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Adopting water cooling for my machine has been a great success. Over the past three years, I have had no failures of any part of the system.

Things have aged though, and I have decided to replace a few worn out parts, and make some new additions. I seriously debated replacing the pump and reservoir, but just can’t justify the cost at this point. Both are working well… they just don’t look good. So instead I have decided to add a flow meter along with a control computer to better regulate the water temperatures.

I decided on the Aquaero LT. Its pricier than the other options, but the capabilities are unmatched. I spent a good amount of time debating the three different models, but at 74, 149, and 249 dollars it was pretty much impossible to justify the more expensive options. I wanted a controller. I didn’t need a flashy gadget. The software that comes with the controller give you all of the capabilities regardless of model.

For the flow meter, I picked up a Koolance INS-FM17N Unfortuantely, I didn’t get the matching Frequency Adaptor. I was hoping I didn’t need it, but at is turns out, there is no way to connect it to the controller. The Aquacomputer G1/4 Flow Meter Sensor Block is just a couple bucks more than the combined price. You would be better off just getting the integrated unit.

At least now going forward if my pump fails, the machine can take action to protect itself and shut down. Its always concerned me.

I bought everything through FrozenCPU again as you can tell, and they were as good as ever.

Installation was about as complicated as you would expect. Its not for a novice, but if you have done any work with building machines, you should be fine. I was a bit taken aback by the lack of ESD protection in the packaging, but everything seems to be working fine.

I plugged my fans into the fan headers on the board, plugged in the usb and power connections, then booted up the machine. The unit also supports controlling the pump as well, but I decided not to got there for now. It turned out to be a good idea. As the machine booted, I could see the fans were still on the radiator. Since I had a fresh load of fluid in the system, I was not overly concerned. it would take some time to heat everything up. Still, I expected the fan headers to default to full speed.

After booting the machine, I loaded up parallels and ran the aqua suite 4 software. Nothing. I told it to go out and detect usb devices. Nothing. Checked for updates, and it found 4.72 was available. I went ahead and updated, but still got nothing, even though version 4 is labeled as supporting all current devices from Aqua Computer. Lost in translation I guess.

I went to the website and downloaded version 2012 of the suite, and ran the installer. It completed fine, and upon first run I was presented with the option of updating my Aquaero LT. I went ahead and click the button, and it began updating me to v1022. After it completed, it told me to not load Aqua Suite until the device was reset. I sat there, waiting a bit with a blank screen. The device appeared to reboot, as it beeped. I loaded the software to see that I needed to do another firmware update. I was a bit frustrated as the Aqua Suite 2012 Software seemed to have no options available for configuration.

I ran the update a second time, and allowed the thing to reset. This time it was different. As I loaded the software, tons of configuration options were presented to me in the console. I finally had a hold of the levers I was looking for.

I have been testing quite a bi this evening, looking for the best fan curves to match my radiator and fan setup. So far I have come up with this:

It allows my machine to run silent for almost all normal activities. When heavy loads are executed, the water temp increases, and the fans ramp up to increase the heat dissipation. This way the system only runs as loud as it needs to. Previously, the radiator fans were linked to the CPU header. This lead to full speed fans at the slightest load on the machine. That lead to excessive dust build up in the radiator, and more noise than was needed.

I also discovered while working on the system that one of the bearings has begun to fail in one of my radiator fans. It runs fine in every position except the one I need it in. So next up is finding a new set of fans. We’ll see how that goes. For now I have one of my Noctua units in its place. I have always liked them, but the amount of air it moves it poor.