Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

As far as I am concerned the EK-Predator 360 is the king in AIO cooling performance and low noise levels. Now here is the shocker, if you only to plan a processor, then the Predator 240 will perform as good as the 360 model. However, the 360 simply has significantly more cooling capacity. This is why the 360 was released with the quick disconnect connector, you have the ability to add extra components into the loop. Adding a component extra or even two will virtually have no effect on the overall cooling performance, as it has that large capacity. And as you have been able to see, the results are pretty darn impressive. You can combine that cooling excellence with extremely good (low) noise levels as you will have a hard time hearing this kit. And if you do, just set your BIOS FAN control to silent and lower FAN RPM a tiny bit. Another benefit is obviously the terrific looks. The embedded reservoir/pump and fan HUB makes sure that the wiring leads out from the radiator and not from say the CPU cooling block (which you see with many AIO kits). 

Water-cooling at this performance level however is costly. The Predator 360 will cost you roughly 300 EURO/USD incl VAT. Add another 150 bucks for a prefilled GPU waterblock and yeah you are looking at a 450 EURO bill. We do understand that is the caveat with this kit, but do understand that this kit is as good as purchasing separate liquid cooling components, and then add on top of that fantastic quality and ease of use due to the fact that everything (LCS wise) is factory installed for you .

The results are there though, our Core i7 4970K is a tricky processor to cool. The test platform makes use of the Core i7 4790K and we test it in a default setup (clocks) and then overclocked at 4600 MHz with 1.3 Volts. Now the 1.3 Volts is not even needed for the overclock, 1.2 Volts would have been good enough as well. However we inject more voltage to see how the cooler behaves. We also know with certainty that many of you are overclocking at 1.30 Volts. And for this cooler, that is just not an issue at all. Then on top of that we added the AMD Radeon R9 Nano, this product under hefty stress remains just under 40 Degrees C, even when we overclocked it. 

Aesthetics & Design

The overall looks are very tasteful as far as I am concerned, at first sight it might look bulky due to the thick radiator. However once you house it inside a chassis, most of that is not visible. And whatever is visible is nice and black in design. You do not have screaming logos and LEDs and neither do you have wires leading out of the cooling block, as all of it is coming from the radiator, meaning you can route cables out of sight. The 360 has the quick coupling connector, that is a bit in sight we agree. Other then that we feel it just looks terrific.

Pricing

The EK-Predator 360 at 239 ex VAT (~300 incl) in combo with a liquid cooling block for your graphics card of choice as mentioned is pricey. But assemble and compile your own liquid cooling kit and you will notice that the bill will run just as high. The Predator offers ease of use, great quality and an excellent and safe liquid cooling experience. But sure, the pricing is steep.

Concluding

When we tested the EK-Predator 240 we told you that it was probably one of the best LCS kits we have ever tested, the 360 is as good and even better. While you do need a spacious enough chassis for the radiator to fit we do have to state that if you plan to only use it for the processor, the 240 model might be your better alternative as the performance will be close to similar. Then again, if you want to go future proof and in a later stage perhaps add liquid cooling to a graphics card, this makes more sense. Once you need the extra cooling capacity with a CPU+GPU combo, that's where the Predator 360 will make a lot of sense. No matter how you stress or overclock is, you will remain impressed by the cooling performance and low noise levels. Even heavily overclocked with high voltages is not an issue noise wise as you can easy lower fan RPM in the BIOS settings, and even then the 360 will offer you really good cooling performance. Aside from the processor socket refurb the product is fairly user friendly to install, just be careful and take your time. Quality does come at a price, the EK-Predator 360 certainly isn't cheap. But you receive an all factory assembled kit. The pump and reservoir are housed in an innovative matter, the product itself is silent. Proper use of copper is the keyword here as well, with a proper cooling block and awesome thick tubing. While I understand it is hard to explain the price-premium I can say that it will be worth that money with the great build quality EK offers here, this kit just oozes and breathes quality. It will not and cannot disappoint, at this stage I cannot even compare it to the AIO kits anymore as it so much more than that. It is that good.

We grant it our hard earned top pick award.

Handy related downloads:

• SiSoft Sandra
• AIDA
• CPU-Z
• HWMonitor