Gadgetory

excellent hey guys and welcome back to Pauls hardware i am absolutely ecstatic to be bringing you guys this video today because this video this one right here is my cpu cooler showdown video yes that is correct I finally have produced this video I've run all my tests I've got my numbers and I'm sharing them with you guys right here right now or at least in a few moments after I've rambled for a little while about about what I have written down here in this paper I'm trying to keep things organized so first off a little bit of history here because this has been a project I've been working on for quite some time if you want to get specific almost 4 months ago was when I first did the water 2.0 extreme unboxing over you and at that point the idea crept into my head that oh maybe I should take this cooler test against some other ones it out there and if it's any indication there's actually a water 3.0 extreme available from thermal take now so this one's still out there - from what I've read they're both very similar but anyway from the water to point out extreme i also added on the h2 20 and h1 10 and then the most recent addition was the Coolermaster iceberg 240 l prestige i should say this is the swift tech h 220 the corsair h 110 the idea for this video was to take a bunch of high-end closed-loop water coolers basically to find ones that were better than your typical 240 millimeter radiator whether via thicker radiators or using different materials or a larger radiator and to sort of pit those against each other and see if you wanted to go beyond 240 what your options were and watch what was going to get you the best performance now I've learned a ton throughout the creation of this video because I'll be upfront and say that's a apart from doing some air cooler testing here and there I've really never attempted to take multiple water cooling units and pit them against one another to see what kind of performance they got another thing that I learned is that if you're going to be testing CPU cores it's best not to wait until like the dead middle of the summer when it's just about as hot as it's going to get in order to do that ambient temperatures do play a factor I am testing here in my apartment and you guys can't see everything but there's no air conditioning in this room so when the temperature is is in outside it rises in here a little bit too so I have corrected all of my results to 22 degrees Celsius I've normalized all the temperatures so you can get still the same basis for comparison but if you're going for an aggressive overclock middle of the summers might not be the most ideal time next up I'm going to move into a quick sort of mini review of each one of these coolers and I've done unboxings of each of them already and as I go into this mini review you might notice I'm leaning towards the negative side I'm going to point out stuff that I saw that I wasn't super happy with so right from the get-go I want to point out all of these coolers are fantastic all of them performed really well and I never ran into anything that I would call a game destroying bug or something like that all of these work just fine I'm going to point out some small issues here and there that you might want to take into consideration if you're looking into purchase each one of them so as that said let's go ahead and get started with the Corsair H 110 now the courser h 110 is a 280 millimeter radiator so this is the larger radiator but not thicker it's pretty standard otherwise the larger radiator radiator does limit your case options so bear that in mind when you're looking for a case if you are going to get this cooler make sure that you get one that supports the 280 millimeter rat apart from that this is om 2 by ace Tech which is a company in China which makes a lot of the closed-loop CPU coolers this has the standard ACE tech mounting system and I will point out that the east tech mounting system is middle-of-the-road in my book when it comes to CPU cooler mounting solutions after Mark's aftermarket CPU mounting solutions tend to be difficult as a general rule on this one it's not terrible if they do give you some adhesive so you can apply this plate to the back of the motherboard the biggest issue potentially that I saw is if you're installing this on socket 775 1155 1156 or 1150 / 1366 for that matter the metal plungers in here when they're actually screwed in from the other side of the motherboard if you do over tighten those they can twist around in the plastic bracket at the back here and it can kind of strip out that socket and you know just keep twisting it over and over again it's happened to me once and I've talked to some other people it's happened to so bear that in mind if you are doing this instantly and apart from that I did want to point out that the H 110 was the quietest cooler in the roundup and I'm talking about the low temp out of the load the load noise when I talking about the noise generator here I also want to say I'm when it comes to noise comparisons amongst all these that's one thing that I will be including in future reviews is a more scientific means of measuring the actual noise generated for this review I'm going to give my subjective just what I've heard and what I felt was louder and not as loud but I'm I'm gonna that's that's one of the things I've learned throughout this process and I'm hopefully going to be improving in the future getting an actual set up to measure the decibel sound pressure which would be nice next up is the thermal take water 2.0 extreme and this one has a 240 millimeter radiator but it is thicker than your typical radiator which is 25 millimeters thick this one is 38 millimeters of just over 38 millimeters thick the water 2.0 extreme features USB control so you can actually feed a usb down to the header on your motherboard it also gives you the ability to monitor the liquid temperature in the loop which is a nice feature to have this also is om 2 by 8 a stick so this one features that same mounting system as the H 110 again not the worst but it does have that same potential to possibly strip the threads or the plastic backplate if you over screw it and the other thing is that this one was the loudest cooler in the roundup this is a relative measurement it wasn't crazy loud or anything like that and of course you do have the option to lower the fan speed if you choose to so that is amenable but at the speeds that I was tested testing at which is 60% and 100% fan speed the water 2.0 did strike me as amongst the louder in the roundup the next cooler is the Swift tech H 220 so a closer look at that one will reveal that this one is very customized so Swift tech does a higher end water cooling stuff so they've done