I have a Kingwin aqua star water cooler. This morning I noticed that my comp fans sounded really loud. Then there was a shutdown. I checked the CPU temp: 60C- 62C, so I figured it must be that. Then I opened the case and saw that the water was stagnant, not flowing at all. Is this because of the water level or because the pump has died? Are there any known issues with this product? Also, the gage was defective when I got it, but physically it functioned fine.

Either I refill, hope gets going again, RMA the unit, or switch back to CPU Fan. Any suggestions?
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sorry, missed your posting. I don't know, personally I wouldn't use a water cooler, it's more complex than a clean copper heatsink with a large cooling fan.

kingwin isn't a brand I'd really trust with my cpu's health to be honest as well, although they are probably ok for what they are.

But I have basically silent cooling at below ambient temperature cpu temp generally using something like thermaltake's nice copper/large slow fan cpu cooler.

Or other units like that, combined with arctic cooling mx-1 paste gives super cool and quiet performance without the complexity of water cooling.

Here's the newegg list of thermaltakes, find one that spins at about 2000+ rpm, with around 20db sound listed, and it will be basically silent when combined with modern motherboard cpu fan speed control stuff.

Make sure it's all copper, but even the newer aluminum ones aren't bad, in fact, much to my surprise, the new stock amd aluminum heatsinks / fans for their 939 stuff are fine, pretty quiet, and keep the stuff reasonably cool. But go for copper if you can.

Avoid Zallman, their stuff is designed to look cool, but it's junk, doesn't cool worth anything, not as silent as they claim, just eyecandy that doesn't work.

I'll take that non conductive thermal compound over arctic silver's stuff any day of the week, it cools as well, and it's safe and easy to apply, and you can't risk shorting out your mobo/cpu by spilling it like you can with the silver based compounds. It's cheap, a tube will last a long time, make sure to get ALL the old junk off before you apply this stuff though, clean both cpu and heatsink base thoroughly before you proceed.

Don't really know more, my guess is your kingwin just failed, their other stuff I've looked at tends to be kind of lowend, false economy savings in my opinion, false because it breaks and you have to replace it anyway.

Your CPU's are currently running about 30C above what mine run at.
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Before I read this I went and bought the following:
www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16835118223

It got really good reviews and looks like the best at the moment.

What do you think?
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I haven't been happy with any of those fancy type fan things, but you might as well try it I guess since you bought it.

Make sure to use good thermal paste like the kind I linked to with this. I think zallman kind of is deceptive, the standard shaped ones that fit in your case better cool as well or better, without the weird shapes that can be hard to get around in some boxes.

But the reviews did seem ok, so I guess it's fine. I've started reading newegg reviews more, and they seem to be ok, you just have to watch out for fake positives, but the presence of negatives is almost always all you need to see, but companies do post fake stuff for their products so beware.
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I see what youa re saying. And I like the look of the Thermaltake ones. Hmmm...

I dont mean to be lazy but I dont even know how to figure out what fans and heat sinks will fit my chip and case. I have the following:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Manchester 2.0GHz Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3800BVBOX

LIAN LI PC-V1000BPlus II Black Aluminum ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

How in the hell do I figure this out?
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