Gadgetory

we fully anticipate the comment section of this video to be filled with the usual comments about error versus liquid but remember that there are use cases for each and that it's always a matter of making sure that you're not crossing over into the other cooling medium by under or over spending for this piece we're focusing on rounding up the best liquid coolers that we've tested this year well look at air coolers separately but this one focuses on just the closed-loop liquid coolers because a lot of people are looking around for these types of guides right now for links to each of the discussed products check the description below or you can also find our initial reviews for the coolers this coverage is brought to you by ifixit.com and their protec toolkit I fix it as refreshing their protec toolkit in time for the holidays you can find a link in the description below to the protec toolkit and other toolkits that iFixit sells we find the protec and essentials kits to be the most useful for DIY enthusiasts so as usual for this roundup we're looking at all the stuff we've tested this year and only the stuff we've tested this year if a liquid cooler isn't mentioned or listed that you know about it's very possible that we simply didn't test it the goal of this content is to go over the best liquid coolers of the year and that means we're only going over things we've actually tested so things that we haven't tested aren't going to be listed of which would instantly answer any questions as to why X cooler isn't mentioned if you had that question also air coolers will get their own content piece later we are currently focusing on liquid cooler is because we've tested a lot of them over the past year and it makes it easier to just kind of put it all in one content piece and categorize them for different performance metrics one of them being most modular for example best noise levels most serviceable isn't it just one interesting one best flat out thermals best noise to performance and we do as usual have the dumbest to trend category at the very end the first one is for best flat out thermals or what you might call an award for best out-of-the-box thermals for this one we're ignoring the noise argument completely and just looking at a baseline of raw thermal performance when maxed out both the Corsair h 115 IV 2 and EVGA CLC 280 ranked within margin of error from one another this functionally for the top of the chart these are 280 millimeter solutions which we think provide an ideal mix of compatibility and noise the thermal performance and when min maxing for each metric the 280s work out pretty well in most cases 280 millimeter coolers are an extra 10 to 20 dollars over the 240 millimeter counterparts and the additional thermal Headroom means that fans can be slowed down in turn this achieves similar thermal performance to 40 solutions but with lower noise levels as for the highest raw performance though the Corsair and EVGA 280 millimeter solutions both take half of the crown as again they're within margin of error from one another each unit uses an ASA tech Gen 5 pump with the 2-time for price at one hundred and ten dollars on sale this week or typically around 130 regardless of the sale prices EVGA and Corsair seem to constantly match one another so the choice will primarily come down to what you think of the block design internally they're mostly the same in this case it's the outside that counts both units have RGB LEDs and those are behind the logo plates and both have their own software solution that you can hook in to strictly looking at the out of the box fan configurations though because aftermarket fans would basically equalize all of these the next crown is for best noise to performance ratio for peak noise normalized performance at 40 decibels thus far the testing puts the Kraken X 62 at the top of the charts we haven't tested as many coolers with this newer method introduced only a couple months ago but so far the stack up of popular coolers puts NZXT srgb heavy cooler up top the Kraken X 62 also happens to be one of the most expensive coolers on the market it is sometimes difficult to get a hold of outside of the NCHC store and typically runs around 150 to 160 dollars fortunately other nearby coolers including 360 millimetre units can compete in price and performance in terms of noise normalized performance with the kraken x 62 if RGB isn't your thing this next one is for most serviceable and is assigned for the easiest cooler to take apart and maintain over a long service life and uptime animatics was first to market with an actually good liquid cooler for thread Ripper on which we found highly competitive in noise analyze performance including vs. nearby air coolers it's also trivial to dismantle and maintain which is pretty much impossible to say for almost every other liquid cooler that's made by A's attack the company nearly deserves its own award category for being brave enough to actually invest in a small market segment like thread Ripper because it's paying off when considering the performance uplift granted by a full-coverage cold plate the libtech TRS strips a select performs significantly and opening the unit only reveals more of why that is the cooler spans it's micro fins nearly across the entire area of the cold blades leveraging the native service area of thread Ripper for cooling benefit but the serviceability of the cooler gives it an important award in our teardown we show how easy it would be to maintain the lift tech tr4 in the future permeation will be less of a concern as the easy access ports make refilling a non-issue if it's ever used beyond at the four to five year mark you've got the ability to refill the liquid with standard distilled water or some kind of mixture propylene glycol of you are choosing lock design and assembly are also surprisingly high quality making the leak tech units the only coolers we're strongly recommending for threader for outside of the usual Noctua air Nhu 14s for most a modular we have the Alpha cool ice bear 420 this is an odd unit it's for a few reasons to thermally the ice bear performs worse than many of its smaller cheaper peers which is entirely due to its stock ice wind fans or at least mostly due to that the fans are noise focused and limited in performance leaving us wanting in a lot of ways replacing the fans helps a bit though you can potentially become bottle necked on the pump with a radiator this large as well and still the unit can hook into prefilled alpha cool blocks like the ice wolf that we previously reviewed and therefore gives users what amounts to a cheaper semi open loop that is highly modular the market is small for this setup as venturing into modularity quickly enters territory of open loop markets but there is still a market for quick disconnect the ice wolf blocks can