Corsair Hydrocool 200 Water cooling helps pump a 3.2 P4 to 3.7GHz

CORSAIR IS A VERY well recognised name in the memory market, producing XMS Extreme memory speed modules that can give you timings that could easily help your overclocking stability.

At CeBIT this year we first saw a prototype of their water cooling system powered with a Bosch pump, nicely mounted in an extra-black designed case. We wanted to see how this machine works and wanted to play with water, as we wanted to know how far a P4 3.2 GHz FSB 800 can go.

In fact, we were able to get this CPU running at 3.45 GHz cooled with a normal retail P4 cooler but with water we could go up to 3.7 GHz and still have it stable. You can find our air cooling P4 3.2 GHz effort here.

The external back case is just a little bit smaller then Shuttle's XPC and it will take you just 15 minutes to get it up and running. All you have to do is to connect the cooling case through your water tubes to the CPU block, pour some special liquid inside, place the cooling block on the CPU, fasten it and connect the card to your motherboard and we are ready for rock and roll.

The card that you place inside your case regulates starting your PC together with your water cooling to prevent you ending up with fried CPU. When you boot the system you can't fail to notice the LED display on the Corsair case that will keep you informed about temperature of the CPU block. This is very useful as you are able to see how hot your CPU becomes during your overclocking games.

Inside the HydroCool 200 you can see your pump in action and all this is lit up with some nice glowing light, making this system very attractive when it's at work. Corsair have considered people who like to keep their case closed and provided a slot card in which you can place your water tubes inside your closed case, which is very wise move.

Some people will go against the external case design but, if you are an overclocker, you probably like to show off and be the fastest in the neighbourhood and this nicely-finished water case will garner great kudos from your friends.

It's easy to disconnect the tubes so transporting your case and the Hydrocool 200 will be not that hard, just you have to consider that you need to carry one more piece.

We tested this system with an Epox 875 and an Albatron 865 PE motherboard and got the same results. We where able to drive the 3.2 GHz last of the Northwood CPUs to 3.6 GHz. We even got up to 3.75GHz during the warm days in Vienna. We reckon that we could go even faster, as at the time of testing, the lab temperature in Vienna was more then 36 degrees. Well, we updated the testing results and were able to get to 3.7 GHz stable. I was able to boot at 3.82 GHz but Windows complained it was too much.

We were testing the claims that both Epox and Albatron can work at FSB 1000 and over, and the fastest overclock with a clock faster than the initial 3.2 GHz was 3.5 GHz or 250 MHz, times 4 - 800 MHz FSB effectively times 14 multiplier - and this resulted in a huge performance gain. It's always faster to get your Overclock speed by overclocking your FSB.

There are two operating modes - one normal and one turbo mode - where the latter will create some more noise and the cooler inside this water cooling case will become noisier but it will cool your CPU better and its really up to you what do you prefer.

In normal mode, the level of noise is acceptable, though I would like it to be quieter. of Water cooling can run much quieter or even noiseless. We heard this kit it will be quiet but at the performance level of some high-end cooler. In turbo mode it gets quite noisy hat's why I preferred not to use this mode. I confess, I am a fan of silent PCs.

Test:
We used:

Intel P4 3GHz C FSB 800 MHZ
Epox 875 Canterwood motherboard
Corsair XMS3500 2 x 256 MB PC3500 DDR 400 module CL 2.0
Maxtor 80 GB 7200 2MB cache drive
Pioneer Slot in DVD
Targa Visionary 19 " display Enhance 300W Silent PSU

For Athlon/Nforce testing we used:

Epox EP-8GDA3+ Nforce 2 400 Ultra
AMD Athlon XP 3000+ FSB 333 MHz CPU
2 x 256 MB Corsair PC3500 XMS DDR 400 module CL 2
Cooler master

Benchmarks

Here are some results at 3.6 GHz vs. 3.2 GHz initial speed. Even though the machine was stabile at 3.680 MHz we didn't bother to retest. We already had 3.6 MHz numbers and we kind of like round numbers. 3.5 GHz with FSB 1000 was stable on both Albatron 865 PE and Epox 875 board.

We used standard Sandra 2003, and non-replicable gamers test on 640x480, 1024x768 where the CPU has an important role.

In both Quake and Aquamark you can clearly see performance gain while we would have expected to see bigger numbers from this Aquamark test. This could imply that Aquamark is more graphic than CPU intensive test.

3DMark 01 and 03 show HUGE performance jumps with this extra 400 MHz speed update and you have almost 3000 marks faster result in 3DMark01SE, while nature test runs impressively at 122,8 FPS, - an inch less than 26 FPS.

3DMark03 also likes this extra 400 MHz as it performs 1000 marks more than its 3.2 GHz clocked brother. We were surprised by a jump of 6 FPS in nature test where 3.2 gives you 27.1 FPS and 3.6 goes up to 33.1. Knowing that this is a graphics intensive test, we sure are impressed.

Sandra CPU test jumps a 1000 marks to 11071 and while other CPU result goes up by 500 marks

Quake 3	640x480	1024x768
P4 3.2C FSB 800 Epox 875	391.8	364.8
Hydrocool 200 P4 @ 3.6 Ghz FSB 800 Epox 875	412,9	373.2
Athlon 3000+ XPC Nforce 2	317.8	302.1
Aquamark	640x480	1024x768
P4 3.2C FSB 800 Epox	115.10	96.9
Hydrocool 200 P4 @ 3.6 Ghz FSB 800 Epox 875	120.4	97.4
Athlon 3000+ XPC Nforce 2	104.3	90.9
3Dmark 2001SE Nature	640x480	1024x768
P4 3.2C FSB 800 Epox	16380	96.9
Hydrocool 200 P4 @ 3.6 Ghz FSB 800 Epox 875	19092	122.8
Athlon 3000+ XPC Nforce 2	15429	101.5
Sandra 2002	P4 3.2 GHz	Hydro P4 @3.6 GHz	Athlon 3000+ XPC
CPU	9986	11071	8068
	2777/6188	3172/6716	3255
Composite Figures	3Dmark03	Nature
P4 3.2 GHz Canterwood 875	4862	27.1
Hydrocool 200 P4 @ 3.6 Ghz	5877	33.1
Athlon 3000+ XPC Nforce 2	4703	27

Conclusions

Every first step is hard but we must admit that we were more than surprised with the Corsair Hydrocool 200 kit. We got a high performiance water kit that can get you into some very fast speeds and help you pass FSB 1 GHz barrier and work at 3.5 GHz or 3.6 GHz at FSB 800 MHz and get very close to 3.7 GHz. I assume that you can possibly go to even more than 3.70 but it was not stable for us and it needed some more time to tweak it and play with it.

The design of the case is very pleasing on the eye and it looks very nice when its turned on making it very desirable for people who like to show off what they have.

We must admit its noisier than we would like but this is something that Corsair will look at for their next product, we are sure, but still, as I said, it was driving acceptable noise.

It costs a little bit more then 250 Euros in Vienna and I reckon that this is a fair price for this kit. It's really up to you… Do you prefer internal or external water cooling? Well, even if you're sure you want an internal solution, this kit could help change your mind. µ