Gadgetory

today NZXT announced its new kraken line of coolers this is the X 42 this is the 140 millimeter version of the cooler they've also got a 240 and a 280 prices are all over the place but the 140 model that we have here the X 42 is priced at $130 X 52 is a hundred and fifty dollars it's 240 millimeter rad and then if you got extra money 160 for the 280 this thing is primarily interesting because it's got a full RGB LED controllable backlight behind the pump plate and this does have an infinity mirror in it as well so it is one of the most aesthetically advanced I suppose liquid cooling solutions out there on the market at least for a CLC but we'll talk about that more in a moment first all this coverage is brought to you by an tech and a new qubit mini ITX case designed by Razer which supports full custom loop liquid cooling we're still waiting for the other two units the 240 the 280 to come in but today we're going to tear this one down and look at the internals because it's actually a bit different from previous ace attack pumps this is a Gen 5 is Dec pump and a lot of this design as we understand it was actually by NZXT so to my knowledge this is the first AC tech product in the consumer side of the market that has a PCB and electronics inside of it that were fully designed by the partner in this case that's NZXT rather than by ASA tech so that's new the LEDs as I said are also new they've also kind of gotten a bit smarter with the cables there's all modular cables if you noticed unlike the previous cracking coolers where you had a huge web of cables sticking out of the thin and they were not optional now you can connect your disconnect including this USB cable this is a mini USB and that goes straight to a computer so you could plug it into a laptop even and still control the LEDs even though it's not actually cooling anything pumps powered by this there's a SATA power connector so your SATA power as you would use for an SSD or hard drive you plug the SATA power in there and that's how this is powered but that is it for the connections and then other features sort of on the outside before we dive into the teardown these tubes you can see now swivel this the not happen with the fourth gen a stack pumps or the 4.5 gen this is a 5th gen feature and that's done just really by having an elbow here and then there's probably we'll see when we tear down probably another elbow in there like that which would allow this action other than that it's the normal Barb's it's got fancier to be nice opposed but it's still the rubber tubes that a stack uses the closest comparable competitors on the market would be Corsair so they've got the H 100 IB 2 that is also a Gen 5 pump and then if you look at my notes here there's an H 115 I with a Gen 5 ace attack pump but this is much different and that's in one way just the tubes they don't come straight out the top of the thing they come out of the back then up and then also the LEDs and all that are completely new so let's tear it down this is the Kraken X 42 model you can see we've got the bottom just as always would be it's got pre-applied thermal paste your copper cold plate the rest of the the bottom bracket there and then your mounting so we're going to start with unscrewing four of the outside screws I haven't taken one of these apart obviously it's brand new so we will we'll learn as we go and just a quick note if you think about doing something like this yourself just know going into it you're probably destroying your cooler you could technically probably refill these well that is a giant screw but I don't know that it would be too successful never tried to refill a closed loop it is just a propylene glycol in there though okay so standard cold plate copper cold plate with the removal of those screws we can now pull this apart a lot of foam padding in there no liquid yet so that's good there we go there's a better view of the inside so foam padding this gray thing sticking up is actually if we wash this off I think you will see that it is probably a diode of some kind covered it in a ton of thermal paste yes so this is actually a diode it sticks way up and it goes through the inside of this you get this stuff out of the way so this is going into into this hole that's also got their own base everywhere that as I understand it should go straight into the liquid so this diode should actually be able it's a thermocouple it should actually be able to read the temperature of the liquid and it goes way in there so that's actually theoretically good news because on this particular model all the new Krakens you can control the pump speed and the fan speed independently if you wanted to do such a thing but that's that's the first part of this taking apart I don't know where these cables connected we're going to be able to disconnect them or not but we can try I guess I think we'd have to get in under here to take them apart and there are three more screws in here so unfortunately for us these wires are soldered on each end which means there's no good way to disconnect them without destroying them don't do I have wired sorry guys brand-new cooler and it's ruined but yeah that's we got to see how it works and I've already I've got others coming in for testing so this will educate us more in the long run what we've got here is the diodes sticking out that goes into the lower chamber to test the liquid temperatures the cables that were soldered here are for the LEDs and power or things like that this PCB is pretty complex actually this is designed by NZXT not by ACE tech so that is interesting and new let's take this apart okay talk about that in a moment at that moment so for the the PCB because this is the main point of interest basically a small way for cheap PCB in terms of just the thickness but you don't need a thick like overclocking PCB that'd be silly so what we have is a an RGB LED controller of some kind and then on this end which is what shines through this thing here with the infinity mirror effect and there's some LED light tubes in there I'll talk about later so on this side we've got one two three four five six seven eight three six eight at least eight LEDs in this circle some of them are side flare type LEDs but those are the main ones in the center and then on the other side oh yeah we've got your power ground all that trouble on the other side you can see the USB connector the SATA connector the diode and the and the controller which is stm32 if anyone