a lot of work developing this particular one they designed it themselves this is 240 millimeters again but this one features copper in the radiator itself and copper just by virtue of physical properties of the elements copper is able to absorb and disperse the heat more efficiently than the aluminum fins of say the water 2.0 or the h1 10 the other thing about the h2 20 is that it as it is an expandable loop which means if you purchase this if you if you do want to expand it in the future and make your own custom loop the pump is very strong so you can actually adapt it to add on another radiator to - you can add a reservoir to the loop for example you can get your tubing in there and kind of make a custom loop so it's a starting half point that's kind of an upsell feature that this one is also one of the more expensive ones in the roundup so that's also something to bear in mind but if you are looking to get into water cooling but you don't necessarily want to invest in a whole custom loop right off the bat that's a nice option for you I will say that the pump is fairly loud on the h2 20 but it is PWM controllable so if you have motherboard fan control options you can use those PWM controls to lower the RPMs of the pump which does lower the amount of noise it generates as well and then the helix fans that are included with the h2 20 are excellent they have a really wide rpm range from 800 to 1800 rpms and they are more tuned towards silence than they are towards cooling which i think is why some other testing at that Linus's test for example when he swapped out the helix fans on h2 20 was some knocked to nff twelves he was able to drastically improve the performance but it does run a nice and quiet especially if you lower down the RPMs of the fan so it's 60% percent it was the quieter of the the coolers in this roundup well but that pretty much wraps up for a mini review of the h2s what I did want to say also that the backplate on the h2 20 is full metal and impossible to strip so I did like that feature and it does also provide some adhesive to stick it on there so that you can line it up properly when you're doing the mounting next up we have the cooler master iceberg 240 L prestige this is one of the newer ones that's come out again we have a more custom design from cooler master as opposed to some of the ACE tech and cool the cool it designs that we've seen from a lot of the other water coolers out there cooler master has again much like the h20 designed this to be an expandable loop if you decide to so you have again a combo block pump and reservoir all one that fits on top of the CPU and has a little window in it which lets you look in there and make sure that you got liquid going in there and everything which is kind of nice although it's difficult to see when it's actually installed it has some while winding around the tubing which helps prevent kinking which is also a nice little feature along with the thermal take water 2.0 this was one of the louder coolers in the roundup although again I will say all these coolers you can adjust the fan speeds using your motherboards software and that can drastically reduce the noise that's generated and then I also wanted to point out that I was not super impressed with the mounting system for the 240 L prestige at least if you're going with a socket 1155 1156 or 1150 solution you're actually good you'll just have these little plastic plugs that pop through the motherboard there is no backplate it's easy but when the plugs are installed you pretty much need to be able to hold on to the back of the play the plug on the motherboard then in order to mount these threaded screws from the other side that you actually mount the pump with it's it's not the best but I would recommend if you're getting any of these coolers here definitely make sure your case not only supports the radiator itself but also make sure that the case has a open backplate on your motherboard so you can actually access the back of your CPU mounting area but that's all for the mini review let's go ahead and move on to the performance testing area of this video and I'm going to start off with giving you a quick rundown of the test bed that I'm using I am testing in an enclosed system so it's more of a real world experience not an open test bed I'm using this case right over here which is the NZXT phantom 630 I chose the 630 because I will to close case first of all it's a real case so you can buy and I needed something that would fit a variety of colors including 240 millimeter as well as 280 millimeter for the CPU I'm using the Intel Core i7 3770k which is of course a third generation IV Ridge processor and I'm running it at the somewhat inadvisable frequency of 4.6 gigahertz and a 1.36 volts now I did this not because I needed that much voltage at that frequency but I really wanted to give these high-end coolers a really heavy load to deal with I'm going to be changing this in the future because at that voltage I was running very at very high temperatures particularly when the temperature here rose up in the summer months so I am going to be lowering that frequency maybe just a tad and definitely lowering the the voltage quite a bit because that is hitting right up against that area where Ivy Bridge processors tend to to kind of go over the edge and get really really hot really really quick but all the coolers were able to handle it I'm happy to say beyond that I'm also using an Asus saber-tooth z77 motherboard and I also did use the Asus AI suite software which has the Thermal radar function I was using that to monitor the temperatures not just to the CPU but also the V RMS because they were heating up a lot as well as well as the other connection points on the board I was also using that to adjust the fan speeds to go 60% as well as 100% fan speed for the various tests I was running I got also got 16 gigs of Corsair ddr3 1600 memory 4 by 4 gig kits I do have a video card in there although it was did not have a load on it but that's the Asus GTX 580 directs you to also for the power I have a PC power and cooling 750 watt power supply man for storage main operating system drive Kingston HyperX SSD and I was running Windows 7 64 bits and for my testing software or the load software is using prime95 running the small FFT load test or stress test on that next up let's talk about methodology and this is one place where I learned a lot when it comes to methodology for CPU cooler testing I think the most important thing is to maintain consistency there's lots of different variables that you might roll in there that might change the outcome of your tests one or another but as long as everything is tested the same we should get at least using these