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We reviewed AMA's Aragon 900 all-in-one liquid cooling unit earlier this year. Our first look at it showed that the unit offered great visual appeal but simply didn't deliver when it counted most, while overclocking (Why else would you get liquid cooling?). Following our review, we were informed by AMA that there was an issue with the PWM controller on their unit that caused the fans to operate at about 50 to 75 percent while plugged in to a 4-pin (PWM) connector on the motherboard. They assured us they would have the issue fixed for consumers and asked us to test it again without using the PWM connector.
We found an opportunity to toss the Aragon 900 back on our test bench and see if it the results were significantly different than the first time around. We wanted to get straight to the meat, so we only monitored temperatures during a full CPU load, while overclocked. We even decided to take it a step further and bump up the speed and voltage even more, compared to our previous overclock settings. We compared the Aragon 900 to the Zerotherm FZ120, which is the best air cooler we have tested. Last time, the cooling performance of the Aragon 900 showed to be close to (just slightly better) than our air coolers.
Overclocked Load Temp Readings | |
| Cooler | Average Core Temps (°C)* |
| ZeroTherm FZ120 [air, 1 fan] | 50 |
| Aragon 900 (PWM/4pin) | 48 |
| Aragon 900 (3pin) | 45 |
* Unadjusted CoreTemp readings, rounded up
As you might expect the Aragon 900 tested much better time around, otherwise we probably wouldn't have bothered with this update. We found that use of the PWM controller did in fact lower fan speeds and cooling performance. Changing of any of the CPU bios settings did not alter the results. The mere fact that it was on the 4-pin (PWM) connector was enough to fool the controller to run at slower speeds. We had to either use a 3-pin connector on the motherboard or a molex (PSU 4-pin connector) to 3-pin adapter to get the better results.We also noticed a slight increase in noise due to the fan speed increase. However, the cooling-to-noise trade off was more than worth it, as we improved about 3 degrees Celcius with this fix.
Category Scoring REVISED
| Category | Score | Comments |
| Thermal Performance | 20/20 |
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| Installation | 20/20 |
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| Acoustics | 16/20 |
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| Overclocking | 18/20 |
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| Warranty & Support | 10/10 |
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| Price/Value | 6/10 |
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Our REVISED Recommendation
Knowing what we know now, it is clear that Aragon 900 is one of the best all-in-one cooling units on the market. Some enthusiasts still will shy away from all-in-one units as they like to custom build their own liquid cooling solutions. We still want to stick by what we have said in the past, which is that top air coolers will be the best bang-for-buck option for mainstream users. But for enthusiasts that desire an easy to install, all-in-one liquid cooling solution, we think the Aragon 900 should be a serious consderation. Just be ready to dish out more than a couple Ben Franklins ($200 for our international readers) to get this unit.
Click here to see the original review.