Having patented a simple yet efficient design of a closed-loop liquid cooling system (LCS) that integrates a pump into the CPU water block in 2005, and successfully protected its IP for 20 years, Asetek has become the world’s leading OEM producer of all-in-one liquid coolers. However, that patent expires on May 6, 2025 — today — and thus Asetek loses its key advantage in the PC market and potentially some clients, reports Heise. Coincidentally, last month the company said it had received notification of interest in its liquid cooling business

The patent in question, registered as PCT/DK2005/000310 in Denmark and also known under the US number 8240362B2, was instrumental in defining the architecture of all-in-one liquid coolers for enthusiast grade PCs. Due to Asetek's legal strategy, many competitors were sued for using similar design approaches. As a result, while most products from various brands were built on this design principle, either through licensing agreements as a result of legal pressure, or by Asetek itself and then sold under other brands.

Very few makers — such as Alphacool or EK Water Blocks — attempted to build all-in-one liquid coolers differently. However, Canadian manufacturer CoolIT was among several companies offering significant alternative solutions, but had to reach an undisclosed settlement with Asetek after disputes.

AiO cooing design unshackled

Asetek was one of the pioneers of closed-loop liquid cooling systems in the early 2000s and patented many technologies covering all-in-one liquid coolers. This put Asetek in a unique position to sue competitors for patent infringements or make them its customers and produce LCSs for them. However, as suppliers of closed-loop liquid coolers find ways to overcome Asetek's patents to circumvent some of the company's patents while the other expires, they lower their orders to the Danish liquid cooling giant.

"Asetek A/S has received updated purchase forecasts from a number of the company's largest OEM customers," a statement issued this week reads. "Based on these new forecasts, the expected increase in demand in the second half of 2024 of the company's liquid cooling products may not materialize. This will result in a significant decline in Group revenue and profitability for 2024 compared to the revenue and profitability guidance issued on March 8, 2024."

Indeed, some of the popular LCS makers we spoke to at Computex earlier this month emphasized that Asetek does not make some of their latest products or use any of Asetek's patents. As a result, the Danish company will not get any licensing fees or manufacturing orders in the coming months.

As one of the world's largest makers of liquid cooling systems, Asetek has dozens of clients, including PC OEMs, cooling system suppliers, and even data center developers. For obvious reasons, Asetek does not disclose the names of its customers who have cancelled their orders or what kind of products it ships to them.

While Asetek's traditional PC customers can indeed produce their liquid coolers themselves, they are hardly driving revenue growth for the company, unlike data center clients, who are increasingly buying liquid coolers. Unfortunately, we have no idea which of Asetek's clients abruptly cut their orders to the liquid cooling giant.

"The management team and board of directors of Asetek will consider the long- and short-term consequences of the weakened and uncertain market situation," a statement by the company reads. "The assessment today is that the negative trend in revenue may continue into 2025. Based on this, a plan containing initiatives to navigate the short and long-term challenges will be developed and then communicated as soon as possible."

Asetek — renowned for its AIO cooler pump designs — has announced a new exclusive partnership with 3D metal printing manufacturer Fabric8Labs. The pair have announced a new cold plate design optimized with AI, featuring Electrochemical additive manufacturing, drastically improving the cold plate's quality, scalability, and sustainability (recyclability).

Electrochemical additive manufacturing (ECAM) is a manufacturing technique that involves 3D metal printing at room temperature. The manufacturing process involves a water-based feedstock that contains dissolved metal ions, which enables ECAM 3D printers to build metal structures rapidly while improving the product's quality.

This new 3D printing process purportedly allows for complex, high-resolution structures that significantly improve a product's thermal capabilities through enhanced fluid dynamics. ECAM products can be built at higher fidelity, improving the product's performance over more traditional manufacturing techniques.

Not only does ECAM improve product quality/performance, but it also allows for more flexibility. Metal components 3D printed with ECAM can be printed directly onto temperature-sensitive sub-strights such as PCBs, which can speed up manufacturing and allow for fewer components in a product. In Asetek's case, it can now install circuit boards directly behind the cold plate, which could potentially reduce the size of its AIO pump housings. However, this is just a limited example of what it can do. Other issues could make this use case non-viable, such as the circuit board overheating being so close to the cold plate (which is a heat exchanger in and of itself).

