Verdict: Pre-assembled, pre-filled, pretty rubbish

When Cooler Master first announced the Aquagate Mini, we thought 'great, a smaller, more refined Aquagate', but unfortunately the reality is very different.

The Aquagate Mini R80 actually has more in common with the rather awful Global Win Silent Stream, not a good analogy to be lurking at the back of our minds as we set up the Aquagate Mini R80 for the first time. The pump is mounted on top of the universal CPU waterblock (which is even compatible with Socket 603 and 604 Xeons) and is pre-fitted with soft black plastic 6mm ID tubing. The waterblock/pump combo is connected to the radiator, which is mounted with a tiny 80mm fan. As the system is pre-filled with a mixture of water and anti-icing fluid, you don't have to mess about filling or bleeding the system.

But, as the radiator and fan are so small, the Aquagate Mini R80 was unable to keep our overclocked and overvolted Pentium 4e CPU cool enough to prevent the automatic thermal protection kicking in and shutting down the system. At minimum fan speed, it cooled the Athlon 64 to 4ûC below the reference AMD HSF and 9ûC below at maximum fan speed. However, at maximum fan speed (3,800rpm), the Aquagate Mini R80 makes more noise than most modern HSFs, which defeats the whole point of upgrading to a water-cooling kit in the first place. And at low fan speed, the Aquagate Mini R80 is less effective than the Cool River and Thermaltake kits.

Although the Aquagate Mini R80 is very easy to install, its cooling abilities at a tolerable fan speed setting leave a lot to be desired. As it couldn't even cope with cooling our Pentium 4e test rig, the universal mounting mechanism for the CPU waterblock is really rather pointless too. If you must buy a pre-assembled, pre-filled kit then the Cool River is a far better choice, plus it has GPU and Northbridge waterblocks.

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