Gadgetory

EVGA has closed the loop liquid cooler was shown at CES last month marking the company's first foray into the erupting AIO market the new EVGA CLC 280 milliliter and 120 millimeter coolers and yes the name is literally closed-loop cooler will be competing in the same market as the NZXT kraken x 62 and corsair h 115 i EVGA has taken a more balanced stance between course and NZXT offering some tone down LED functionality while also lowering price and keeping performance a focus before getting to that this coverage is brought to you by Thermaltake and their core p3 chassis which can serve as an ad hoc test bench or you can wall mount it which makes it pretty unique and otherwise is built of pretty simple and high-quality materials you can learn more at the link in the description below starting with the basics EVGA sa i/o units are pretty straightforward there are two models there's a two eighty millimeter right here and then a 120 millimeter both of which use EVGA s backs webspam design the pumps are a stock Gen 5 pumps which we figured out pretty easily by one asking and two taking it apart you can see that tomorrow from posting today the teardown will go up one day later and we'll link that in the description below once that's been posted and the teardown reveals that the insides are what you would expect as a general a cynic Gen 5 comp there's not a bunch of customization other than for the LED plate in the top of the cooler and the PCB is pretty comparable to Corsairs h 115 i but vastly different from NZXT is kraken x 62 which has two really heavily customized well one very heavily customized custom-made PCB and that is entirely for the RGB functionality and then the normal ASA tech pump PCB pricing is one hundred and thirty dollars for the 280 milliliter unit and $90 for the 120 millimeter unit which places EVGA right between Corsair and NZXT in terms of price for the size of the cooler and the FDA's reminder there Kraken X 62 direct competitor to this is 160 dollars pretty steep and of course there's a CH 115 I is priced at about 120 dollars EVGA is cooler comes with the usual Intel and AMD bruh packets and they'll also be offering free and for brackets for those who purchase a units prior to the risin launch they are planning for compatibility nothing is new with regard to mounting it's the same a trivial to install a tech cap screws and standoffs as always and we've come to appreciate those and if you know installation for any other AIO it's basically the same especially if it's a stack a mini USB cable runs to a USB 2.0 header on the board to provide RGB LED control via software the software unfortunately wasn't ready for us to fully dig through prior to the reviews publication thanks to Chinese New Year we weren't able to get that tool in time but we've worked with the basics and can go through a few features that are noteworthy one EVGA plans to offer user serviceable firmware on the pumps which is actually a substantial point of interest and that means that you can update your firmware as you go or save profiles to it in addition to user serviceable firmware they're also planning to synchronize GPU and cooler LEDs through the software and we think it'd be interesting if EVGA also explores this option for their motherboards in the future the software offers the usual fan speed control options and they also have liquid temperatures displayed there which is based on a thermocouple that's placed inside of the pump block reading the liquid temperature and we show that in the teardown if you're curious and then of course there's your cold place at the very bottom of the whole thing and that's got the really densely packed micro fins that we've come to expect at this point from this type of a i/o so everything looks like it should it's an assemblage of plastic can copper more or less with some liquid going through it but the fans are quite a bit different it's got the backs of fan blades design with an open chassis that's going to be pretty interesting for future testing and then the pomp plate and block itself allows for user customizable RGB LEDs not to the extent of entities but still customizable more than courses and the profiles that can be saved to the pump itself to the firmware means that you can disconnect the cable later if you wanted to ditch it and just save a profile and let it run let's move on to testing and thermals the methodology as always is defined fully in the article in the description below and we also just posted about 20 minute long video talking to justice evil has the complications of thermal testing that you should think about if you are thinking of doing your own testing what we do is measure ambient seconds a second we measure the core temperatures second a second and then do a delta value between them to account for ambient fluctuations we're running the RPMs at ten fifty fifteen hundred and max rpm which in the case of the two hundred eighty millimeter unit this 2200 rpm we'll be testing the 120 millimeter unit later when this video goes live I'll be on a plane to California for an event so that review will go live after but for now 280 is the thing we're looking at versus the X 62 and H 100 or H 115 and h100 I really to keep things simple let's start with the EVGA only results then add other 280 coolers and then everything else averaged across more than a thousand cells of data we're seeing a load temperature of 39 point 5 Celsius delta T while at the lowest fan rpm matched with a 7.3 C idle temperature again delta T the 1500 rpm temperatures that land at five point four sells his idol and 34.7 load with the unbearably loud 2200 rpm fan speed getting us an extra two degrees Celsius reduction in load temperatures it's absolutely not worth the noise trade-off in this scenario but the output does show what's capable if you wanted to live in a room where you've got a server level stand noise look at decimal numbers last for folks who are curious about noise output let's add the NZXT crack in X 62 competing 280 cooler and the Corsair H 115 IV two numbers to this chart matching first against NZXT EES crack in X 