 120mm radiator, there was no temperature increase when adding the GPU block to the loop.