Review: EK Classic RGB P240 Liquid cooling

#5713554 Posted on: 09/22/2019 11:46 PM

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Quite a bit cheaper than buying the parts separate but only a benefit if you plan on adding a gpu to your loop but given the quality and cooling capacity of most 3rd party coolers these days on gpu`s i see no benefit other wise, also...how much of an impact will adding a gpu block to the loop have on temperatures.

#5713850 Posted on: 09/23/2019 11:32 PM

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The only real benefits to using one of these vs a CLC today are the ability to use them in any case, to route hoses to be out of the way, the ability to easily swap out the pump (the only part that can really fail catastrophically), and of course the ability to expand the loop as you mentioned. Plus aesthetics, of course - CLCs are pretty much universally ugly and bulky.

It's worth noting that for any GPU worth water cooling, a thin 240mm rad like is included here is not enough to effectively meet cooling demands. RTX 270+ and the new AMD cards all put out more heat than a 240 shared with the CPU can handle without ramping fans up beyond comfort level, so you would need to add another radiator to the loop to make it worthwhile, and possibly a better pump as well as the one in this kit isn't very strong. At which point, you may as well have just parted out a loop with a thick 280 or 360mm rad to begin with because it would have been cheaper. These kits are great for getting your feet wet (figuratively) but they aren't as good a deal as people think.

#5713858 Posted on: 09/24/2019 12:17 AM

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Well my Corsair H115i does a good job of cooling my i7 7700k, currently idling at 32c on the cpu package with both fans @440rpm and my Evga 2070 xc ultra`s cooler barely makes a sound when gaming, my interest for custom loops went out the window when i got back in to a baking career...if i get time i`d rather spend it gaming not maintaining, Aio all the way.

#5714047 Posted on: 09/24/2019 02:33 PM

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I want an extra graph showing any performance improvement from using any sort of watercooling system to original cheap air cooler - give me Cinebench or some other longer time benchmark results for original manufacturer air coolers eg. Wraith Spire vs these water cooling systems. I'm thinking there isn't any difference at all... and that's why it is not highlighted in these sorts of reviews.

I saw a video LinusTechTips did when they compared a good air cooler to various 240 and 360 rad water coolers and found performance was the same or better with air cooler. So are you basically just paying a lot for lower fan noise during load and nothing else?

#5714055 Posted on: 09/24/2019 03:02 PM

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Chart added.

And no, the benefit of a liquid cooling loop is that you can change to a monoblock, or next to CPU add a GPU. It is here where radiator size will matter as you increase capacity.

For the situation where you cool one processor, not overclocked I agree that the step from 240/280 to 360 is not going to make that much of a difference, as the cooling capacity of the radiator is is not 100% utilized with say a 90 Watt TDP proc.

#5714315 Posted on: 09/25/2019 11:23 AM

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For the situation where you cool one processor, not overclocked I agree that the step from 240/280 to 360 is not going to make that much of a difference, as the cooling capacity of the radiator is is not 100% utilized with say a 90 Watt TDP proc.

Thanks. Well actually I was thinking of the situation where for example I have 3900X running with its Wraith Spire cooler from AMD, and I am not doing any overclocking of processor at all (by manually setting voltages) but instead let it do its own boosting as it was designed to do (from 3800 to 4600 Mhz).

What I want to know is.... would I see any benefit at all in this situation from switching from the supplied AMD Wraith cooler (which I really like the look of BTW) to a third party AIO or water cooler system? (I like the look of the NZXT one)
I mean does the CPU boost spike more or for longer if the cooler is slightly better?

And by benefit I mean would I see any difference in benchmark result scores or longer all-core load results (such as long all core 10+ minutes renders). So I know others used certain render tests which took 17 minutes to run, which gave time for most coolers to heat up and reach some thermal throttling situation (even the short Cinebench R20 run is not long enough to do this)