Performance
Our test setup is made up of: ASUS P5WD2 Premium*, Pentium D 840 Extreme Edition, 2GB Corsair XMS2, Seagate Barracuda 7200.9, ASUS X1900 XTX, Cooler Master Stacker 830, Enermax EG600W.
Prime95 was run for nine hours, with Folding @ Home running in the background everyday for four days to load the system and allow the thermal paste to even out. During the actual tests, we ran SiSoft Sandra's CPU Burn for 15 minutes, with 3 instances of Folding @ Home running in the background. Ambient room temperature was maintained at 23°C/74°F.
Comparison coolers are an Intel stock heatsink, a Cooler Master Aquagate Mini R120 liquid cooler, and a Koolance EXOS-Al. Like the Corsair Nautilus500, the Koolance is a self contained water-cooling kit, as is the Aquagate Mini. The Koolance would be more of a direct competitor though as it is an external kit. All the liquid cooling setups were run with the fan speeds set to their lowest setting as well as their maximum. Arctic Silver 5 was the thermal paste used and the Stacker 830 case was closed with the default 120mm fans running.
*Since our previous results were collected with the P5WD2, we reverted back to this board for testing the Nautilus500. The only thing to note is we noticed temperatures being an average of 3°C higher under idle and load when compared to the P5N32-SLI used for our installation procedure. Since this was the case for all our coolers, this increase does not influence our final judgment.
Idle Temperatures
The dual core, HyperThreaded Pentium D 840EE is no cool running chip, even when it's sitting around doing nothing. At the lowest fan speeds, the Nautilus ran the coolest by 1°C over the EXOS-Al. At the highest fan speed, it placed second to the EXOS, also by 1°C.
Load Temperatures
Under load, the Nautilus500 surprised us with putting out the best numbers at high speed. It finished ahead of the EXOS-Al's high speed setting by 3°C. Low speed temperatures were also very good, though the EXOS was a slightly better performer here by 1°C.
Overclocking was quite good, topping out at 312FSB using an Intel Extreme Edition 3.73. This is slightly lower than our results with the Koolance EXOS (we hit 318FSB with that), but much higher than we've managed with the Aquagate Mini.
Final Words
To be totally truthful, when we first opened up the box and saw the size of the Nautilus500, we were not quite sure what kind of performance we would see in our testing. I expected to see similar performance to the Aquagate Mini, perhaps a little better, but did not expect it to exceed the Koolance EXOS-Al, specifically at high speed. After hammering away at the unit now for over 2 weeks, we have to admit that we're pretty impressed with the performance of the Nautilus500, especially when compared to the EXOS at the settings mentioned a moment ago. Idle temps were good, but under load, where it really counts anyhow, the Nautilus500 finishes very comfortably on top leading the EXOS by 3°C and the Aquagate Mini by 5°C at the high speed settings.
Build quality is quite solid. Aesthetically, there's nothing really wrong with the Nautilus, but we do think the four legs could be shortened a bit to lower its center of gravity. The reason for this is some cases, such as the Stacker 830 we used, is not perfectly flat. Furthermore, not having any Velcro to help secure it doesn't help either. Now, in most scenarios, the Nautilus is secure and we're not concerned about it falling, but it has a greater potential of falling when compared to the much heavier EXOS which also has Velcro pads available for extra stability.
Only other item in regards to the construction is that we would like to see a seal in between the reservoir and chassis to avoid incidents of overfilling and spillage like we experienced. Corsair will be mentioning this in their next instruction revision, but until then, keep this in mind.
The Nautilus500's speed settings should be adequate for most users. Enthusiasts would obviously like a bit more control via a rheostat (as well as some sort of status screen or LCD), but having two options does take some of the guess work out of the equation for novices. In regards to these settings, we found nary a difference between the two settings in terms of noise. High speed was really not much louder in pitch and at either setting, the ASUS X1900 XTX fan was louder than the Nautilus under load. That being said, when idle, the Nautilus was a bit louder than the Aquagate Mini, and about the same as the EXOS, all at low speed.
Performance was obviously key when Corsair put the Nautilus500 together, but the main goal was to introduce a water-cooling system that almost everyone can use. Basically, if you can install a stock heatsink, be it Intel or AMD, you can install the Nautilus. Corsair does have their numbers, but here are VL's own numbers from start to finish:
As you can see above, the Nautilus500 was significantly quicker to install than the other two kits. The reason for this is that the motherboard needs to be removed before installation for both the EXOS and Aquagate, but not for the Nautilus500. Keep in mind that we're very familiar with the Aquagate Mini and Koolance EXOS, so those times are about as low as they get (for us anyway). We think we can maybe shave another minute for the Nautilus, but either way, a liquid system installed under 10 minutes is pretty impressive. Again, we have to stress that complete novices will probably take double the time, but this would be the case with any complex cooling kit.
For , Corsair supplies everything except for distilled water. The Aquagate Mini is cheaper, but it cannot be expanded like the Nautilus500. The EXOS is a comparable performer, but costs more and the CPU blocks are not included. At this price, the Corsair Nautilus500 exceeded our performance expectations and we were very impressed how easy it was to install. New users will probably need more time, but if you're comfortable with heatsink installations, it's probably going to be easier to install than it is to remove your existing cooler.
If you have any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.
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