AMA Aragon 900 Watercooling Kit

The Aragon 900 Watercooling Kit from AMA Tech does an excellent cooling job and has all the parts you need for aggressive CPU cooling. UPDATED to show the waterblock’s innards.

UPDATE: The following pics were requested – I never open a waterblock before using it to keep it as received from the manufacturer. The mounting system is very easy and secure – this is an example of the LGA775 mount:

Opening the waterblock reveals three parts – the top, a plate which directs incoming fluid to the center of the base, and the base:

The base is a pin-fin design with channels to direct water to the exit barb:

Here is the plastic plate over the copper base – fluid comes in the center and exits from four sides:

MSRP: $210

The good guys at AMA Tech were nice enough to send a sample of their Aragon 900 Watercooling Kit to test. The kit’s waterpump, reservoir and waterblock are shown below:

Not the the reservoir features a “cross” at its base – this ensures that as water enters/exits from it there is no swirling – quite effective in use. The waterpump is compact and noise free, powered from a 12 volt HD plug. It can be screw mounted with its brackets or there is an adhesive pad to secure it should this be needed. The inlet/outlet holes are covered to keep any foreign material from entering the system – peels easily away when you’re ready to install the nipples.

The only other task required is to cut the tubing to lengths you will need. The kit features “squeeze clamps” which are fine to keep hoses in place – they can be installed by hand if you have strong fingers.

Key Features

• Copper core radiator with 2 120mm LED fans, 1900 rpm, 4 pin PWM molex connector
• 360 l/hr 12 volt water pump
• Copper base waterblock with plastic top
• 500 cc ethylene glycol solution
• Water tank 60 mm diameter, 152 mm high
• Waterblock clamps for Intel LGA 1366, 775; AMD Socket AM2, AM2+, 1207
• 9.5 mm ID tubing

The waterblock features a small pin design as can be seen from its intake port:

The base of the waterblock is well finished and appears flat:

The radiator is configured to mount outside the case with the included pedestals to keep it from tipping:

The radiator also have mounting holes so that if you opt to mount it in the case, you can:

The waterblock is compact and mounts nicely to the motherboard – note that you will have to remove it to mount the backplate for the mounting kit. I found the mounting system as one of the best I’ve used – easy to mount/dismount and very secure.

To give an idea of its size, here’s a pic of it running on the test platform:

Parts that ship with the kit include everything you need to assemble it. Note that you need to screw in all the nipples to the radiator, reservoir and waterblock – you need a box wrench for this as hand-tightening will not do. All told it took less that an hour to get it going.

IMPORTANT: Test the kit for leaks BEFORE you install it!

The kit appears well built and compact enough so that it does not take excessive space. If you have room in your case, you can mount the radiator in it so that the whole kit fits inside. The CPU mounting brackets are well made and an easy fit to the motherboard. Overall, a very nice job.

Test Results

The Aragon 900 Watercooling Kit was tested on an Asus P5WD2 motherboard with a modified Pentium D 805 to read CPU case temps while running Prime 95 with the following results:

Fan noise from both 120 mm fans was measured 8″ from the fans’ intake with a Radio Shack sound meter and measured 53 dBA @ 1865 rpm; 50 dBA at this distance is very quiet 3 feet from the fan.

Results show that this kit performs very well, besting high end air by about 2 degrees. There is a great deal of cooling overhead with water so I don’t doubt that agressive cooling with a high watt CPU will be its forte.

I have no pricing or availability data but as soon as it’s available, I’ll add it.