Hardware Aquacomputer Aquaero 5 XT Review

For some, it's a hobby.

 

No one 'needs watercooling'. It's quite straightforward to make a good air coolled computer.

 

I hardly think I need to explain what needs to be improved, its clear that this review is thin on the ground from all the other comments, you guys have been writing for years and know the quality and detail of review your customers expect.

For starters though theres 2 images, which tbh look like the press shots?!?! Theres not even a picture of the screen in use, which is what I would have liked to see most, not to mention a rear shot either.

Look at your own comparative product review: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cooling/2010/08/22/mcubed-t-balancer-mining-fan-controller/1 a much simpler device yet that has twice the review this does

 

Yes a couple of pictures of the screen in operation would have been nice.
When I brought my aquaero 4 a large part of why I went for it was aesthetic so it would have been nice to see some shots of this screen in operation showing some of the various monitors.
What colour is the lcd ilumination display anyway?

 

OK, first up, I'm not going to let this lie; I'm determined to address your points, as it's you guys who make the site run.

First up

I'll admit, I share your opinion here, I'd have liked to have included more product photography and this is something I'm pushing the reviews team to do more of; on the job hands-on photography. However, the shots we have included are our own, and are professionally shot in house.

What you're saying is you don't just want specs, you want opinion, but the review has this. We call the touch screen superfluous, discuss how well the cooling curves worked well, and how tough the unit was to set up. Can we really test a 4-pin fan header for performance - is it not just a case of it does or it doesn't?

This article is a review; it's an account of our time with the product and our opinion of it following our experiences; it is not a spec sheet. I can appreciate your enthusiasm for the product and subject, but we simply do not have the time or resources to perform this degree of testing you suggest. We're a business, and our reviewers have deadlines; sadly we can't spend a whole week playing with a fan controller, no matter how shiny it is!(Incidentally you can indeed stabilise temperatures by setting a target temperature and tying in whatever peripherals you want into it. The review states a max output of 60W, which I think a pair of DDCs and 8+ rad fans would most likely surpass.)

No informative reviews? 7 Page GA-A75 motherboard review, 7-page GA-Z68AP motherboard review, 4 page Corsair 400r case review, 5 page Samsung SSD review

No useful articles? All about Ivy Bridge, huge 600W PSU round-up, How to Overclock Sandy-Bridge-E (world exclusive at publishing), Why we need Origin (100+ comments, although most of them telling me I'm wrong.

Our fan controller reviews used to be 10 pages long? Scythe kaze Master review, 2008, 2 pages, Zalman Fan controller review 2007, 3 short pages, How to scratch build your own PWM controller, 2001 - 2 pages

We might not be as verbose as some of the other tech sites, but that's because when we wrote longer reviews no one read them! As such, we try and keep concise and to the point, without descending into spec sheet recitals.

And on top of that, you block our ads too.... (except for that O2 one a few weeks ago)

I'll admit, this isn't our finest review, and would have benefited from additional photography and a little more added detail looking at the more detailed features of the Aquaero. Following the feedback in this thread, that's something we'll take on-board and look to improve upon in the future in all our reviews. However, the way people have reacted in this thread you'd think we'd reviewed the fan controller as a doorstop.

I'm really proud of the work the whole team does on bit-tech; we work hard, under tight deadlines and try our best to keep our content interesting and impartial whilst remaining appropriate to the audience. We might have mis-judged this on this occasion, but to have you guys so vehemently rage on not just the review, but the whole state of the site is this way is saddening. The team is extremely knowledgeable and experienced and we genuinely work in the field that we love. We mod our cases, watercool our systems, and still coo over the shiny shiny when it comes out of the box, not to mention spend far too much time playing games. We write the site for ourselves as much as you (and get paid to do it, bonus!) and the vast majority of the time, this works out well. Obviously in this case, we under-estimated what you guys expected, but we'll take this on-board and improve next time.

 

You guys mostly do a good job, and I can see that your points are valid, Baz. What I would have liked to have seen is taking a review system and adding a water cooling kit to it, getting some idle and load temps as well as sound levels and then adding the fan controller to it and taking the same measurements. A few other things I would have like to know were how well does the remote work in media center, does it work in any other software such as xmbc, is the green circled button a mouse, how far away were you able to use it, etc.? I also would have liked to see what the included waterblock was for. I have been reading this site for years and I don't intend to stop anytime soon!

Oh and about the advertisements, I use adblock. I turned it off for this page and count 6 advertisements! Your background frame uses about 20% of my screen, and then the ads along the right hand side use around another 20% leaving around 60% actual content space. Granted I am not on a wide screen monitor at the moment, but I think that is a bit much. I don't mind banner ads along the top and bottom, say 1 banner on the top and one on the bottom of the page followed by a google text ad at the very bottom. Honestly, the one of the biggest reasons I block ads is so many pages these days have crappy video ads that start playing video AND audio which is quite enraging when trying to figure out which of 20 or so tabs is making noise! Thankfully, I have not encountered that here. I have altogether stopped going to sites that otherwise had good content because of that obnoxiousness! Another problem with ads is many times the site operators are not responsible for or even aware of what is put in the ad spaces that they sell on their site, so often times advertisements will contain viral payloads that get installed just by loading the otherwise safe page. A lot of people who run adblocking software, along with addons like NoScript, do so to protect themselves.

 

please revision Thermaltake CLP0575, Noctua NH-D14 and ZALMAN CNPS9900MAX-B