cares to look that up and that is an F 103 C 8 T 6 with a bunch of other things in there my is 604 something like that so that's the controller the LEDs all control through here is pretty complex little board for a liquid cooler this is the cap that sits between the pump and the infinity mirror all goes like this something like that anyway and then the part to talk about here I suppose is just the mirror so this is pretty basic stuff if mostly probably know how it works one mirror on the outside another one lowered down and it creates the effect that there's multiple strips of light in there and then you can actually just this is the whole ensemble right here you just move it around it come out go that'd be cool cool that's kind of neat this is your NZXT logo with one of the mirrors behind it and with a light tube so there's one light tube and then it just looks like a bunch of them because again the mirrored finish on each side so that's what we got internally for the actual hardware here's another PCB this is the base PCB it's the simpler one this is the one that does all the heavy logic with the LEDs and it is actually pretty complex as you'll see in the software when we review these things this is the one from ASA tech but it is again all kind of designed by NZXT with this particular product so that's the base PCB you'd find that in pretty much any gen 5 pump it might have some modifications I'm not positive but let's see if we can start taking this apart find out what's under there ultimately we'll have to take the cold plate out to see see how the liquid flows and things like that ok so it goes that PCB that thing is very tight very thin not much to talk about there here's your motor this one's got one two three four five six seven eight little coils in it so I don't know if that if it's an eight pole or what but it's pretty powerful looking the magnetic motor should be using a bigger screwdriver head for this but you get the idea this comes out I can actually see the liquid in there I don't know if that's visible there it is there's your liquid this screws got a rubber stopper on it to prevent it from coming out I'm not sure if this screw has to come out to remove the stuff we're doing next so I'm actually going to put it back in for now and if we can't get it apart then I'll take it back out later that's just to simplify so I know all the liquids coming out of one place I think next we just have to start taking the rest of it off there's your mounting your socket plate I won't need that currently so take that off this is all connected it looks like so next thing is to start taking these out but these I really have to get this screwdriver size right on this is they're very very thin and unforgiving mother okay okay there's one it's going to strip now gamers next a showerhead sort of really tempted to start going the brute-force like pull it out with pliers method Oh no it's holding us oh there's a screw got it hidden screws okay there's another part there's where the that 90 double elbow I talked about is so elbow one elbow - that's what allows the swivel while also being pushed outside of the pump rather than out of the straight out of the top like the Corsair Gen 5 units are so we are done done with this half of the unit this can go away for the better really so if I drill through the head of a screw something went over there it's still holding this on got all the heads of the screws huh there we go look at that I'm sure it's exactly how they disassembled it at the factory so what we've got is uh basically these these okay few things these screws are really soft metal these are extremely easy to strip I knew that going into it fortunately I also don't care so that means that there's really no downside to you know try and try every screwdriver I've got easily accessible and if it's still strips then screw it we'll just well not screw it we'll do the opposite we'll drill it so that's that's what we ended up with plates obviously babette bent for my endeavors but you get the idea the format here is the same as the other ASA tech pumps in the past so basically you've got a little cover here that goes over the micro fins explain this many times before if you've heard it I'm sorry but basically there's ton of micro fins in here and there's little channels on the sides the liquid goes through the fins like this so the bottom of the plate touches the component CPU or GPU conducts the heat spreads through the fins you want as much surface area as possible to dissipate the heat most efficiently and then liquid goes through the fins carries the heat up and out of the tubes and this basically helps with pressure helps keep the pressure high through those fins you can see that the two pieces go together like that so that's how they meet and that pretty much handles the the cooling aspect of it there's channels way in here both sides down there down there might be one other one definitely down there and that's where you get the liquid coming back up and out of these in and out of these tubes or I should say these sort of barbs or barb housing anyway so that is the let's let's rephrase that that was the crack and x42 NZXT I'm sorry a pretty cool engineering though so again this is kind this is kind of the most important or most interesting aspect of the whole thing this is NZXT ease design PCB with the LEDs on it and a nice circle pattern emits that light pretty evenly through the mirrored finish and then you've got some side lights as well things like that we'll have more coverage of this thing though in terms of like actual cooling performance pretty soon I've got all three units coming in testing versus the H 100 IV 2 which is the direct Gen 5 competitor and the some of the other stuff predator 280 from ek so that's what we got for you patreon like the postural video as always if you would like to help fund the purchase of more screwdrivers that are good for this I mean we I have a lot of screwdrivers but very weak screws and not quite a perfect fit alternatively if you'd like to fund the purchase of a new whatever this size drill bit is because it snapped at the end so yeah that's a that's our content thank you to our sponsors for paying for new drilling I will see you all next time subscribe links the description below for more information leave a comment if you want to let us know what you think check back soon for the review I'm going to get out of here before I hit my head on this see you next time you