HEXUS.reviews :: Corsair Nautilus500 liquid cooling system

[Nick]

Corsair £99 Nautilus500 package, then, is a mixture of mainly good and a little not so good. It's easy to install, albeit not in the 15 minutes that Corsair likes to quote in certain literature. Cross-platform performance is good, too, and the entire system is a cinch to remove, transport and re-attach, should the need arise. We even shipped it between HEXUS addresses with the Nautilus500 pre-filled with coolant, and we were pleased to see not a drop spilled.

Check out the full review on HEXUS.net

[NightshadowUK]

Well I dunno about anyone else but I'm kinda tempted... if only it had a VGA connector...

[MD]

its seriously tempting for the money....

[Zak33]

superb value that....really nice

[Steve]

I knew this was a winner when we first saw it at CES.

[herulach]

How do you bleed it?

I really dont see a lot of point in the whole out of thebox water cooling craze. They arent quiet, they dont cool that well, and they arent _that_ cheap. Who exactly is this aimed at? It isnt good enough to be aimed at performance users, and if its just quiet then silent then it isnt that useful for quiet pc enthusiasts either, i can make a cpu quiet with a scythe ninja and 2 yate 120mm fans.

It isnt that expandable either, i can almost guarantee that it will struggle if you throw a graphics card in the loop.

What im basically saying is, if i wanted a quiet pc, then 99 quid could be much better spent on a VGA silencer, Yate loon case fans and a ninja. If i want performance then pretty much the same, but with different fans.

[cah]

I think these things would do very nicely on something like a sugo sg01. I'm tempted.
The point of the review was to show though that surely this device has adequate cooling capacity for a cpu and it's not all that noisy?

Still, it can't beat one of those alphacool ready2go aspire x-qpacks mmmm.
http://www.alphacool.de/xt/product_i...&cPath=299_325

[Deviate]

It looks nice... Sounds appealing.. However, a silent watercooling solution is really what I'd be aiming for, as that is, supposedly, one of the main aspects of Water Cooling. The price is the true drawing factor for this though.

[Spud1]

Well my hydrocoolEX was very nice (before I had to sell it due to moving), not overly quiet but it certainly did the job, keeping my CPU (3ghz P4) at ~30 degrees under load To be honest, i'm happy with any temp under 60 so even this budget version should do pretty well.

I have a problem with your review though - I don't think you have made a fair comparison between air and water coolers.

You don't compare the air coolers and corsair unit at the same fan speeds, so it's not a fair comparison. Ok so they are different systems but at the heart of it the fan makes all the difference. A massive, fast, fan in the system will get rid of more heat than a slower one - the same principle applies to both water and air cooling.

So, in the first test for example, shouldn't you be testing the akasa fan at 1300rpm too instead of 800? I bet the difference between the two would be significantly less if you did..

Same for all the other tests, you never have the fan speeds the same...

[Clunk]

Ok so they are different systems but at the heart of it the fan makes all the difference. A massive, fast, fan in the system will get rid of more heat than a slower one - the same principle applies to both water and air cooling.

not always for watercooled systems. take the Thermochill PA series of radiators for example.
you can get the same results from a very low speed/low cfm fan, as you can from a high speed/high cfm fan. i tested it myself this week and was quite amazed.

3x Papst 120mm fans rated at 108cfm on full whack cpu temp stayed steady at 28c, with 3 yate loons @ 7v the temps were the same 28c. so from that, i think its more to do with the efficiency of the other components used, rather than just the speed/cfm of the fans.

[DR]

Wouldn't it be cool if they did have a VGA Block

[enderox]

where the hell can you get these from ?

dabs, MD, scan - no sign of them.
dealtime was no joy either.
froogle is as useless as ever.

[adamd1008]

Does anyone know the lifespan of the Nautilus500? (Before pump will burn out of whatever.)

[Lee H]

Does anyone know the lifespan of the Nautilus500? (Before pump will burn out of whatever.)

Not at the moment. However I'll let you know that the old hydrocool EX200 I used to have and passed to a friend is still working after 2 years of 24/7 usage.

Anyway I've gone slightly OT - I'll email my contact @ Corsair and see if they know.

Best Regards,

[herulach]

Wouldn't it be cool if they did have a VGA Block

No, itd be really really really hot, hotter than lava in fact, imagine cooling your pc with lava, and then trying to cool that lava down by blowing on it with a tiny ass fan, thats how it would be.

[Nick]

Does anyone know the lifespan of the Nautilus500? (Before pump will burn out of whatever.)

I *think* it's 50,000 hours...