In addition to these improvements, ECAM is purportedly more scalable and offers better recyclability than other metal-based manufacturing processes.

Asetek and Fabric8Labs have announced a new cold plate built on Fabric8Lab's ECAM manufacturing process. The new cold plate reportedly boasts all the advantages the new manufacturing process delivers, including better thermal characteristics, compared to Asetek's outgoing designs, which are built with traditional manufacturing techniques.

Sadly, neither party shared any detailed specifications or performance benchmarks for this new ECAM-built cold plate. However, Asetek announced that its "AI-optimized" ECAM cold plate will be featured at Computex 2024 (happening right now) at the Asus ROG booth. Depending on scheduling, we hope to have one of our people check out the booth to see Asetek's new cold plate in action.

In TeamGroup's Computex press release we find a plethora of PC components, from elegant and extreme DDR5 RAM with "auroras" all the way to the humble USB 3.2 Gen 1 flash drives. All of these components fall under TeamGroup's marketing slogan of 'Dazzle Chill Integrate'.

T-Force Xtreem ARGB DDR5

Equipped with dual light pipes, black translucent acrylic and a 'multi-optical design' to produce an aurora of soft flowing light, the T-Force Xtreem ARGB DDR5 is available in frequencies between 7,000 and 8,266 MHz and is specially designed for gamers and extreme enthusiasts who want a little soft RGB lighting in their rigs.
Keeping things cool via a black 2mm anodized aluminum heat spreader, the RAM has a matte finish which provides a softness, complemented by the aurora effect.

T-Force Xtreem DDR5

If you need the ultimate overclock and advanced cooling, then TeamGroup hopes the T-force Xtreem is what you are looking for. This time there is no soft aurora RGB, instead we get the same 7,000 to 8,266 MHz frequency range, 2mm of high-quality aluminum alloy heat spreader and a thermally conductive silicone gel to efficiently draw the  heat away from the chips.
The matte heat spreader design is low-key, for those that want performance without the attention of RGB. That said, the large T-Force logo adds a little 'panache' to what could be just any piece of silicon.

T-Force Siren GA360 ARGB CPU All-In-One Liquid Cooler

Developed in collaboration between T-Force and Asetek Designworks, the T-Force Siren GA360 AIO features a seventh generation Asetek v2 pup and efficient motors with PWM control. The AIO liquid cooler allows for precise real-time adjustments to the water block motor and fan speeds according to your CPU temperature and it 'Supports Al-Controlled PWM to Direct Balancing of Operational Temperature' The Siren GA360 is compatible with Intel and AMD CPUs.

Just like the T-Force Xtreem ARGB DDR5, this cooler has an 'aurora' effect via an ARGB water block and fan, supporting many different RGB lighting protocols.

TeamGroup states that the GA360's "entire manufacturing process is RoHS-compliant, and its packaging is made of recyclable materials, allowing the Siren GA360 to deliver incredible gaming prowess while supporting a greener environment." 

T-Force Siren DP360 All-In-One ARGB CPU Liquid Cooler

Spotted on the show floor by our roving reporters, the Siren DP360 features a copper water block plate, and a pump fan speed of 2800 RPM. Compatible with LGA1700/115X and AMD AM4 and AM5 CPUs and with a 394 x 120 x 27 mm radiator, the AIO also features a circular LCD display.

T-Force Dark AirFlow Cooler Series for Gen5 M.2 PCIe SSD

With an expected maximum sequential read and write speed of over 12,000MB/s and 11,000MB/s, respectively. The T-Force Dark Airflow Cooler series are a trio of cools, each with multiple layers of aluminum fin heatsinks and heat pipes to increase the thermally conductive area. Active cooling, via a fan and a 'multi-faceted cooling design' helps keep your PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD cool, even under stress. 