62 the EVGA 280 milliliters CLC which needs a new name we're performing about 0.75 Celsius better than the X 62 for the most part this is a shallow victory we've got a variance of approximately 0.5 Celsius in our results after accounting for calibration even so these two coolers are functionally identical NZXT is running at 35 point four nine tiles here's delta T with EVGA at thirty four point seven five Celsius delta T at the top and EVGA has more rpm Headroom on its fans so it supports a higher speed and therefore tops the charts with a thirty two point eight six Celsius delta T and that's pretty damn good but again very loud these highest rpm also loud is 1700 and that lands it at 34.6 three soldiers LT moving down now to 1050 rpm we see EVGA start to lose some ground against mgi's X 62 units our hypothesis currently for this is that the two Celsius deficit against MDX is cooler is likely because the EVGA loses power in its fan towards the low end of the PQ curve which is strictly a function of fan design in this case let's start course there now of course there is a competing h1 15i is priced at 120 dollars making it 10 cheaper than eega s and forty dollars cheaper than mdx these coolers on this benchmark looking at the performance we see Corsairs h1 15 i at 1500 rpm is functionally identical to the crack in X 62 and falls within our test to test variant the Corsair and NZXT units are equal strictly in terms of cooling at this rpm making corsair the obvious choice if you don't care for the leds EVGA CLC to 80 millimeter cooler outperforms corsair by about one celsius one at 1500 rpm when we look at max RPMs Corsair is cooler has fans I can hit 2,300 rpm with its SP series fans and that lands of that 33.4 Celsius load still EVGA is new CLP 280 cooler lands at 32 86 and is a bit advantaged even with the 100 rpm lower fancies but of course design matters too and finally here's a charge with all of the temperature results this has a couple other coolers present if you're curious you can dig through those but they're all going to be in the article in the description below if you need more time for the chart the most direct comparable units are still the 280 millimeter coolers that we've mostly run through today and for the final charts we're looking at the noise levels noise levels are measured at 20 inches away with a DB meter mounted to a tripod and we're seeing the EVGA 280 and NZXT 280 course both landing around 37 DBA with a 1050 rpm so keep in mind that EVGA was too salty as warmer at this speed so ng XE is advantaged in temperature at 1500 rpm where EVGA it was advantaged in temperature about 0.75 salties cooler the EVGA unit runs at 45 out to DBA with the NZXT x 52 at 46.4 DBA so bit of a gain there but not too bad overall we saw the test accord a 2015 i-4 noise levels but you can see the rest of the noise tests on this chart from previous benchmark EVGA is first attempts at an AI o is remarkably strong they've come out swinging and have already beaten NZXT in terms of noise levels if just barely and in terms of temperature levels at the mid-range again just barely kind of a shallow victory because it doesn't gain you a lot in terms of performance but they've done well for first iteration design the only place EVGA falls behind is in the low end of the fan speed curve where at ten fifty rpm there to Celsius warmer than NZXT X 62 when it's at a similar or actually equal rpm ultimately the product stack now pretty much looks like NZXT at the top in terms of price not necessarily value but price there at the top and EVGA and then Corsair for the main three we'd be looking at for this type of 280 millimeter liquid cooler EVGA again is that $130 Corsair 120 and exp 160 NZXT Zechs well really their entire lines the kraken x2 series but the X 52 between the three products were mainly talking out here is a pretty tough sell unless you really really like the RGB LEDs that is it's only seriously marketable point when compared against these two more functions focused coolers like the EVGA and the Corsair h 115 units so if you really like the pump place and the Infinity design on on GX is unit and they do have far and away superior RGB LED control and quality in terms of color and functionality has a halt to anything on the table and the Exige is better in that department right now then clearly you should buy an tht that's what matters if you don't care about that evie das got white Corsair has lights EVGA is are a little bit more intense and customizable than coursers I suppose so if that kind of matters to you even change the Victor if you just care about price Corsair is still in a good position but EVGA is actually out matching Corsair for the most part and is only $10 more does the extra dozen temperature difference matter no not really because we're at a temperature at this point even with the non Delta values we're not gaining any performance out CPU because you have an extra one degree cooler core on the CPU doesn't gain you a whole lot if you just want to be better EVGA is just better and that's really all there is to it at 1500 rpm you're really at a tolerable noise level that's probably where you want to stick 2100 rpm is a server room noise level intolerable and I wouldn't recommend it so you should really take heed of those results I suppose that makes them look great on the charts but noise matters too so that's all for this review as always subscribe for more will have the 120 units one toward torn down tomorrow and to the full review will be online once returned from the trip and then we've got reviews of the Kraken series all ready to check the channel to that page shelling of the post roll video patreon.com slash gamers Nexus to help us out directly or go to the website gamers Nexus net where we've got the written review of this with a couple of extra tests including one that I'm really interested in where I'm going to be blocking off the sides of the fan where it's been cut out to see if that matters now hopefully that goes up in time for today's review but if not check back thanks for watching I'll see you all next time that's enough like a