cool reference GTX 10 series cards have integrated pumps to ensure that the four 20s pumps doesn't limit performance and they are also prefilled we weren't big fans of the quick disconnect valves but they get the job done just be careful to unscrew the correct end of the valve and read the instructions thoroughly in terms of modularity short of going with an ek fluid gaming beginners open-loop kit the Alpha cool options provide full copper solutions worth considering for niche markets we do recommend replacing the fans though the next one is for best noise levels overall this one goes to a cooler that's been retired sadly though it didn't deserve it and it's been replaced with other lines we give this one to the ek predator 2 ATX LC cooler which managed to remain operable and within temperature spec at just 600 rpm on the fans while putting out 29.2 DBA for its noise level that's only 3 DBA over our noise floor of 26 temperatures our were around 49 degrees Celsius delta T over ambient for this cooler so nearing 70 C if you factor in ambience and it remained nearly completely silent and operable under full ABX workloads but also again the only real noise coming out of the system at this point is from other fans like the power supply the GPU case fans things like that we were all so impressed with eks quick disconnect system as they're easily the best of their kind when it comes to ease of use and security the predator units stock fans permit lower operating noise levels a greater range of customization and competitive stock thermals here comes the big unfortunate part as to why it was retired unfortunately the cooler had good reason to be terminated just one scroll through the new agate user reviews it reveals nearly 70 percent negative reviews say that 10 times fast all of which point to leaks in the loop so 70 percent negative it's one of the worst scores we've seen and they're all for catastrophic failure we still want to call to attention that the fan and cooler design for its silence is among the best of the coolers we've looked at this year it's just unfortunate that it didn't work out we do however hope that other CLC makers can replicate the acoustic performance and maybe even the QDC setup without also replicating the destroy the entire system performance of the cooler the next award best overall value was originally expected to go to the cooler master master liquid 280 but we never got to test it and this one coupled with the previous one is probably going to scare if you away from liquid coolers the coolers fans crews have a tolerance of fifty point four six to fifty point six five millimeters and because Coolermaster routes its radiator tubes right behind the screw hole and additionally does not have a stopper pad like every other cooler on the market the fifty point six five millimeter screw punctured the tube fortunately no damage is caused to the test system and looking at user reviews online it appears we weren't alone with this problem this is a matter of zero tolerance and zero redundancies or safeties provided by the radiator and of the dozens of units we've worked with over the years this is the only one that we've ever had this problem with so it's a matter of not having any protection behind these screw hole and also routing a tube behind one which seems crazy let's bring the overall value award title back on the screen and give it to something more deserving best overall value presently goes to the EVGA CLC 240 cooler which was bitterly embattled with the Corsair h100 ib2 well you know overall performance versus price including noise normalized 40 DBA performance and flat-out performance the EVGA CLC 240 slightly outperforms the H 100 IV to at 40 DBA and manages otherwise similar performance the point of differentiation here is that presently in generally speaking EVGA has tried to hold on to a slight price advantage over course they're the coolers both bounce between 85 and 110 dollars with EVGA a couple bucks cheaper right now the trouble with value liquid coolers as always is that you rapidly enter territory where an air cooler might be cheaper and equivalent in key performance metrics so keep that in mind as you look at the lower end liquid coolers because as you start entering that territory of sixty to ninety dollars it really might be best to look for an air cooler and finally the dumbest trend or as we've been calling it the best dumbest trend goes to the fans for the year all the fans all the fans on all of the coolers not every single fan on every single cooler is bad to be fair but a lot of them are the ice wolf for example is one of the worst fans we've worked with and it comes on one of the really the largest closed-loop liquid cooler on the market it might be v largest comes on this thing 420 millimeters you got three of these and they're not very good but if you replace them there's a lot of thermal Headroom to gain they're not alone though alpha cool there's also the stock fans for really everyone else EVGA is aren't that much better in terms of absolute raw horsepower EVGA can kind of brute force its way to the top of the charge just because they spin at 2500 rpm and produce like 60 decibels worth of noise but that doesn't mean it's a good fat just means it spins really fast and is loud Corsair stock fans aren't particularly impressive either neither our NZXT T's and overall it's just a matter of trying to make the most affordable liquid cooler possible that these companies can make so they can compete with the high-end air coolers and unfortunately a lot of the time that means sacrificing the fan the fan tends to be towards the top of the list of things to get cuts which might have to do with reliability and making sure the pump has a long service life doesn't have any failures things like that but just in terms of trends we'd like to see change even if it increases price a few bucks fans would probably be the top of the list for liquid coolers so that's all for this one as mentioned earlier we are working on looking at a bunch of air coolers it's a matter of having to test them all and what systems we're gonna use for that testing so we're working on it we'll have an air cooler round up separately might not be till a little bit later but it's on the way and it will have comparative data to the liquid cooler so you'll be able to properly see at what point in terms of price is there a threshold crossover where air and liquid basically become the same where's the where's the threshold for that so as always subscribe for more and make to make sure you catch the air cooler roundup you can go to patreon.com/scishow cameras and access the tops out directly stored on cameras nexus dot net sipping assure it like this one or find all the links to these stuff talked about in the description below thank you for watching I'll see you all next time