TeamGroup C231 and C175USB3.2 Flash Drives

The final products announced from TeamGroup are two USB 3 flash drives. The C231 features a USB3.2 Gen 2 interface, with maximum read and write speeds of up to 1000MB/s and a capacities up to 2TB. The push-slide mechanism hides the USB C connector, keeping it out of the way in your pocket and protected from sharp objects.

The C175 Eco USB 3.2 Gen 1 flash drive is made from 75% post-consumer recycled plastic. There are no performance specs so one must assume that it does not match the performance of the C231.

MSI is one of the best-known brands in the PC market, producing a robust lineup of laptops, desktops, GPUs, and motherboards. They also make a variety of other components and peripherals, like keyboards and CPU coolers. 

MSI has three lines of AIO Coolers that mirror its motherboard sub-brands: The MPG, MEG and MAG series. The MAG series is MSI’s budget-oriented offering, and features a pump which is integrated into the radiator. Today we’re looking at thelargest unit in the lineup, the MAG CoreLiquid P360. 

With today’s CPUs raising the bar for cooling difficulty, does MSI’s MAG CoreLiquid P360 have what it takes to cool Intel’s Core i9-13900K and earn a spot on our best AIO coolers list? We’ll have to put it through testing to say for sure. But first, here are the cooler’s specifications, direct from MSI.  

Cooler Specifications

Packing and Included Contents

MSI’s CoreLiquid P360 comes in a fairly large box that uses plastic, foam, and cardboard to protect the inner contents.

Included with the package are the following:

• 360 mm Radiator + CPU block
• Three 120 mm fans
• Mounts for all modern CPU sockets (including AM5 & LGA1700)
• Fan splitter
• PSU Molex 4-Pin to 4-pin (2 Pin Wired) Cable
• Noise reduction adapter
• Thermal paste

Installation

Installing the P360 was fairly simple. To begin, press the backplate to the motherboard, and secure it by screwing in the standoffs. Next, you’ll need to secure the fans to the radiator, and then mount the radiator to your computer case. Apply the included thermal paste from the syringe to your CPU. Afterwards, all that’s left is to press the CPU block against the standoffs and then secure them with the included thumbscrews.

Many coolers come with pre-applied thermal paste. This won't be a big deal to experienced builders (they may have a different paste they prefer to use, anyway), but it's rarer these days to see an AIO without pre-applied thermal paste.

Features of MSI’s MAG CoreLiquid P360

Radiator Pump Design

Most liquid coolers today are based on Asetek designs, which have the pump included in the CPU block. However, MSI’s MAG CoreLiquid P360 features a pump that’s integrated within the radiator, powered by a three-phase motor. MSI claims two advantages from this design: longer life expectancy due to the pump being removed from the CPU’s direct heat, and reduced noise levels.

Next to the pump, below the radiator tubing, is a refill port. This allows a user to service and refill the AIO without having to send it to the manufacturer for repair (or more likely, just buying a new cooler).

Full Copper CPU plate

The CPU contact plate on MSI’s CoreLiquid P360 is made of pure copper.

Medium thickness 360 mm radiator

MSI’s CoreLiquid P360 features a 360mm radiator that’s 27 mm thick. This isn’t the thickest (or thinnest) radiator we’ve seen, but it should be compatible with most cases that have space for three 120 mm fans.

3x 120 mm fans

There’s more to a cooler than just the heatsink or radiator. The bundled fans have a significant impact on cooling and noise levels. Included with the MSI CoreLiquid P360 are three 120 mm fans, which are not available for purchase individually. 

Testing Methodology

While it was fairly easy with previous generations of CPUs for coolers to keep the flagship i9 processor well under TJ max (the maximum temperature a CPU can sustain without throttling) in tough workloads, this isn't realistic on current generation high-end CPUs (the 13900K especially) without extreme cooling (or enabling power limits).

While in the past a CPU hitting its peak temperature was cause for concern, enthusiasts are going to have to learn to accept high temperatures as “normal” while running demanding workloads with Raptor Lake and Ryzen 7000 CPUs. Modern AMD and Intel CPUs are designed to run fairly hot without any problems – up to 95 degrees Celsius for AMD Ryzen 7000 CPUs, and up to 100 C for Intel’s Core i9-13900K. Similar behavior has been standard in laptops for years due to cooling limitations in tight spaces. 

