Gadgetory

the m22 is one of the stranger liquid coolers made by a relatively large liquid cooling manufacturer NZXT dumped to a Sutekh for this 120 millimeter closed-loop cooler instead of opting for a pump in radiator design that circumvents aces act patents and permits sale in the US the m22 is a complement to NZXT ease asa tech products at the high end which will still exist but comes in at $100 and 120 milliliters that's a bit high for a 120 millimeter liquid cooler particularly considering that competition from EVGA CLC 120 comes in at $70 and is made by the familiar ace attack but his performance may make up for the price differential today we'll find out before that this video is brought to you by I fix its brand new Manta driver kit the iFixit Manta kit is a universal repair tool kit that includes 112 steel bits redesigned from the ground up with longer necks for four millimeter bits allowing more precision when working on components the $60 iFixit Mantic has everything from pentalobe drivers to why drivers and standard bits learn more at the link in the description below we already have a teardown video of the NZXT m22 bits and pieces in front of me so if you haven't seen that and you're curious you can check that video out it went up already but the short of it basically there's a pump located inside of the radiator that takes up some of the potential dissipation room for additional aluminum fins but it does bypass ASA Tech's patent registration where they basically say we're the only people who are gonna put a pump in the CPU block so it gets around that in terms of design overall it's not that different from any other closed-loop liquid cooler they only work so many ways there's a copper cold plate with micro fins in it it's got a gasket on top of the cold plate so the gaskets over here and basically helps direct flow and change modulate the pressure as necessary for the liquid going through the micro fins that mounts to what would be the CPU block except the pump isn't in there and then the rest of it just flows through the radiator as it would do in any other liquid cooler nothing else has really changed for the most part so the concerns obviously would be you're sacrificing some of your aluminum thin area in the radiator so the dents of your fin stack is less and potentially covering some of the airflow area with that pump located there now fortunately most of it is right behind a dead zone on the fan it's behind the hub so you're not pushing any air really through the hub anyway maybe some of it gets out and goes around if there's enough gap between the fan and the radiator fins but for the most part it's not going to be too much of a problem except this is bigger than just the hub so the outside edges of the pump do obstruct some airflow and you do sacrifice some of the fin stack area so we'll get to looking into that today the m22 is $100 the X 42 which is an ASA tech NZXT cooler 140 millimeter is presently $115 on Amazon so 15 bucks more for 140 and we'll see how the thermal performance is in a moment the EVGA CLC 120 is presently $70 we never liked the EVGA CLC 120 in fact our review of it was pretty critical and that's because it made absolutely no sense to buy the two 40s or 280 are so much better that just doesn't make a good purchase except the cooler is now dropped down to $70 so it's pretty competitive in that regard these days but there are a lot of 120s out there that are pretty competitive in price considering them 20 to 100 bucks to mzx ease credit the LED is on this cooler are basically the best in their class it's just the infinity mirror like they have on all of the other NZXT liquid coolers except it's a slightly smaller block on top but it's still got the cam integration for RGB LEDs so they've got that right not many other people do that in 120 class the cooling might not be there though so let's go over that first of all supplier overview this is made by a pol tech NZXT obviously specifies a lot of it they created the PCB for the RGB LED control that's NZ FC is doing but the cooler itself the pump is made by a politic they source a radiate well they probably make a radiator for this one and the rest of its all done by them they make a couple of other coolers as well they've previously made the Silverstone Tundra Series coolers for the most part suppliers in the industry primarily include ASA tech sometimes cool it or cool IT if you prefer and that's really mostly it Dyna Tron used to make a lot of stuff doesn't make as much anymore so those are your suppliers for testing as always it go to the link in the description below for the article that will contain testing methodology and also some additional information if you want some more on this cooler let's start with the 40 DB a noise normalize charts this is where we basically set all the coolers the output and equivalent of 40 decibels of noise at 20 inches of distance for the full system which uses a passive power supply and very quiet GPU fan so we're mostly looking at the cooler noise at this point and then that allows us to see the efficiency of the cooler at 40 decibels to more fairly compared all of them with one another with their own fans this is out of the box thermals except at 40 decibels normalized at 40 DBA across the board the NZXT kraken m22 falls in dead last attributable in part to reduce surface area for heat spreading I'm 22 operated at 54 degrees Celsius over ambient when restricted to 40 DB a markedly behind EVGA CLC 120 had cooler that again we didn't like that much and at 49 degrees over ambient for that one the reason we didn't like the CLC 120 from EVGA was mostly because alternative 240 products performed better quieter and we're not that distant in price at time of launch looking to the crack in X 42 the difference in performance is tremendous it's about 10 degrees cooler at 40 DBA than the m22 and cost about $15 more via retail channels like Amazon that's money well spent the EVGA CLC 240 is