Gadgetory

you can't water blocks make some of our favorite quick release valves but their previous attempt at a semi open-loop cooler the ek predator terminated after an overwhelming amount of issues with leakage it was a shame too because the predator was genuinely one of the best performing coolers we'd ever tested for noise normalized performance and ultimately if it can't hold water it's all kind of irrelevant ek is attempting to redeem themselves today with the modular semi open approach set forth with the new ek mlc Phoenix series a viewer recently loaned us their ek mlc Phoenix 360 cooler and Intel CPU block which we then immediately put to work on the bench before that this video is brought to you by thermal grizzly makers of the conductor hot liquid metal that we recently used to drop 20 degrees off of our coffee leak temperatures thermal grizzly also makes traditional thermal compounds we use on top of the IHS like cryo not and hydro not pastes learn more at the link below so this is ek is 360 millimetre liquid cooler it's a modular kit basically the one we have here came from a viewer and the viewer purchased the 360 millimetre radiator which includes three of their Vardar Evo fans and with that the viewer also purchased an Intel block so this is the CPU cooler there is no GPU cooler in this one so you could buy a separate GPU block if you wanted to it increases the price significantly but today we're just testing the CPU cooling component so this is a semi open-loop it's basically a closed-loop right now however you could use the quick disconnect valves the QDC valves and attach another component to the loop if you desired and in that way it's kind of an easier version like a not even a baby's first loop it's like even before that so this is a quick way to get into a semi open loop design but it is kind of expensive just for these components it cost the viewer who loaned it to us about two hundred eighty dollars so I believe when I checked a moment ago the CB block for the Intel cooling component was eighty bucks and then this radiator plus fans almost two hundred dollars on its own that's for the design it's pretty straight forward it's very similar to the predator previously but improved in a few ways I mean one would hope considering the predator had a whole lot of leakage reviews by consumers on new AG Amazon and other retailers so this one is still a pump on radiator designs at the pump is located up here you've got some sort of tank up there as well and then the block for the rest and it's really that simple so if you do connect multiple components to this loop like a GPU block if it doesn't contain a pump within it you're basically going to want to ramp this RPM up to the max and it does create some pump whine which is something we'll talk about momentarily once we get into the noise section so that's the very basics of this cooling solution this is not quite a closed-loop liquid cooler it's far more expensive but it's also something you can add GPU blocks to the question is whether or not that's actually worth it or if you should start looking towards things like proper open loops at that point although they are a bit more complex to get into so let's go through the thermal numbers and see how that looks then we'll talk conclusion and value at the end we're starting out with a chart that only shows our ek MLC Phoenix tests and then we'll add the rest of the coolers momentarily this chart shows all of our Phoenix testing including some quick push pole configurations and noise normalized 40 DBA configurations EK ships the unit with a stock pole configuration for the fans and in that out of box configuration it does the best it operates with a load temperature of about thirty two point six degrees over ambient this was followed by a push configuration test using an allen key to flip the fans around which then gave us a thirty three point seven degree Delta Z over ambient so completely 100% within margin of error at that point and that would also suggest that there's no appreciable difference between push and pull configurations in an open-air format in fact if you saw any impact from changing the push versus pull layout at all we would suspect that it be more dependent on your specific use case ie the literal case that you're putting it in and the rest of the cooling configuration within that case that would be more impacting than an open air from what we've seen normalizing at 40 DBA increases our temperatures by degrees as you'd expect and the increase is outside of error margins so it is actually measurable although it's not necessarily appreciable to probably 90 plus percent of users we'll talk about this more in a moment moving on to our steady-state chart for all tested devices the ek MLC Phoenix readily claims its position I'm on the top three coolers we've tested its performance is within error margins of the EB GAC LC 280 and the Corsair H 115 I we do not have the measurement resolution required to determine any difference between these three devices at this point in the very least we can confidently state that the ek MLC Phoenix 360 unit cooling only the CPU is a top three cooler on our charts its performance is admirable here and the coolers of Vardar fans are a large contributor to the advantaged cooling capabilities to give us some perspective on where the Phoenix leads we see it ahead of the crack in X 62 outside of error margins and ahead of the ice bear 4/20 which suffers from both awful fans and a pump which is comparatively anemic to the large radiator size more importantly the ek Phoenix 360 silenced to 40 DBA performer is better than about 80% of our charted items on this larger chart meaning that it has a lower noise performance and still exceeds the flat-out cooling performance of most of its competitors we don't have every single cooler we've tested on this chart mostly because we'd run out of space but the ek Phoenix at 40 DBA lands at 7th verses about 40 tested configurations on this testbed which include largely liquid coolers so that's damn good performance normalizing for 40 DBA the ek MLC Phoenix 360 unit chart tops once again though it is technically within margin of error of our second-place line item B Kraken X 62 280 milliliters cooler the Phoenix ends up at 35 degrees delta T over ambient and is mostly comparable in size to the three sixty millimeter coarser h1 50 I the h1 50 islands at thirty six point eight here of course as always this is noise levels in decibels when we're looking at 40 DBA for noise normalization so we're not accounting for the type of noise although the ek Phoenix it does rank as best for noise normalized performance at 40 DBA it still has an audible pump whine during use so it's type of noise is a bit more annoying than other items at 40 decibels you may want to manually step down the pump if using this only the coolest CPU though the higher speed will significantly benefit combined CPU and GPU loops we're not sure the pump line is just in our sample or if it's a wider spread issue but one note where the item is that we were able to reduce some other noises like turbulence caused by the fans by remounting the fans andrey securing the cables they were a bit loose and that was causing some chatter when the fans were going at full speed as for flat out noise tested in our standardized environment with a noise floor of 26 DBA the ek Phoenix ends up about 48 DBA but can spike up to 50 when pumping gets bad this does make it one of the louder coolers but not the loudest that still go to EVGA loudness is ultimately a function of how fast a manufacturer is allowing the fans to spin and what's more important is the noise normalized thermals that we already showed you as they help illustrate how well a cooler can perform when under constrained conditions so this cooler does well overall it's a 360 millimeter cooler it's appearing above other 360s and some of our charts in terms of thermal and noise of their own performance it's one of the leaders in both categories at least if you ignore the flat-out noise levels when we run it at 100% rpm it does well it's $280 this isn't something we would recommend buying if you're just going for a high performance liquid cooler that's easy to use because in that case you could save more than $100 and get a properly closed loop however if there's a specific use case you want this for for example adding a GP block with something like a Kraken or of course our H Series cooler couldn't do then it's a good option but again at that point it's starting to get so expensive that it's time to look at what open loops caused and see what kind of difference it is in price to jump to it and then if that's worth it to you this is going to be a lot easier to set up it's simpler it's basically to quick disconnect valves and then you install everything else just like you would for any GPU cooler or any CPU block so it is pretty trivial to setup but overall we do like the cooler quite a bit for its performance it's just expensive so maybe not the most practical purchase but if you already had your heart set on it because you just really wanted it well you can at least buy it knowing that it's good so there's that much at least and as always we think anyone who sent stuff in for loan to review it's certainly helpful this is a good one but we'll have to be sending it back now so thank you for the loaner as always subscribe for more go to patreon.com/scishow it stops out directly or go to store dock gamers Nexus dotnet to make a shirt like this one or one of our other products like the mugs or the mats I'll see you all next time