Furthermore, Intel’s i9-13900K supports Adaptive Boost Technology (ABT) which allows Core i9 processors to dynamically boost to higher all-core frequencies based on available thermal headroom and electrical conditions. This allows multi-core loads to operate at up to 5.5 GHz if the necessary amount of thermal dissipation is there. This feature works in a way that actively seeks high temperatures; If the chip sees that it is running underneath the 100 C threshold, it will increase its performance and power consumption until it reaches the safe limit, sustaining higher clocks (and providing better performance) for longer periods.

The increased cooling challenges posed by Raptor Lake mean that we’ve had to change some of the ways we test coolers. Some coolers were able to pass Cinebench R23 multicore testing with Intel’s 12th Gen i9-12900K when power limits were removed (although only the strongest models were able to pass that test). Most liquid coolers and all air coolers I’ve tested “failed” that test because the CPU reached TJ max in this scenario. 

With Raptor Lake’s 13900K, not a single cooler tested has been able to keep the CPU under TJ max in this test – because as we pointed out, the chip is designed to dial up performance and power until it richest that thermal result. We’ll compare performance instead by looking at total benchmark scores and clock speeds maintained. 

I’ll be testing Intel’s i9-13900K CPU using Asus’ TUF Gaming Z690 Gaming Plus WIFI motherboard and Cooler Master’s HAF 700 Berserker computer case, with case fans limited to 35% speeds. The motherboard’s default fan curve is used for the CPU Cooler’s fans.

In addition to testing Cinebench without power limits enforced, we’ll also be showing results when the CPU’s power consumption is limited to a more reasonable 200W. We’ll also show results at 125W for those who prefer whisper-quiet cooling, at the cost of some performance. For both of these results, we’ll show traditional delta over ambient temperature results.

We’ll provide noise level measurements recorded using a PSPL25 Sound Meter for all three power levels tested to compare how much noise each cooler makes in different scenarios. We expect most coolers to run effectively silently at 125W.

LGA1700 Socket Bending

There are many factors other than the CPU cooler that can influence your cooling performance, including the case you use and the fans installed in it. A system's motherboard can also influence this, especially if it suffers from bending, which results in poor cooler contact with the CPU. 

In order to prevent bending from impacting our cooling results, we’ve installed Thermalright’s LGA 1700 contact frame into our testing rig. If your motherboard is affected by bending, your thermal results will be worse than those shown below. Not all motherboards are affected equally by this issue. I tested Raptor Lake CPUs in two motherboards. And while one of them showed significant thermal improvements after installing Thermalright’s LGA1700 contact frame, the other motherboard showed no difference in temperatures whatsoever! Check out our review of this contact frame for more information.

Testing Configuration

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No Power Limits Cinebench Results

With Raptor Lake’s i9-13900K pushing speeds of 5.5 GHz or more, even the strongest of coolers hit TJ Max while running Cinebench R23 and other demanding scenarios. As the 13900K is designed to increase clocks and power until it reaches its top safe temperature, we’ll be comparing the overall benchmark score and the CPU’s clock speeds instead. 

The results below are for a 10-minute testing run. But to be sure that was sufficiently long to tax the cooler, we also retested both Thermalright’s Assassin X 120 R SE and DeepCool’s LT720 with a 30-minute Cinebench test. The results didn’t change much at all with the longer test: The average clock speeds maintained dropped by 29 MHz on DeepCool’s LT720 and 31 MHz on Thermalright’s Assassin X 120 R SE. That’s an incredibly small 0.6% difference in clock speeds maintained, a margin of error difference that tells us that the 10-minute tests are indeed long enough to properly test the coolers.

Because of the difficulty of cooling the i9-13900K in this workload, the best way to compare coolers here is to record the average power consumption of the CPU. When it comes to total cooling capacity, MSI’s CoreLiquid P360 is capable of cooling roughly 287W. This puts it a bit behind the other 360 mm AIOs we’ve tested, but the P360 also has a lower price than the competition.

