Vigor's Monsoon II TEC CPU Cooler

The Competition

Putting our "walking-on-water" challenge into this comparison is Gigabyte's 3D Galaxy II water cooling kit, which retails for a similar price as that of the Monsoon II TEC-equipped air cooler.

The 3D Galaxy II uses a 120 mm aluminum radiator and reservoir-integrated pump, supports motherboard VRM cooling via an added fan over the CPU water block and includes two splitter valve assemblies for adding graphics card water blocks. Gigabyte's box photo illustrates this perfectly.

Gigabyte also provided its Blue Eye VGA cooler. While VGA cooling holds a distinct marketing advantage for water cooling kits, adding heat to the loop would have skewed this CPU cooling test, so it was left out.