Hailea HC-500A Water Chiller Review

Results Analysis

As good as the Fenrir is, it was only able to overclock the i7-980X EE CPU to 4.4GHz without the processor temperature spiraling out of control. In the end, the CPU temperature stabilised at 97°C, just a few degrees lower than the level at which Thermtrip activates, underclocking the CPU to prevent damage.

In contrast, the water-cooling loop allowed us to overclock the CPU to 4.72GHz before the processor temperature reached an alarming level; 95°C. However, it's also worth bearing in mind that this loop was also responsible for cooling the two GPUs of the HD 5970, dropping their peak temperature from 73°C on air to just 43°C.

While 4.72GHz is a great overclock for a 6-core Core i7 processor, when we set the coolant temperature to 13C, the HC-500A was able to drop the CPU temperature to 47°C, allowing us to overclock the CPU to 5GHz. The GPUs also ran much cooler, dropping from 43°C to a tepid 30°C.


Just because we can, we also tried running the HC-500A at its lowest temperature setting, 4°C, to see if this would make any difference. Unfortunately, although this dropped the CPU temperature to a chilly 28°C, we were unable to break the 5GHz barrier without Prime95 crashing. Even so, this shows that the HC-500A still had a lot of untapped cooling potential, even with a heavily overclocked 6-core CPU and dual-GPU graphics card.

Conclusion

While the temperature and performance results clearly indicate that the Hailea HC-500A water chiller provides far superior cooling to a standard water-cooling loop, it's worth bearing in mind that a water chiller isn't an automatic replacement for your radiators.

Firstly, the HC-500A is much louder than a well designed standard water-cooling loop, which in of itself should be quieter than a collection of screaming air-coolers. It's hard to quantify the noise that the HC-500A makes, as there are two sources of noise - the compressor and the cooling fan. The latter makes a fairly continuous whooshing noise, so is quite easy to ignore after a while, whereas the compressor bumps and rattles into life every time it starts a power cycle.

However, there's a very simple solution to the noise problem. As the HC-500A doesn't need to sit next to your PC, if you use extra-long tubing then you can locate the HC-500A far enough away from your ears that its noise is no longer an issue. We've even seen some mods in which the HC-500A is in another room from the PC, with holes drilled through the intervening wall for the tubing to pass through.

As an added benefit, because all that needs to be integrated into your PC's case is the pump and reservoir, you can get away with using a much smaller and cheaper case than a high-end water-cooling loop demands.

In addition, it's worth thinking about how much power the HC-500A draws. For example, when the compressor and fan first start up, the HC-500A has a peak power draw of 415W. However, within about a minute this dropped to 340W, even with the CPU and GPUs at full load.

While this is a lot of power, it's still a lot less than a less-effective TEC cooling system. What's more, once the user-set temperature has been reached, the on-board processor will regularly switch off the compressor and fan for a few minutes at a time, dropping the power consumption down to zero until the coolant temperature rises again.

Then there's the price tag to consider. While £400 might sound like a lot for a cooler, it's by no means outrageous when you consider that a quad 120mm-fan radiator and eight 120mm fans will set you back around £180 and require you to buy and/or mod an expensive large case.

The HC-500A is also reasonably priced against other forms of extreme cooling. For example, a traditional phase-change cooler will set you back around £600 and only be able to cool your CPU.

As such, if you're seeking the very best cooling and overclocking for your PC then the Hailea HC-500A is definitely worth considering as it provides far more cooling potential, convenience and adjustability than any form of extreme cooling.

• Features
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• 7/10

• Cooling
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• 10/10

• Ease of Use
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• -
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• 8/10

• Value
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• -
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• 7/10

• Overall
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• -
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• 8/10

Score Guide