As Cinebench R23’s multi-core benchmark will push coolers to their limits, it’s also a great test for recording the worst-case scenario of fan noise levels. You might notice that our noise charts start at 36 dB. This is the noise floor of our testing environment; we’re unable to measure noise levels below this threshold. Keep in mind that noise measurements are logarithmic, meaning the differences between the noise levels of the coolers will be more noticable than these graphs would suggest. 

When it comes to acoustic levels, the P360 is one of the louder units we’ve tested if the fans are running at full speed. It is quieter than the competing DeepCool and Enermax AIOs, but noisier than other coolers here.

We’re also showing the total Cinebench R23 benchmark scores to show illustrate little is lost  – or gained – with different cooling solutions. Between the weakest and strongest coolers, there is a total benchmark score variance of roughly 13%. 

MSI’s MAG CoreLiquid P360 does very well here, with a total score of 39,292, which makes it the third-strongest showing of the coolers we’ve tested with Raptor Lake.

200W Cinebench Results

When restricting power consumption to a more reasonable 200W, MSI’s MAG CoreLiquid P360 does reasonably well, tying with SilverStone’s VIDA 240 for the fourth strongest result. But that’s only part of the story: How loud does it get when set to 200W?

Looking at acoustic levels when restricted to 200W, the P360’s results are roughly middle of the road. It’s quieter than six noisier coolers here, and the results are a tie with DeepCool’s LT720.

125W Cinebench Results

The lowest power limit I test at is 125W, mainly because this is also the lowest level where I can reliably measure noise measurements. Lower power consumption causes the noise of the CPU cooler to fall below the noise created by the system fans (even while restricted to 35% speed). 

Looking at thermal results alone here, MSI’s P360 does well, taking fourth place in cooling performance. However, I feel that noise levels are more important at 125W. And in this metric, the P360 doesn’t do very well in comparison to other units. It’s not “loud” in any sense of the word, but it was noisier than most of the competing coolers we’ve tested.

Conclusion

When paired with Intel’s i9-13900K, MSI’s MAG CoreLiquid P360 is capable of cooling 287 watts in long-term workloads. The P360 offers a unique design with a radiator-integrated pump and is a good all-around cooling option with a value-oriented price tag of $119.99, though we've seen it drop even lower from some third-party sellers. Just know that the tradeoff for its lower price is fans that, while not loud, are noisier than much of the competition.

 MORE: How to Buy the Right CPU Cooler

MORE: How to Check CPU Temperature

MORE: All CPU Cooling Content

DeepCool was founded in Beijing in 1996 and has earned a solid reputation in the CPU Cooler space with options like the Assassin III and AK620, considered to be some of the best air coolers on the market. The company’s lineup includes both air and AIO coolers as well as computer cases, keyboards, power supplies and other accessories.  

While most AIOs on the market are based on Asetek designs, DeepCool is one of the few companies which makes its own, in-house, pump designs. DeepCool sent us the new LS320, a 120mm AIO liquid cooler featuring its latest generation in-house design, and the cooler retails for $89.99. 

In the past I’ve generally avoided 120mm AIOs due to their typically limited cooling potential. However, we previously tested the larger 240mm LS520 cooler and were impressed by how well it handled Intel’s Core i9-12900K. That made me wonder: Is the LS320’s redesigned pump system enough to overcome the disadvantages of a smaller radiator and earn a spot on our best AIO coolers list? We’ll have to put it through testing to find out. But first here are the specifications from DeepCool. 

Specifications for the DeepCool LS520

Packing and Included Contents 

DeepCool’s LS320 ships in a small, almost square box, packed with molded cardboard and soft plastic coverings of the individual parts for protection. 

Included with the package are the following:

• CPU Block and Radiator
• 1x FC120 120mm fan
• Mounts for all modern CPU sockets, including LGA1700, TR4, and AM4/AM5 motherboards
• Customizable blank plate for CPU block
• Manual & support pamphlets
• 2x coolant line clips

Cooler Installation

Installing the DeepCool’s LS320 was fairly easy. To begin, you’ll first want to secure the radiator to your case. And with these small 120mm AIOs, the radiator often gets mounted in the case’s rear exhaust, though we mounted at the top for comparison to larger coolers. For more about radiator and fan placement, see our PC airflow guide. After the radiator and fan are mounted, press the backplate against the motherboard and mount the stand-offs. You won’t need to worry about thermal paste, as it is pre-applied to the CPU block here. Press the CPU block against the standoffs, and then use the included thumb screws to secure it.

