Performance

As this review focuses on the differences between the original WaterChill water block and the Antarctica, the blocks were tested under the same conditions in the same test bed. Notice that these tests include the use of the chipset water block and the video card block, and are carried out with a Hydor L20 inline pump.

Test bed consists of:
- AMD Barton 2500+ CPU
- Abit NF7-S motherboard
- 2 x 256 MB Corsair PC3200 dual channel RAM
- GeForce 4 TI4800SE 128 MB video card

- Antarctica and standard WaterChill CPU block
- WaterChill radiator RDT02
- WaterChill reservoir RSV01
- WaterChill chipset cooler
- WaterChill VGA cooler
- Sunon 12V 120x120 mm low noise fan
- Hydor L20 water pump (700 l/hr)

Again, we will run two sets of tests. One running at default speeds and voltage, and one running overclocked and overvolted. We include results from both coolers in the charts below. For ease of comparison, only CPU temperatures are shown, but they give a pretty accurate idea of how the Antarctica performs. Ambient temperatures were at all times measured to be 21C (+/- 0.5C).

It is obvious from these charts above that the Antarctica is indeed better than the original WaterChill water block, especially with the fan going full throttle. The biggest performance gap was seen at overclocked settings with the fan set at 12 volts. A 5 degree difference is quite a bit here, considering the rest of the kit consists of the exact same components.

On average, there is a 2.4C temperature decrease with the Antarctica at default CPU speed.

An Asetek technical supporter indicated that the Antarctica performs best with a pump with a higher l/hr rating than the standard Hydor L20 that we was using. If we ever get a chance to test with a Hydor L30 instead, we'll do a small follow-up to this review.

Conclusion

We already recommended the WaterChill kit, so considering this block gives roughly 10-20% extra performance for a little extra cash, the Asetek Antarctica deserves your careful consideration. However, if you are an owner of the older WaterChill, it probably isn't worth the upgrade, unless you simply must have the best performance. At £41.11 including VAT from The Cooling Shop, it's priced quite reasonably.

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