Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

you know, I adore all Kraken X products we have tested to date. Top-notch performance, silent, great looks. Unfortunately, it's different for the Kraken M22. The unit offers really nice looks, terrific even. The cooling performance is comparable to a good heat pipe cooler, it will, however, let you down once you start to overclock with the added voltage on your processor. It still performs reasonably well, it's just that the M22 will get loud, fairly fast and remember, this is a 99 Euro/USD costing product. 

Performance

So, while the cooling is really reasonable, it remains to be just that. Our 95W Core i7 4790K is simply put a nasty processor to cool. In a default setup (clocks) the performance is fine. However you are at Guru3D.com and we know you will tweak your PC 5 minutes after you assembled it - so we added 1.30 Volts the temps remained to hover at 77 Degrees C. At 1.35 Volts reach 80 degrees C (!). And once we fire off 1.40 Volts at this processor we reach 85 Degrees C. For short bursts of stress, I could be fine with 1.35 Volts. So from the cooling perspective, it's all very reasonable. The problem, however, when tweaked is that the acoustics rise real fast. 

Acoustics

Noise is something we have discussed, as there hardly is any, at defaults. On previous older model NZXT LCS reviews, we often complained about the fairly high noise levels, this has changed with the Kraken X series. With one 120mm fan, NZXT is able to make this product silent when the CPU is not tweaked. The fans don't resonate either as they are housed in rubberized inserts, even mounting the screws is done in a rubber socket. The pump we could hear a tiny bit, however that likely can be tweaked out with the right BIOS DC profile. So at the processor at defaults is silent. However, once we added 1.30 Volts to the CPU, here we already reached 38 DBa (under CPU load wPrime 1024M). That you can hear slightly. After that, the cooling capacity cannot cope with the load. At 1.35 Volts on the CPU we reached 40 DBa and at 1.40 Volts a gnarly 45 DBa. 

Aesthetics

Overall the looks are very tasteful as far as I am concerned, an all-black design with the subtle shades of grey make it an appealing product to the eyes. Even the fans have been logo marked (dark) tastefully. It is an easy to install and mounting system, and factory filled with coolant in a closed loop. The black design will make this kit look great in any PC. It simply is a good alternative to heat-pipe coolers with the added benefits of being fairly quiet whilst offering very nice looks. No skills are required other than the need for ten minutes to install the kit. The bling is all about the RGB LED system embedded on top of the water-block. Then the wide combination of RGB functionality, animations or color-coded LEDs based on coolant temperature or even your audio is what makes this thing shine. It looks great, and if you dislike it, you can separately disable the NZXT LED logo from the LED rings as well. 

Conclusion

I am battling the M22 a bit. This is supposed to be a mainstream product, so in that essence and thought the cooling performance is right where it should be. The looks are great as well. Where I find the M22 lacking is overclocking cooling capacity and moreover, acoustics. Ther wasn't a lot of room left for a proper tweak at normal acoustic levels. Then again, if you do not plan to tweak or overclock, hey this is a lovely kit you can add-into any chassis. I wasn't a fan of the new mounting kit, the backplate is unconventional to install with the multiple screws, mounting the cooling block took a lot of force and pressure to accomplish. All trivial remarks perhaps for a mainstream segmented product. The thing is, however, this is still a 99 Euro/USD product. And for that amount of money, I expected a tiny bit more cooling capacity and lower noise levels when overclocked. I think the position of that pump smack-down in the middle of the radiator does cost cooling capacity, and thus effects acoustics. So the bottom line, if you need something with decent enough cooling performance and do not plan to tweak and overclock, then you are good to go with the M22. It has terrific looks and offers the RGB LED suite combined with the CAM integration, that all is nice. For those that require a bit more cooling capacity and acoustics that remains silent, have a peek at the Kraken X series, as that in the end would be better suited for you.

Handy related downloads:

• SiSoft Sandra
• AIDA
• CPU-Z
• HWMonitor