New Testing Configuration

What's different than other coolers?

Latest in-house pump design from DeepCool 

The vast majority of Liquid Coolers on the market today are based around Asetek designs, with pumps integrated into the CPU block. But the LS520 incorporates the latest generation in-house design from DeepCool.

User Customizable Plate  

Included with the LS320 is a blank CPU block plate, which lets you create your own design for the RGB-lit CPU block. Given that most companies just slap their logo here and give you no other options, this is a nice touch.

Custom DeepCool FC120 fan

The LS320 includes DeepCool’s FC120 fan, sporting a unique fan connection system which allows for easy daisy-chaining of both fan & lighting controls in a single cable. The FC120 fans are a stronger SKU than the company’s retail models and feature upgraded airflow and static pressure as a result of higher maximum fan speeds. These fans include arrows on the sides indicating both the directions that the fans spin as well as the direction of the airflow.

As with other recent AIOs, I'll be testing DeepCool’s LS320 with Intel's Core i9-12900K. Due to the increased thermal density of the Intel 7 manufacturing process, as well as changes to core and component layouts, Alder Lake CPUs are more difficult to cool than previous generation CPUs in the most heat-intensive of workloads. 

This means that coolers that kept previous generation products like the i9-10900K nice and cool sometimes struggle to keep Intel's i9-12900K under TJ max–the top temperature before the CPU starts to throttle. Many coolers, including DeepCool’s last generation Castle EX AIOs, failed to keep the i9-12900K under TJ max when power limits are removed in workloads like Cinebench and OCCT when I’ve tested them.

Please note there are many factors other than the CPU cooler that can influence your cooling performance. A system's motherboard can especially influence this, as there are boards on the market with CPU sockets that aren't up to Intel's spec, which can cause warping or poor contact with the CPU. The case you use will also influence cooling results.

With Alder Lake's cooling demands in mind, I'll be rating CPU Coolers in 3 different tiers.

Tier 1: These coolers are able to keep the i9-12900K below TJ max in most loads, with no power limits enforced. I expect only the best liquid coolers to meet this standard. 

Tier 2: These coolers are able to keep the i9-12900K under the TJ max threshold with CPU power limits of 200W enforced. I expect most liquid coolers and the best air coolers to meet this standard.

Tier 3: These coolers are able to keep the i9-12900K under TJ max with CPU power limits of 140W enforced.

Testing Methodology

To test the limits of a cooler's thermal dissipation capabilities, I run two primary stress tests: Cinebench and OCCT each for 10 minutes. While this may be a short amount of time, it is sufficient to push most coolers–air and liquid–to their limits. 

While stress testing in Cinebench, I run both with power limits removed and with an enforced 200W CPU power limit. In this test setup using MSI’s z690 A Pro DDR4 Motherboard and Be Quiet’s Silent Base 802 Computer Case. Only the best coolers are able to pass Cinebench testing when power limits are removed. 

I don’t test OCCT without power limits because attempting to do so results in CPU package power consumption jumping to over 270W and instantly throttling with even the best AIO coolers. Instead, I test at 200W to give coolers a chance at passing. I also include 140W results to give data closer to a lower-end CPU, such as AMD’s Ryzen 5600X or Intel’s i5-12400.

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• MORE: How to Overclock a CPU
• MORE: How to Check CPU Temperature
• MORE: All CPU Cooling Content

Cinebench Test Results

In the past, I’ve begun my cooler testing with Intel’s i9-12900K by testing Cinebench without power limits and with a 200W power limit enforced. Unfortunately, DeepCool’s LS320 wasn’t capable of passing either of these tests. However, this is to be expected as it’s a 120mm AIO and users who want a cooler capable of cooling higher TDP loads should be looking at 240/280mm sized AIOs or larger.

