Verdict: Great cooling at a competitive price.

American-based company D-TEK doesn't make a whole range of water-cooling components, and it currently only produces a diminutive 120mm-fan radiator, which isn't nearly big enough to cool a multi-waterblock loop. For this reason, although we've labelled this custom kit as D-TEK, it also contains a large amount of components from other companies, including products from EK, ThermoChill and XSPC.

The only D-TEK-branded component in this custom kit is the FuZion CPU waterblock. This substantial waterblock has a large copper base, the inside of which is studded with 340 rounded pins, around which the water flows before exiting the waterblock. The FuZion is pre-fitted with four push-pins for installing in an LGA775 motherboard, although if you feel like making life hard for yourself, you can screw it through the motherboard using the supplied bolts, washers, nuts and screws. Unfortunately, as the input barb is very close to the output barb, it's difficult to secure the tubing in place using the supplied Jubilee clips, and almost impossible with anything thicker, such as a reusable plastic clamp.

Northbridge cooling is provided by the same EK-NB S-MAX waterblock as used in the EK custom kit. This has a copper base and an acetal top, so you can see the coolant passing through the inside of the waterblock. The EK-NB S-MAX is attached to the Northbridge by two or four bolts (depending on your motherboard), and an assortment of nuts, springs and washers. Fitting it can be fiddly, but fortunately, the procedure is clearly explained in a paper manual.

Aqua PCs, which supplied the D-TEK custom kit, specified an EK waterblock for the graphics card - the EK-FX88 GT. This is compatible with GeForce 8800 GT and 512MB GeForce 8800 GTS graphics cards. Unlike most graphics card coolers, it comprises two separate elements - a huge copper and acetal waterblock that cools the GPU and RAM, and a black anodised aluminium VRM cooler that screws into the waterblock. Like most modern waterblocks, the EK-FX88 GT has two inputs and two outputs, so it can be easily configured to support SLI. The EK-FX88 GT is very easy to mount; all you need to do is gently screw it onto the graphics card using the supplied M2.5 x 8 screws.

Next on the on the list are a Laing DDC 18W pump and an XSPC Laing DDC Top. The former is a standard DDC pump; you need to unscrew the top and replace it with the XSPC Laing DDC Top. This transparent top is considerably larger than the standard top, and has the input barb on top of it rather than the side.

The kit also includes an XSPC Bay Reservoir to store the coolant and bleed the system. As its name makes patently clear, this should be mounted in a 5.25in drive bay reservoir. Like the EK custom kit, the D-TEK custom kit was supplied with a ThermoChill PA120.3 triple 120mm-fan radiator. This can mount three fans on each side in a push-pull configuration, but our sample was supplied with three fans configured to pull air through the radiator. Although the PA120.3 is shorter than the quad 120mm-fan radiators in the Danger Den and Vadim custom kits, it's very thick, so it's worth checking that there's sufficient space to fit it in your case.

Our sample kit was supplied with 2.5m of 1/2in ID soft tubing, which is plenty to connect all the components. Rather than expecting you to mix a coolant additive with distilled or deionised water, Aqua PCs supplied 2l of Feser VS.C. This clear coolant acts as a corrosion inhibitor and also contains ethylene glycol, so it has higher thermal conductivity than water.

Most of the high-end custom kits provided fairly similar cooling abilities, and the D-TEK was no exception, as it succeeded in cooling our test CPU to 12ûC lower than the Tuniq Tower 120. This is an impressive achievement, given the huge overclock and overvolt, and of course, the D-TEK custom kit is far quieter than the Tuniq Tower 120.

Interestingly, the D-TEK custom kit proved to be slightly superior to the EK custom kit (which employs the same waterblock) at cooling the graphics card - the GPU was 39ûC cooler than it was with the reference Nvidia HSF fitted. As we didn't remount the waterblock between testing the two kits, and both use the same radiator, we can only surmise that the D-TEK FuZion CPU waterblock is slightly less restrictive than the EK EK-Supreme CPU waterblock.

Unfortunately, the D-TEK lacks some of the finesse of the other kits, such as anti-kink coils or a method of mounting the radiator. However, as it's one of the cheaper custom kits, and none of these accessories is very expensive, it should be possible to bring the D-TEK up to standard without increasing the price by more than a few pounds.

• Media PC components - 22nd August 2008
• PSUs - 14th July 2008
• Multi-GPU graphics - 20th June 2008
• CPU water cooling - 17th June 2008
• Hard disks - 20th March 2008
• Audio hardware - 29th February 2008
• Graphics cards - 24th January 2008

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