parameters we should be able to get an apples to apples comparison of all these coolers so that said I was using cooler masters ice fusion thermal interface material right here I chose this not because it's an extremely high-end thermal interface material but because I have this tub of it and there's a lot and I need to do lots of replications it's also fairly easy to apply if you're interested where this falls in the spectrum of thermal interface materials it's right in the middle it's not super high-end but it's definitely not terrible or anything either I actually came up with a new method using since this is fairly liquidy using a chopstick did have been in and put a perfect circle dead center on the CPU which worked quite well in between tests I was cleaning everything off using art to clean thermal material remover and surface purify which is fantastic for cleaning thermal grease off does an excellent job make sure everything's nice and clean as I swapped between CPU coolers the testing itself first after the cooler was initially installed I did a 1-hour prime95 small FFT burnin that was just to liquify the thermal interface material make sure it seeped into all the nooks and crannies on the CPU heat spreader as well as on the block from the pump or from the closed loop cooler to make sure that it was getting a nice good contact after the one hour burnin I let it rest with the system off for a half an hour and then after that I did a 15 minutes with the CPP with a computer booted up take the idle temperature for temperature measurements I'm actually doing the core temperature using the average of all four cores after that I would do another 15 minutes idle after that I would do 15 minutes of prime95 small FFT with the fans at 60% to get the 60% temperatures another 30 minute rest that I'll to let the temperature drop back down then another 15 minutes of prime95 with the fans at 100% to get the 100 100% fan speed temperatures at full load and now I guess it's about time to finally show you guys the results so again these results are all normalized to 22 degrees Celsius and again I can say that all of these coolers performed very well given the amount of load on the CPU and the temperature that I was creating all these coolers were able to handle despite it being summer here and the temperatures being in the 80s and 90s they they all did a great job if you're looking at this chart here and you want to pick a winner that's the h2 20 definitely the h2 20 was the winner although all of these CPUs coolers performed within about 3 or 4 degrees Celsius of each other so they were all within just just with shouting distance of each other I think when it comes to the actual results but I will say that any off-the-shelf cooler that can handle prime95 small FFT load on a 3770k at 4.6 gigahertz and 1.36 volts is doing a fine job particularly in the middle of summer but again the H 220 as the winner for this particular roundup when it comes to actual temperatures although you will see that all the coolers are doing a fine job keeping that CPU cooled down and then again if you want to take the acoustics into account the H 220 I'm sorry the the H 110 from Corsair was the quietest thanks to the I think the larger 140 millimeter fans followed by H 220 and then last would be the the 240 L and the thermal take water 2.0 again but again these are sound comparisons that are subjective based on what I heard and it's also just between these coolers and I've definitely heard louder coolers than any of these when it comes to fan noise as well as pub noise and that I wraps it up let's do some closing remarks again this has been a learning experience for me I'm going to be modifying my testing methodology for CPU coolers in general in the future gonna stick with the closed system I think I'm going to lower my CPU frequencies and voltage down just just a tad especially if I want to be testing 120 millimeter 140 millimeter coolers as well to get them into this ballpark because I am pretty sure that a smaller cooler like 120 millimeter one I just wouldn't even have been able to handle the load I put onto it so if I did have any of those in this roundup I wouldn't even have been able to run the tests I'm also going to be looking at doing some audio quality or some some noise generation comparisons as well I'll be looking into getting a perhaps a microphone or something that can actually shine pressure a bit more specifically if not I will just use my microphone to record and give you guys just an actual playback comparison of the different noises that are the amount of noise that's being generated depending on of course the load as well as the fan speed that I'm running but I do want to close by saying a huge thank you to Thermaltake Coolermaster Swift tech as well as Corsair for allowing me to take a gander at all their coolers again any one of these is going to be a great choice for you guys if you're looking at it the Swift tech age 220 if I can do one one final thing that you might take into consideration these are really hard to find right now they seem to be in short supply so if you find an age to 20 go for it if not again any one of these other ones will do a fantastic job for you that's going to wrap it up for this video once again thanks to you guys who've been waiting on this one I know I've gotten a lot of comments from people saying where is the CPU cooler comparison I know it's been a long time coming but I'm I'm moving very soon I will be setting up a new area we're getting some new equipments I'll be having some dedicated space to do my video so that I'll be able to crank them up a bit more frequently as well as bring you guys some more testing comparison videos to give you guys some bet some more knowledge and some more stuff to go off of when you're looking at purchasing especially something like this when you're talking look spending $100 more on just a CPU cooler it's good to have some results so you know what kind of performance you can expect also coming in very soon I still have a couple ACS the 87 motherboards so I'm going to be doing some testing with those the 87 pro is the 87 sabertooth so I still got more videos on the way stay tuned for those please toss me like if you enjoyed this video go ahead and post a comment down below if you were surprised by any of these results or if you'd like to see additional tests in the future I'd love to hear your ideas for that and then of course for these e87 boards I've already got a lot of excellent comments and feedback on the unboxings I did for those but I'd love to hear additional stuff because those videos are still to come thanks again everyone for watching this video guys and I will see you next time on Paul's hardware