Primochill Compression Tube Reservoir Review

Primochill Compression Tube Reservoir Review

Manufacturer: Primochill
UK Price (as reviewed): £42 (inc VAT)
US Price (as reviewed): From $40 (ex Tax)

We've lost a few water-cooling companies in recent years but one of the longest-standing, and still-running has to be Primochill. It has always been a big advocate of interesting reservoirs and general water-cooling customisation, but with the likes of EK Waterblocks and Phobya now on the scene, it's had to revamp its range to keep up with the times.

We didn't look at its recent Myriad reservoir, but we heard a few stories about it being tricky to fit together. For the moment, Primochill has turned its focus away from bay reservoirs and clearly spent some time pondering how to make a difference in the tube reservoir arena. Its offering, called the Compression Tube Reservoir (CTR), looks to solve a number of problems encountered when using this type of reservoir.

Its available in 80mm, 120mm, 240mm (tested) and 400mm variants, starting at a modest $40 and rising to $60 for the giant 400mm version. At the time of writing, we don't have a firm UK price or stockist, but we'll update the article as and when we do - at the moment, prices look like they'll be somewhere between £30 and £50. It's also one of the first tube reservoirs that's available with different coloured acrylic, sporting blood red, yellow, UV blue and pink and even frosted versions.


If you're keen on showing off your coolant, then the CTR has the lowest-profile end caps we've seen, allowing for a huge area of uninterrupted eye-candy with less than 10mm of the tube taken up securing the end caps. This is thanks to a new end cap fitting method, which we're guessing gave the CTR its name, rather than having anything to do with compression fittings. One cap has four ports, with the other having two. Sadly, there are no blanking plugs provided and you'll likely need to buy up to four of these if you're just going with the standard inlet and outlet setup, to blank the remaining holes - something you don't have to do with most other tube reservoirs.


The caps are actually two-piece affairs but unlike pretty much every other tube reservoir we've used, they don't involve threads. We've certainly been on the receiving end of at least one cracked reservoir having over-tightened the end caps to stop a persistent leak so we were keen to see just how Primochill has got around this. An O-ring is sandwiched in the middle of the two sections of end cap. We took one apart and were initially stumped as to how to get it back together again. The excited teenager in us then subsided and we did the sensible thing of reaching for the instructions.


The inner-piece has a small slope on one side, allowing the O-ring to just sit around it, which you need to do first on a flat surface with the O-ring at the bottom. You then place the tube section over the piece and O-ring - no screws just yet. The actual end-cap piece simply slips over the end of the tube, up to an engraved line about 8mm from the edge. Rather than using the same screws you just removed to secure everything back together again, you need to use two longer thumb screws - this is where we got stuck before; the thumb screws allow you to reach the inner section and pull it close so the smaller flush-fitting screws can actually reach.