200W and 140W OCCT Test Results

I usually like to run OCCT's small set stress testing for stability when overclocking, but on Alder Lake I haven't found a cooler that's capable of handling OCCT without throttling unless power limits are enforced.

I test OCCT at 200W to demonstrate a thermally demanding load, but also with a 140W power limit enforced to show how these coolers might perform with a CPU that's easier to cool, like Intel's i5-12600K or AMD's Ryzen 5800X.

Just like with Cinebench, the LS320 wasn’t able to pass our 200W testing here. However, when restricted to a more reasonable 140W, the LS320 handled our cooling tests easily. It performed about equal to the Corsair H100i Elite and Cooler Master’s PL360 Flux when limited to 140W and 50% fan speeds.

95W OCCT Test Results

I’ve begun to include 95w testing results due to reader requests. These results should be representative of performance on CPUs like AMD’s Ryzen 5 5600X or Intel’s i5-12400. In this testing, the LS320 performed well–on par with most coolers tested at this power level.

Noise Levels and Acoustics

To test noise levels, I used the SLM25TK Sound Level Meter positioned 18 inches behind the rear of the Be Quiet Silent Base 802 PC case, and recorded early in the morning to achieve the lowest noise floor possible. The chart below shows averaged results, measured over the course of five minutes, to account for sudden variations in measurements.

The LS320 runs fairly quietly in workloads it was designed to handle, running realistic workloads with TDPs of 140W or less will result in fairly quiet operation. This cooler output only 34.5 dBA when restricted to 50% fan speeds. If you attempt to cool high TDP loads on it, noise levels will be comparable to Be Quiet’s Pure Loop 2 FX or Cooler Master’s PL240 Flux, as the fan hits 100% RPM speeds.

Conclusion

DeepCool’s LS320 is a small AIO, which is best paired with CPUs of mid-range TDPs, like Intel’s i5-12600K. It’s capable of handling 140W-plus when paired with Alder Lake CPUs, although it will get noisy as the fan speed maxes out. The LS320 is a bit expensive for the performance it provides, but it will work well in SFF cases that don’t have room for bigger coolers.

• MORE: How to Buy the Right CPU Cooler
• MORE: How to Overclock a CPU
• MORE: How to Check CPU Temperature
• MORE: All CPU Cooling Content

DeepCool was founded in Beijing in 1996 and has earned a solid reputation in the CPU Cooler space with options like the Assassin III and AK620, considered to be some of the best air coolers on the market. The company’s lineup includes both air and AIO coolers as well as computer cases, keyboards, power supplies, and other accessories.  

We have DeepCool’s new LS520, a 240mm AIO liquid cooler which retails for $109 USD, on our test bench. While most AIOs on the market are based on Asetek designs, DeepCool is one of the few companies which make their own, in-house, pump designs. The LS520 features a redesigned pump system, but is that enough to tame Intel’s 12900K and earn a spot on our best AIO coolers list? We’ll have to put it through testing to find out. But first here are the specifications from DeepCool. 

Specifications for the DeepCool LS520

Packing and Included Contents

DeepCool’s LS520 ships in a medium-sized box, packed with molded cardboard and soft p;lastic coverings of the individual parts for protection. 

Included with the package are the following:

• CPU Block + Radiator
• 2x FC120 120mm fans
• Mounts for all modern CPU sockets, including LGA1700, TR4, and AM4/AM5 motherboards
• Customizeable blank plate for CPU Block
• User Manual & Support Pamphlets
• Coolant Line Clips

Cooler Installation

Installing the DeepCool’s LS520 was fairly easy. To begin, you’ll first want to secure the radiator to your case. Afterwards, press the backplate against the motherboard and mount the stand-offs. You won’t need to worry about thermal paste, as it is pre-applied to the CPU block. Press the CPU block against the standoffs, and then use the included thumb screws to secure it. 

New Testing Configuration

What's different than other coolers?

Latest in-house pump design from DeepCool 

The vast majority of Liquid Coolers on the market today are based around Asetek designs, with pumps integrated into the CPU block. But the LS520 incorporates the latest generation in-house design from DeepCool.

