asetek Antarctica Waterblock Review

Watercooling has come quite a long way in recent years and, as time progresses we can only expect things to get better. asetek has been a major player in high performance cooling and even though the Waterchill wasn't targeted at the high-end cooling enthusiast the advent of the DIY parts catalog does help bridge the gap by providing high performance enhancements to the Waterchill line.

The Antarctica waterblock preformed great under the test conditions and actually worked better than expected. There were a few issues worth restating, It was mentioned before that the hoses were difficult to remove, this is due in part to the size of the push on fittings and their location on the water block. Since I couldn't get my fingers around the connector I needed to use the sides of an adjustable jaw wrench just to remove the hose.

Seating the hoses is also quite tricky since the hoses are still moveable once they are installed. During the initial leak test the center hose begin to leak profusely after appearing to be completely seated, another quick push solved this issue but was still a bit annoying. Though on the bright side if the hoses are prepared correctly and pushed in all the way the chances of a leak are very slim.

Now for the ever popular list of Good things and Bad things.

Excellent cooling capacity
Easy to install
Lightweight waterblock
Usable on all 1/2" O.D. watercooling systems

Hoses difficult to remove by hand
Minor issue with PCB flexing with the waterblock installed
Tested block limited to 1/2" O.D. Hose

I would like to thank asetek for helping to make this review possible.