To test pumps I use a flow meter and a differential manometer and vary restriction by adjusting a brass gate valve. I adjust the gate valve to give different flow points and measure the pressure “gain” across the pump using the differential manometer. To understand how to read these plots check out this guide.
Performance with a D5 Vario:
The AquaComputer top performs poorly across the entire range of operation as it does not improve above the Laing top performance at all. The choice of port makes a small difference, neither option is particularly exciting.
Performance with a D5 Strong:
Overall we can see that the top does not perform as expected. Comparing it to the other tops in the roundup it can be seen that this does not just perform poorly, but it performs noticeably worse than any of the competition:
Summary
An expensive, poor performing, attractively chunky top with a cool but debatably useless water level sensing feature. This is the most expensive top in the roundup, even if you remove the fill level sensor option. At $50 I’d hope it was at the top of the pack in terms of performance, but instead it’s at the bottom.
Where to buy: FrozenCPU (only stocks the one without the fill level sensor), AquaComputer
Data. Gotta love it. Thank you for saving me an expensive mistake.
Comments are closed.