Now to the exciting part! How does this kit really perform? I tested this kit with the following components:

• Chieftec Dragon DX Silver Case
• AMD XP 1600+ Palomino CPU
• Asus A7V333 motherboard
• 1 stick of 256MB Samsung PC2700 RAM
• GeForce 3 TI-200 video card

I measured temperatures at two different settings:

• Stock settings: 1400 MHz, 1.65 Vcore
• Highly overclocked: 1795 MHz, 1.85 Vcore

As mentioned earlier this kit isn't in intended for serious overclocking, but I couldn't help myself to see how far it would go. However, I knew the CPU would go pretty far on air, and I was interested in knowing if this water cooling kit could help it handle higher clock speeds. For idle I let the computer run for approx 2 hours doing nothing, so I was sure the temperature had leveled. For full load I ran Folding@home for about 4 hours and then measured the temperatures.

Default value chart

Overclocked chart

As the charts indicate, the Poseidon Kit does fairly well. It cannot match the more expensive kits available today, but it performs well for its price. It is just about on-par with the best air cooling solutions available, but it doesn't make nearly as much noise. Performance can be increased with CPU block lapping (to get rid of the machining marks) and by putting a higher rated CFM fan on the radiator to bring down water temperatures (therefore bringing down the CPU temperature). Locating the radiator outside the computer case will most likely help a bit as well.

After making these tests I got a new CPU, a T-Bred 1700+ that I am currently running as a 2600+ with 1.80 Vcore, and the CPU temperature is just about 50 C full load with the Poseidon. This should give you an idea of how well it will do with the high performance AMD computers of today.

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