EVERCOOL WC-F117 Nighthawk Water Cooling

Now we move to all of the other boxes and see what they have to offer.

First up, we are going to take a look at the CPU box and what all it has in it.

Here we can see the water block, stand offs, a socket A and PIII clip, a pair of Intel clips and one AMD K8 clip. I will get into my system specs in a bit but for this review, I will be using the K8 clip with my AMD 3700+ Sandy.

Now onto the GPU.

Here we have the GPU water block, the NVIDIA and ATI 2-hole brackets and the NVIDIA 6800/7800/7900 brackets as well. My system has a 7800 GT in it so I will be using the 4-hole bracket to attach the water block my card.

We also have the PCI slot bracket that allows this cooler to be used externally. Due to lack of space, this is the route that I will be taking.

Let’s get into installation!

Evercool made it very easy to install this cooler. I am able to use my existing AMD K8 bracket and just clamp down the retention clip to hold the cooler firmly onto the CPU. From here, I move onto the video card. To do this, I have to remove the stock cooler on my 7800GT, and if I understand it correctly, this does not void my lifetime warranty. Nice going eVGA and thank you very much.

One thing that I noticed about the GPU box was that it did not include any video RAM cooling what-so-ever. This annoyed me as I had to order some from Newegg. This wasn’t a huge problem but it was a small hidden cost in using this kit and I would like to recommend this personally to Evercool in the future.

Once everything was fastened down tightly, I double checked to see if the connectors were screwed down tightly and once I was certain that everything was how it should be, I started up the computer.
Now I have reviewed a fair share of coolers for Techgage in the past and while hardware comes and goes, I have tested everything on the same setup that I have always used. Let’s take a look at my system specs.

Testing System
• Processor – AMD 3700+ San Diego 1MB L2
• Motherboard – DFI LanParty Ultra D (SLi mod)
• Video Card – eVga 7800 GT
• Power Supply – Silverstone ST56F Strider
• Memory – 512 x 2 Crucial Ballistix
• Hard Disk – 1 WD Raptor 74 GB / Seagate 160 GB
• Sound Card – Creative Audigy ZS2
• OS – Windows XP Pro / SP2

There you have it. It’s nothing fancy but it really gets the job done and for me, that’s all that matters. It should be pointed out that I do have a second 7800 GT that works nicely with its sibling in SLi but since there is no water block for a second GPU, I am excluding it in this review.

We now know all of the hardware is installed correctly and we have a good idea of how the system temperatures should read as I am using the same case, the same fans at the same speed and I have the ambient temperatures the same as they always are. As I said earlier, I have done quite a few cooler reviews for Techgage and with the testing environment being the same each time; let’s see just what the F117 can do.

There it is folks. I am somewhat surprised but with a budget water kit, it is kind of expected. On the idle temps, the Evercool comes in just above the air coolers that I have reviewed. While I am disappointed in these results, they are certainly within a safe threshold and are nothing to worry about. The GPU temps are where I am impressed. The stock cooler on my 7800 GT would idle about 46-47 degrees Celsius and while that is within a safe limit, I always say that lower is better.