A short time later Asetek began dabbling with watercooling solutions and hit the market hard with their WaterChill cooling solution. WaterChill was basically a DIY style water cooling system consisting of pond pumps, 12v to 120/240v relays, custom waterblocks, awesome installation hardware and Black Ice radiators. While most of the components are sourced from independent suppliers the real IP was the waterblocks and later some custom 12v pumps.

I again reviewed many of these units and was supremely impressed with the price to performance ratio. Sure you can get better cooling by making a few tweaks but they offered coolers for the enthusiast with a variety of different radiator configurations. WaterChill really matured the retail DIY watercooling market and made it what it is today.

The WaterChill system lasted for about 4 years which coincides with the emergence of the LARGE heatpipe coolers. These coolers couldn't surpass watercooling performance but were cheaper, easier to install and, in some cases, just as good. While DIY watercooling was still popular with hardware enthusiasts however, building one is often cost prohibitive and introduces a maintenance issue that many mainstream users are not willing to deal with.