Installation

I decided to replace my current reservoir (AGB-O-Matic Plug-on) with the Aquabay M6.
I used the following water cooling setup to test the Aquabay M6:

• Eheim HPPS+ pump in auto mode
• Alphacool Nexxxos XP CPU block
• Black Ice Xtreme 2 radiator
• Aquabay M6

After I successfully "ripped open" my old setup, it was time to connect the Aquabay.
Here came the first problem: my setup uses 10/14mm tubing, which I consider to be 3/8". This obviously must be slightly different to Thermaltake's 3/8" tubing, so it was quite difficult to get all of my tubing onto the barbs. After a bit of wrestling, I managed to hook everything up. With Thermaltake's tubing, this was a non-issue: their tubing fit perfectly. After about 30 minutes, I had the setup looking like this:


When hooking up the LCD to the appropriate sensors (liquid level and temperature), I witnessed a stroke of Thermaltake genius:

As you can see, the two connectors leading out from the LCD are different. This way, it is not possible to plug in the connectors any other way than intended.

I poured a bit of distilled water into the reservoir, got out my test PSU (which I have shorted, so it starts automatically with the switch) and plugged in my pump. As usual, I fired up the PSU, and watched for leaks. I was pleasantly surprised to see none. The o-rings used throughout the setup do a superb job of preventing water from leaking where you don't want it to.

The LCD comes to life with purple backlight, and everything "blacked out". After about a second, the LCD changes color to blue and shows you temperature from the probe, with the temperature threshold set underneath. Our test sample had the threshold adjustable from 26 to 71 degrees Celsius. In its normal state, the LCD is bluely backlit, and looks like this:


When the temperature from the probe rises over the set temperature, or the water level reaches a minimum, the LCD backlight goes dark pink, and the LCD unit starts beeping. In addition, when the water level reaches a minimum, an icon asking you to add water lights up.


For this test, I decided to leave the temperature probe outside of the water loop. To measure its accuracy, I compared it with a digital thermometer. There was a difference of 1 °C between the two thermometers, which is well acceptable.

Compared to my AGB-O-Matic plugon reservoir, this reservoir has a slightly smaller cap at the top, but the difference is barely noticeable. The Thermaltake reservoir is of a good size, and makes filling a water-cooling loop quick and easy.