Gadgetory

EVGA CLC 280 has already gone through our bench for thermals and noise testing with the conclusion being let it served as a competitive option when matched against the NZXT X 62 and coarser H 150 and I the CLC to 80 and 120 both try to land between their major competitors offering comparable cool and a noise performance the NZXT that rivals crack in mind but with simplified lighting effects to help reduce cost today we're reviewing the CLC 120 from EVGA s new series we've already posted a tear down of the cooler if you're curious about more but before getting to that this covered is brought to you by catalyst energy mint so 3-pack of catalyst contains the equivalent energy to over 21 energy drinks and at just 20 dollars it works out to be a much more affordable and portable option use code gamers Nexus in the link below for 5% off the EVGA CLC 120 is pretty straightforward this is it versus the 280 it's all the same others on the side so basically if you saw our 280 review the CLC 280 the feature set in terms of the RGB LEDs the pump plate the inside of it the a subject gen 5 pump all of that is identical the difference is that this radiator on this one is 120 millimeters and the other one is 280 and of course the fans are different as a result this is a 120 millimeter fan its range maxes out at about 2500 rpm whereas the 140 millimeter fan maxed out somewhere around 2200 rpm give or take the usual percentage for manufacturing variance and tolerance so we're really just looking at a smaller version of it and that means that we're in the 120 140 millimeter range for looking at competition NZXT is kraken x 42 is a 140 millimeter competitor to this that is actually quite expensive it's about $40 more so the EVGA CLC 120 is probably set $90 the X 42 which is 140 millimeter cooler with way more RGB functionality is priced at 130 dollars and then Corsair has some flanking options there's plenty of air coolers as well that compete with these smaller radiators so keep that in mind but for today we're primarily focusing on the 120 and how it compares against it's a larger alternatives rather than looking at the air coolers that'll come in a future video so 120 versus the 242 8 140s all of those will be the main content for today testing methodology as always is a link in the description below and the full article and written review of this we've also already torn the sound as stated and you can find some photos of that there for the testing the very basics you can find the test system and its specs in that article but we're still doing the same ii ii ambient login using thermocouple readers and then averaging out six cores of temperature data over about a thousand cells get the average numbers we have over time numbers we do Delta values for most of the computations and that's pretty much the basics of it and you can find the rest again in the article as was last time let's first start with just the EVGA CLC coolers that be the one twenty and two 80s for temperature readouts and then we'll add the others we're seeing the EVGA 280 C LC at ten fifty rpm outperform the EVGA 120 c LC at is maximum fan rpm of twenty five hundred and that's about a one point two Celsius difference between them keep in mind that our variance is about 0.5 C so we're outside of the margin of test variance dropping down to a more reasonable fan speeds the EVGA 120 c LC at 1500 rpm post the load temperature of 59 to Celsius delta T now about 10 °c warmer than the 39.5 C delta T to 80 millimeter temperatures when at ten fifty rpm fan speed finally the 1050 RPM EVGA 120 unit operates with an idle temperature of 11.4 C delta T and a load about 57 or somewhere nearing 80 Celsius if we were to add ambient back in pretty damn warm at that point if you're curious we also tested the cowling depth with the two eighty millimeter cooler to see if the fan casing made any real difference and the short answer is no it didn't but you can find that in our two eighty millimeter written review which will throw down below as well and just like last time let's now add NZXT back into the results and the XPS closes competition in terms of size of the X 42 but the price is so much higher that they're not really head-to-head in terms of target market the X 42 at ten fifty rpm outperforms EVGA CLC 120 at 1500 rpm by four Celsius give or take showing a clear advantage in the performance from the extra radiator size and of course different and larger fan design the x52 uses the same 120 millimeter sized fans but has two of them on it's 240 millimeter radiator so that matters we're able to run the x52 at 800 RPM and achieve a slightly better performance a noise profile than EVGA SPLC 120 at 10:50 rpm but again you're dealing with a major price hike to the X 52 here's the chart with everything added in the EVGA CLC 280 is still at the top and is still exceptionally loud it's not until way down the list that we get to the smaller 120 millimeter radiator which makes its first appearance right around these 1700 rpm X 42 and the XT cooler where the EVGA 120 CLC operates at about $40 7/8 Celsius at delta T the more reasonable 1500 rpm up version of our test places the EVGA 120 CLC at 59 to Celsius delta T only marginally better than the one air cooler presently on our bench we'll have to add more of those soon but again future content piece for that finally looking to the noise table we see the EVGA CLC 120 landing between the X 42 and h100 iv2 both at 10:50 rpm when the EVGA PLC is running as the same fan speed this makes sense since the H 100 I has similar 120 milliliters and strictly from a noise perspective the performance the volume is better with the larger radiators and by volume I mean noise of not size but your cost also increases substantially moving to the EVGA CLC 120 at 1500 rpm this is also words most likely to be used we're resting right at around 40.7 DBA comparable to the dark rock 3 at 2,000 rpm and ek predator 280 at 1,400 rpm the 2500 rpm EVGA CLC 120 is unbearably loud with its 53.9 DBA output just like its neighboring 50 + DBA coolers like again the EVGA 280 at 2200 rpm EVGA CLC 280 makes a lot of sense in terms of the price and performance positioning of that cooler which is again cheaper than MDF these options it's about $130 and a bit more than Corsair is competing option but has some more led functionality but the CLC 120 is a much tougher sell and it's for a few reasons one of them it's $90 and it's performing really not that great it's about where a good air cooler would be and those will generally be cheaper depends on what you're picking up but the price compared to 140 millimeter options from Corsair and mdft coolers although pretty competitive and cheaper in some ways especially versus mdft it's just not a great position you'd be better off taking up either a good one forty cooler or maybe something that make more sense if you could fit it would be a 240 millimeter cooler because if we look to the coarser h100 I v2 which has been a strong competitors throughout the last year or so even against the kraken line and cheaper by the way the coarser h100 i v2 is priced at around $100 it's $10 more than this and it performs better and it's got a better price better noise performance profile all that stuff for 10 bucks more so if you can fit the 240 that would be the way I would go rather than one of these and a 120 variants unless you really like the look of that pump plate and you also can't afford or can't fit the two 80 millimeter alternative of this that EVGA makes so they put themselves in an interesting position you really should either go with a 140 millimeter or larger cooler with the better performance noise profile or you go with an air cooler if it can fit in the case which so many exceptions can be small form-factor and if the looks are what you want so that's really all this one comes down to not nearly as exciting as the EVGA CLC 280 performance isn't fantastic but it's still overall a pretty good entrance to a new market for EVGA the 280 is absolutely the one that they should push up their flagship and just kind of push that one off into a corner somewhere because the 280 makes them look damn confident it's their first venture into a iOS and it's very competitive with the X 52 the X 62 and the Corsair H 100 IV 2 and H sorry H 115 IV 2 as well competitive with all of those and it's price competitive so let's just forget about this one if you are interested in the I'll have link in the description below for the 280 if you want to watch that review and learn more about it subscribe as always for more patreon link in the postal video to help us out directly patreon.com slash gamers Nexus or gamers Nexus dotnet to read the full coverage I'll see you all next time you