How good is the Swiftech H20-120 Premium WC Kit? Good for me?

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Nirad9er

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I've been looking at this Swiftech H20-120 Premium WC kit. It seems to have pretty good stuff and the setup would be perfect for my case (thermaltake Aguila). How would you rate this kit? What is your experience with it? Would it be a big improvement over my Zalman CNPS9500 air cooler?

Kit consists of:
Swiftech MCR120 single 120mm radiator with radbox and 120mm fan
Apogee GT water block
Swiftech MCRES-1000 Reservoir/Swiftech MCP350 pump combo

Here are my temps

at 3.4ghz (425x8) vcore 1.33v
using TAT 100%
idle: ~33/34
load: ~60

at 3.6ghz (400x9) vcore 1.45v
using TAT 100%
idle ~39/40
load ~70

I can run it at 3.6ghz fine and play games and everything, i just dont like the load temp of ~70 degress at 100% cpu usage so I keep it at 3.4ghz with the above results. What kind of results would you expect with my cpu using this WC Kit. I tried googling but couldnt really find any reviews with these kind of overclocks compared on air.

Thanks
 
Your load temps would most likely drop a little but nothing substantial. A single 120 rad doesn't provide that much cooling power so I think a 2x120 rad would be a better choice.
 
danks said:
Your load temps would most likely drop a little but nothing substantial. A single 120 rad doesn't provide that much cooling power so I think a 2x120 rad would be a better choice.
Click to expand...

It's not the RAD that's the problem here, waterblocks are typically the limiting factor.

A single 120mm radiator can easily cool quad core CPU @ 3.5ghz better than any air cooler...

That kit has a good waterblock and a pump with an OK head pressure...

But, yeah your load temps would go down a few degrees.
 
I'm fairly new to watercooling myself... but I never liked the "kits" as they were offered by the manufacturers themselves. I prefer the "customized" kits that several e-tailers offer.

Swiftech does make decent products... they are one of the "better" companies that added Watercooling to their line up of available products... however, I'm not a fan of the 120.1 rads (of ANY brand)... even for a CPU only cooling setup.

Before you plunk down your hard earned money, do some research, and see what other "kits" are available... you may decide to custom configure a setup based on your preferences, and not what some senior executive THINKS you should be buying.

Good Luck
 
its a good kit and for the price of around $ 180 i guess u cant beat it . A single rad is enough for cooling cpu only , and the MCR120 is a good rad . If u look around for a custom configured setup u sure end up spending a lot more money without seeing any "real world" performance difference . ;)
 
Swiftech makes good kits. But the thing you have to decide before you start is what you truely want to do. When I built my current computer a year ago I started with the Swifttech H20-220 kit plus 2 Danger Den Maze 4 gpu blocks. Now I don't have a single piece of the Swiftech kit left in my computer. I switched the pump out for the MCP355 pump. The Apogee water block out for the ApogeeGT block. The MCRES micro reservoir for a Danger Den dual 5.25 bay reservoir. And the MCR-220 radiator out for 2 Coolrad 12T radiators.
Even going with a smaller pump and 3/8 tubing, my gpu's run around 10 deg C cooler and my processor 5 deg C cooler. My cpu was running around 45C under full load and now it doesn't go over 40C. My gpu went from around 60C under load to 50C.
So decide what you want to do and then ask around in forums. Better to build your own system then buy a system then start modding it. Costs more in the end.
 
dcds1 said:
Swiftech makes good kits. But the thing you have to decide before you start is what you truely want to do. When I built my current computer a year ago I started with the Swifttech H20-220 kit plus 2 Danger Den Maze 4 gpu blocks. Now I don't have a single piece of the Swiftech kit left in my computer. I switched the pump out for the MCP355 pump. The Apogee water block out for the ApogeeGT block. The MCRES micro reservoir for a Danger Den dual 5.25 bay reservoir. And the MCR-220 radiator out for 2 Coolrad 12T radiators.
Even going with a smaller pump and 3/8 tubing, my gpu's run around 10 deg C cooler and my processor 5 deg C cooler. My cpu was running around 45C under full load and now it doesn't go over 40C. My gpu went from around 60C under load to 50C.
So decide what you want to do and then ask around in forums. Better to build your own system then buy a system then start modding it. Costs more in the end.
Click to expand...

Im only interested in cooling the cpu. From my understanding, the kit came with an apogee gt block and an mcr120 rad. The only thing that isnt as good as I wanted is the mcp350 pump, but if im only cooling the cpu, people have told me that it should be sufficient. Am I correct? Would it be better to switch out the pump for maybe an mcp655. Newegg has the Swiftech H20-120 Premium kit for like $130 but its currently out of stock. Would it be worth while to get this kit for $130. Is that a good bang for the buck. Those parts alone in the kit would cost much more if bought separately. What do you think?
 
The MCP350 pump will be just fine for what you want to do. The pump I am running is the same pump just a little higher pressures(MCP355). And it is not having a single problem keeping the CPU and 2 GPU cooled. The kit is a great deal at that price.

*edit* Just wanted to give you some examples

Room Temp is 70F or 21C as reported by digital thermometer in room
CPU temp at idle ( just reading these forums) is 24C as reported by ASUS probe, 23C as reported by digidoc 5. Temp probe of digidoc is sitting right next to cpu.
GPU temp at idle is 27C for both GPU as reported through Nvidia Control Panel. Digidoc is reporting one at 26C and other at 27C.
Now after playing games for a couple hours the highest I have seen it go so far this winter is 31C for the cpu and 45C for the GPU. In the middle of summer when my house is between 82 and 84 F, don't know the conversion to C. I have seen my CPU max at 40 and my GPU around 50.
My MB reading as per asus prob is showing 27C. I am still using the factory heat pipe assy that came on the bd. ASUS A8N32 SLI.
 
Although a MCR120 rad will be "OK" to cool just the processor, you would have to have a higher CFM fan (noisy) to keep temps under control. If you raise the voltage to lets say 1.4875+ a single 120 rad cant keep up. If I was you buy the MCR220 rad and waterblock of your choice (I like my FuZion) however the Apogee GT block would do you good, and now you can use 2 120mm 47cfm yate loon fans which are dead silent and have good temps. I always consider the future when doing mods like this. Right now I'm only cooling my E6600 in my loop, but I went ahead and bought the MCR320 rad, 3 120mm Sunon 92CFM fans, and the D-Tek FuZion block and am loving having idle temps in the teens. This way, if I wawnt to add a few GPU's in my loop, my RAD can handle it.
 
Nirad9er said:
Im only interested in cooling the cpu. From my understanding, the kit came with an apogee gt block and an mcr120 rad. The only thing that isnt as good as I wanted is the mcp350 pump, but if im only cooling the cpu, people have told me that it should be sufficient. Am I correct? Would it be better to switch out the pump for maybe an mcp655. Newegg has the Swiftech H20-120 Premium kit for like $130 but its currently out of stock. Would it be worth while to get this kit for $130. Is that a good bang for the buck. Those parts alone in the kit would cost much more if bought separately. What do you think?
Click to expand...
as far as i know the kit for $ 130 is the OLD one with the old apogee , dont think they gonna get it back in stock again. Guess from now on the only sell the new kit for around $ 180, but havent seen it at newegg yet.
The pump would do just fine.
 
NordicRX8 said:
I'm fairly new to watercooling myself... but I never liked the "kits" as they were offered by the manufacturers themselves. I prefer the "customized" kits that several e-tailers offer.
Click to expand...

Can anyone point to an etailer or two who assembles parts into a "kit"?
 
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