For a long time, water cooling has been the fine line that separates PC “enthusiasts” from the PC “nutjobs”.  I mean, who would pay that kind of premium, not to mention risk damaging your hardware, just to squeeze out another 50MHz or so?  Well, the days of extreme cooling being only for the insanely rich or the clinically insane are over.  Advances in processors and graphics cards may have made hardware exceedingly fast, however, little has been done to address the growing heat problem, or the difficulty standard air coolers are having keeping up.  The result is we are starting to see some interesting trends with performance cooling.   The first trend is the advent of ridiculously large air coolers, such as the CoolerMaster GeminII and the Thermalright Ultra 120.  The second is the proliferation of “hybrid” coolers.  These coolers often mix elements of traditional air cooling with water cooling and Peltiers into a self-contained package. The CoolIT FreeZone,  and the Ultra ChillTEC are prime examples of this.   Lastly, we are seeing water cooling kits being redesigned to be cheaper and more user-friendly, while still trying to maintain water cooling's performance prowess. 

     The Swiftech H20-120 Compact fits in this last category.  Swiftech is well known for their water cooling components, and it appears they still have a couple tricks up their sleeve to offer the performance cooling market.  With their marketing materials, Swiftech is not shy about how they position the Compact kit, they openly say "Watercooling has never been this easy!"

     We will look very close at just how "easy" this kit is to install, as well as how well it performs.  So let's get on with it!

Out of Box Experience:

     As I said before, Swiftech is not shy about the Compact splashing their mighty bold claims in big letters across the front.  Along the bottom is the socket compatibility information, which supports pretty much every major socket on the market today.  It also tells us that this kit has been preconfigured for socket 775.

The top of the package is actually a flap that lifts up, giving us a sneak preview of the radiator and the block. 

     On the flap itself is a nice informative guide that gives the newbies a primer on how water cooling works.   On the right side is a graph that tells us what mix of performance and noise we can expect with the different hardware configurations available.   We will go into more detail on this later.

     The front of the box offers us a quick run down on what is included, which we will do ourselves in a minute.   The sides of the box shows close-ups of the different hardware inside, while the back shows what kind of accessories you can buy to augment your purchase. 

Once we pull out the Styrofoam insert, we see everything is well packed. 

     Hereyou can see all of the contents laid out neatly.  From bottom left, going clockwise, we have the MCR120-Res Heat Exchanger, the RDM1225S Fan, a 12V to 7V converter, the various hardware and fasteners, the AMD bracket, a 2 oz. bottle of Hydrx coolant, the Apogee Drive 350 Self-Powered Waterblock, and a tube of Arctic Silver Ceramique thermal compound. 

     Here is our tubing, two 10" lengths of neoprene wrapped in anti-kinking Smartcoils.  Also included is a funnel.  Next, we will take a moment and go through each component, step-by-step, and examine the specifications, and show exactly what makes the H20-120 Compact unique.

Specifications:

     What really makes this kit interesting, is Swiftech has taken a typical four component loop (reservoir, radiator, pump and block), and reduced it down to just two components.  This has been accomplished by combining the pump and block into a single unit; the Apogee Drive 350 Self-Powered Waterblock.  The Apogee Drive is essentially a CPU waterblock with the MCP350 pump mounted straight to the top. 

     The other half of the H20-120 Compact kit is the combined radiator and reservoir.  The barbs will typically face the bottom, so that the reservoir will face the top.  On the top of the reservoir is the fill-port.  The MCR120 Res Heat Exchanger is built with copper fins, brass tubes and body, and should work with any 120mm fan.  Full dimensions of the Heat Exchanger can be found on Swiftech's website.

     To push heat off of the Heat Exchanger, a good fan is needed.  Swiftech has included the RDM1225S 120mm fan.  At 36dBA, its probably a little on the loud side, however 81CFM should do the job nicely. 

Other Specifications:

Features: