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Intel 120MM Liquid Cooling Unit Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips

2011-11-13
so today I have a pretty cool unboxing of something that at the time of unboxing it is not released but by the time I released the video it will be released so this is the intel thermal solution RTS 2011 LC 4 TDP up to 130 watt yes that is Intel's awesome and like cool marketing name and by marketing ami-nee I mean part number for their new liquid cooler for their LGA 2011 processors and it's not only for their LGA 2011 processors actually I'm line on the front of the box here check this out that is good for 2011 1366 1111 56 and 1155 now one difference between this and competing liquid cooling solutions such as those from Corsair or kool-aid or antic or whoever the case may be is that this one does not come with any AMD mounting hardware I know right very unexpected so we've actually got a trial cameraman with us here today I just thought I'd let you guys know that and I saw on one of the other videos I uploaded you guys are already making comments on what you think of the various camera people we're trying out so I'd be happy to hear your comments and I'm sure he'll be either happy or or disappoint to hear your comments and apparently there's a CPU in here although I really really don't think they're all going to come with a CPU so yeah let's look at the documentation that's included at first we've got the Intel RTS 2011 LC liquid cooling solution which includes installation instructions and a three year warranty that's awesome actually that's outstanding having a three year warranty on a cooler like this important do not fully tighten okay until they're all parts to engage that's good these are all good instructions here's little diagram showing you what to do what goes where and how to mount on a and B oh no not on a penis no no this only mounts on Intel sockets hahaha okay so there you go these are actually fairly detailed plug the thing in the thing and you're done okay let's look at the included mounting accessories and whatnot I like the environmentally-friendly packaging here so that's all recyclable material so this is actually different this looks like the probably OAM by ace attack based on doubt yeah there's an ace attack logo right there on the back of the backplate so you can see it's got the 1156 1366 and 775 mounting here and then it looks like the way okay here's the retention ring all right and then what else have we got okay we've got some thumb screws nice big thumb screw so you have the option of either screwing them in with your fingers or screen them in with a Phillips head screwdriver got some other more different ones all right we've got what looked like aluminum spacers okay we've got some double-sided sticky pads which are going to prevent your motherboard from being shorted out by applying a backplate all right we've got some screws so these are your fan mounting screws as well as your radiator mounting screws I'll show you how those work in a minute we've got some Intel approved thermal compound which comes in a little baggie and we have some zip ties look at that Intel include zip ties for you actually two things a thermal compound very nice alright let's have a look at the unit itself the first thing I want to check out is the fan because my expectations for this fan based on how cool it looks are pretty high this is actually a blue fan and you know what let's pause the video for a minute let's go check out the color so there you go that's what the fan looks like when it's on it's pretty cool or as my little brother would say super COO okay so it's got three LEDs which are all on the central hub not on the frame like we're used to seeing on fans okay it's not incredibly loud by any stretch of the imagination but I think that it's running at 100% right now because that header is not speed controlled so we'll go back and we'll have a look at the unit itself so one of the first things I notice about this particular guy right here is that it looks pretty similar to the enttec 920 in that it has this awesome awesome tubing so look at this I can take this tubing I can twist it up and I could mount my CPU here and I could mount my tubing like that and it would not tink this is nice thick wall flexible tubing and you should not underestimate the importance of that when you're doing a liquid cooling setup tubing is imperative to the overall performance because if it kinks performance will suck and if it doesn't kink performance will be good it is the difference between suck and good so very very nice very well thought-out and it's expensive to bear that in mind tubing is very expensive so putting in a high quality tubing is something where Intel is saying ok we're going to spend extra money on this unit to make sure that it performs well in any given scenario another thing I noticed right away is that it uses a thicker style radiator this is another thing that I cannot stress the importance of enough liquid cooling is not a magic bullet it comes down to the same basic principles of moving air and surface area the only reason liquid coolers perform better than air coolers is that we're able to take that surface area move it very efficiently away from the CPU and then disperse it somewhere else on something that is bigger and has more surface area than a typical heatsink that you can put directly on a CPU socket so using that thicker style radiator versus the kind that is used on something like an H 50 is definitely a good move for Intel last but not least we've got the pump and CPU block combo unit so you can see here that there are actually Oh neat okay so there's actually a power lead here so that's going to plug into your 4 pin PWM CPU header and then there is an additional power lead and that is a good I can't remember whether it's male or female but the point is that it plugs into the fan there you go so that one runs the fan so that means that all of the logic for controlling pump speeds as well as fan speeds is all based on the unit itself here we've got a copper base which is pretty much par for the course if it's using anything but copper it's going to see slightly degraded performance all right and I think that pretty much covers everything you know what that looks like it lights up let's go back to that test bench and find out if it does so this is a lights on simulation of what the unit will look like there we've got the fan installed on the radiator as well as the CPU block unit installed on the CPU so you can see both the Intel logo and the pool by asset tech parts of the top actually light up blue which looks really cool and now let's do a light soft shot of this and here is our lights off look at the unit very very cool looking definitely one of the best-looking liquid coolers that I've seen to date for these pre done prefilled units
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