available for $90 via Amazon these days 10 bucks cheaper than I'm 22 with the Corsair h 100 IV 2 at $105 either one of these would be a significantly better choice in terms of cooling out the price even the CLC 120 would be though we'd still advise against it but $70 does help a quick note here of course there are places you can't just use it 240 even if it costs less so in those instances yes you will still have to use 120 or maybe a 140 if you can ex 42 if you can fit a 140 is much better than that I'm 22 so far but there are still other alternatives in the 120 class so let's go over a couple of additional numbers here's an overtime chart that shows the EVGA CLC 120 with the NZXT fan and the EVGA fan allowing us to determine whether the thermal difference was a result of the fans or results of the radiator and pump design the NZXT fan is cooler overall across our power cycling toward your desk that's why you see the ups and downs and also deals better with soaks this leads us to believe that it's not the fan that's inferior it's actually better but the radiator and the pump design which are restrictive in a few ways one of which being that you're not getting as much surface area to spread the heat and the other being that the impeller as we saw them to tear down is kind of weak for this chart the NZXT m22 in flat out thermals lands again toward the bottom at 53 degrees Celsius over ambient around equivalence with a slowed down 1500 RPM EVGA CLC 120 which operates significantly quieter than the max speed I'm 22 is 45.8 DBA the x52 a cooler that we shunted in favor of the X 62 there's a few degrees warmer than the m22 when cut down to 800 rpm landing at 55 point six degrees Celsius over ambient it's way more expensive than the m22 but the H 100 Ivy 2 isn't it's five dollars more and at a heavily slowed down and quieted 1050 rpm the H 150 ivt performs at around 44 degrees over ambient for this testing unless you absolutely need both the 120 form factor and the lighting effects it's hard to find a place for the m22 moving to noise at 100% fan speeds the m22 operates at 45.8 DBA not too distant from the X 42 out of 79 at rpm which creates a forty eight point six DBA total system noise at 20 inches the EVGA CLC 120 is capable of maintaining a lower noise level with equivalent performance or a significantly higher noise levels at max fan speed that part is up to the user obviously so I'm 22 is primarily good for one user someone who wants a 120 millimeter form factor specifically and nothing else will suffice and that same person must also want the RGB LED lighting effects that cam provides through the top of the block if you don't care about the RGB LED stuff skip the cooler entirely by another 120 assuming you need a 120 the UGA CLC 120 is still not our favorite but at the new $70 price it's far more arguable and it's not like some cheapo 120 cooler made by a no-name supplier it's still made by A's attack it's basically the same parts you'd get if you bought a 280 from EVGA the difference is the radiator is smaller so in terms of reliability it'll be fine even though $70 makes it look a bit cheap I mean you of course could also go air at that price you would definitely do pretty well if you just went with an air cooler but they're definitely valid reasons to go to 120 so if you need a 120 and you don't care about the lights let's give them 22 that's what we're saying if you don't need a 120 and you do care about the lights then get something better that's $90 like a 240 from EVGA from Corsair the LEDs are not nearly as impressive with those two we don't think as the NZXT options so you get the NZXT x 42 if you really want the LEDs but you want a better cooler thermally X 42 is perfectly fine and it's 15 bucks more on Amazon on average so it's absolutely worth the money in our opinion and then finally if you don't need the LEDs at all and you can go with a larger cooler there are way better options the H 100 IV 2 is pretty good for the price especially the EVGA CLC 240 is pretty good and there are quite a few others but we'll stick with those too for now it's kind of the go-to for the current price in the market they competitive and they perform basically all the same cuz their only difference really is fan noise and fan speed and you can check our reviews of those for more on those coolers so that's it for this one the m22 not really impressed with it the pump design although it's unique its creative and they have to be creative if they're trying to circumvent patent issues where NZXT is a partner with ace attack so that gets kind of messy if they're starting to make things that don't use easy tech products it might be in everyone's best interest to try and not cause problems by going with a design that doesn't have the pump on the block and so they did and we have to give them credit for that it's just that the design doesn't seem particularly good so maybe could be improved you could probably move the pump to the tank instead that causes new problems like compatibility any case I can barely fit it to 40 well certainly not for the 240 with a pump in the tank so there are a lot of challenges here with the patent that NZXT and anyone else has to work around if they don't want to use a Sutekh but they are worried about backlash for Mays attack in the instance where they're partnered with them for instance like NZXT still is so we do give credit for that it's just as a consumer you don't buy something because they were unique you buy something because it was actually good and this isn't particularly good except for that very specific one use case we want the leds and a 120 form factor in which case by i guess but an air colored probably better or any other liquid cooler that's it for this one that you were watching is always check out the teardown if you haven't seen it already it's on the channel subscribe for more go to patreon.com/scishow Stiles out directly or Store 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