EK P360 Performance Liquid Cooling KIT review - Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

The past few years or so the market channels has been saturated with all kinds of AIO liquid cooling kits. These kits are affordable and very functional whilst offering pretty decent performance. It however is very hard to beat a proper custom liquid cooling loop.

Granted, it is a lot of work, but it is exactly the work that you put into it that makes you appreciate your build even more. A proper liquid cooling loop will offer seriously good temperatures, very low noise levels and combined with some nice LED lighting and proper component usage a very aesthetically pleasing build. Chances of leakage are incredibly slim, especially with the EK parts I dare to state that if you do things according to our advide the chance of leakage short and long term is even slimmer opposed to a pre-fabbed LCS kit. Honestly I am confident about that.

The EK 360 performance liquid cooling kit as tested is just lovely, and heck, it's called performance not even enthusiast. For just short of 350 EURO you will receive the package as listed today (withouth LEDs). Included are a proper CPU water-block, the D5 pump/reservoir, the tubing, the fittings and then depending on your choice a radiator alongside with the Vardar fans. Everything is included, all you need to do is pick up a bottle of distilled water (1 Liter for 50 cents in the supermarket). The end result is time well spent, killer cooling performance and great looks. 

Overall

While I agree that water-cooling at performance level however is costly, the 360P kit will cost you roughly 345 EURO which includes VAT. We do understand that it is exactly the cost that is the caveat with custom loops, 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. Installation wise things are as easy as can be, just read the included manual or use our article as a guide. Let it sink in, as lots of parts can be confusing and you do need to define where you want and can place your components. Also you need to make sure your chassis actually can fit this kit. We used a Corsair 600C. BTW a quick thanks to Corsair for shipping this chassis, while moving our review sample it got damaged, Corsair was kind enough to replace it. And yes, a good chassis is important as you need space, clearance, a nice big side see-through panel to show of that liquid cooling goodness. The 600C was a perfect match.

Performance

The results are there though, our Core i7 6700K is a tricky processor to cool. As always we test at a default setup (clocks) and then overclocked at 4600 MHz with 1.3 Volts. That 1.3 Volts is not even needed for the overclock, 1.2 Volts would have been good enough as well. However we injected more voltage to see how the cooler behaves. Fact is, 1.3 Volts was just not a problem with this kind of cooling versus processor. Neither was 1.35V or 1.40V. Only at 1.40 and 1.50 Volts thigns get more serious, but even at 5 GHz with 1.50 Volts we managed to finish prime runs and Cinebench. Albeit the temps there got out of hand. So with Skylake up-to 1.40 Volts we could recommend with this cooling kit (depending on ASIC quality of the processor of course). We can only imagine what the performance and OC results would be like with a delidded processor. 
 

Aesthetics & Design

The overall looks are very tasteful as far as I am concerned. The kit itself is obviously a little bland, go and purchase yourself a nice RGB LED kit and light up that gear, a setup like this deserves a little bling. Alternatively you could opt UV reactive coolant and a black-light etc etc. So aesthetics wise the end result will be based upon your choices. Clear coolant and that CPU cooling block alone bring that little extra to a PC though, the looks are much cleaner without a bulky heat-pipe cooler. On the opposing side, we did need to mount a 360 mm radiator and D5 pump/reservoir of course. But you'll probably get what I am sayin' eh ?

Pricing

The EK 360P kit is priced at at 345 incl VAT with the 360 mm radiator and three Vardar fans, the 280 and 240 mm models are 340 and 320 euro respectively. A lot of money for sure, but it is definitely worth it if you ask me.

Concluding

I had a great time installing and testing this 360 performance kit. It is an excellent starter kit for an audience that starts his first custom lqiuid cooling loop. It oozes performance and when done right just looks terrific. As far as the three models go, bigger is better when it comes to the matter of radiators. With a 360 you could always expand your loop to liquid cooled a graphics card. So for the 25 extra bucks over the 240 mm model, I say go for the P360. Just make sure you can actually seat it inside your chassis.

The Ultra HD video above displays the LED animation and liquid cooling combo effect a bit better - albeit with my over-zealousness it ended up a bit too much like a Christmas tree lit up :)

 
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 P360 will offer you really good cooling performance. Quality does come at a price, the EK-P360 certainly isn't expensive, but we do understand it is a lot of money for cooling. The EK P360 Performance kit just oozes and breathes quality and when done right will look terrific. Combine these facts with the excellent cooling performance and I guarantee you, it cannot and will not disappoint. We grant the EK 360P our difficult to get top pick award.  

Handy related downloads:

• SiSoft Sandra
• AIDA
• CPU-Z
• HWMonitor