User Customizable Plate

Included with the LS520 is a blank CPU block plate, which lets you create your own design for the RGB-lit CPU block. Given that most companies just slap their logo here and give you no other options, this is a nice touch. 

Custom DeepCool FC120 fans

The LS520 includesDeepCool’s FC120 fans, sporting a unique fan connection system which allows for easy daisy-chaining of both fan & lighting controls in a single cable. The FC120 fans are a stronger SKU than the retail models and feature upgraded airflow and static pressure as a result of higher maximum fan speeds.

Testing Configuration

I'll be testing DeepCool’s LS520 with Intel's i9-12900K. Due to the increased thermal density of the Intel 7 manufacturing process, as well as changes to core and component layouts, Alder Lake CPUs are more difficult to cool than previous generation CPUs in the most heat-intensive of workloads. 

This means that coolers that kept previous generation products like the i9-10900K nice and cool sometimes struggle to keep Intel's i9-12900K under Tj max–the top temperature before the CPU starts to throttle. Many coolers, including DeepCool’s last generation CASTLE EX AIOs, failed to keep the i9-12900K under TJ max when power limits are removed in workloads like Cinebench and OCCT when I’ve tested them.

Please note there are many factors other than the CPU cooler that can influence your cooling performance. A system's motherboard can especially influence this, as there are boards on the market with CPU sockets that aren't up to Intel's spec, which can cause warping or poor contact with the CPU. The case you use will also influence cooling results.

With Alder Lake's cooling demands in mind, I'll be rating CPU Coolers in 3 different tiers.

Tier 1: These coolers are able to keep the i9-12900K below TJ max in most loads, with no power limits enforced. I expect only the best liquid coolers to meet this standard. 

Tier 2: These coolers are able to keep the i9-12900K under the TJ max threshold with CPU power limits of 200W enforced. I expect most liquid coolers and the best air coolers to meet this standard. 

Tier 3: These coolers are able to keep the i9-12900K under TJ max with CPU power limits of 140W enforced.

Testing Methodology

To test the limits of a cooler's thermal dissipation capabilities, I run two primary stress tests: Cinebench and OCCT each for 10 minutes. While this may be a short amount of time, it is sufficient to push most coolers–air and liquid–to their limits. 

While stress testing in Cinebench, I run both with power limits removed and with an enforced 200W CPU power limit. In this test setup using MSI’s z690 A Pro DDR4 Motherboard and Be Quiet’s Silent Base 802 Computer Case. Only the best coolers are able to pass Cinebench testing when power limits are removed. 

I don’t test OCCT without power limits because attempting to do so results in CPU package power consumption jumping to over 270W and instantly throttling with even the best AIO coolers. Instead, I test at 200W to give coolers a chance at passing. I also include 140W results to give data closer to a lower-end CPU, such as AMD’s Ryzen 5600X or Intel’s i5-12400.

• MORE: How to Buy the Right CPU Cooler
• MORE: How to Overclock a CPU
• MORE: How to Check CPU Temperature
• MORE: All CPU Cooling Content

Cinebench Test Results

Running Cinebench without power limits is the most thermally demanding load in my testing, and most coolers don't pass this specific test–but the LS520 isn’t most coolers. It performed exceptionally well here, beating BeQuiet’s Pure Loop 2 FX 360mm by 11 degrees Celsius!  

When power limits are restricted to a reasonable 200W and 50% fan speeds, the LS520 ties with Cougar’s Poseidon AIO and is close to Be Quiet’s Pure Loop 2 FX. And keep in mind these are both coolers with larger 36mm radiators.

OCCT Test Results

I usually like to run OCCT's small set stress testing for stability when overclocking, but on Alder Lake I haven't found a cooler that's capable of handling OCCT without throttling unless power limits are enforced.

I test OCCT at 200W to demonstrate a thermally demanding load, but also with a 140W power limit enforced to show how these coolers might perform with a CPU that's easier to cool, like Intel's i5-12600k or AMD's Ryzen 5800X.

OCCT’s cooling results are similar to the previous results when limited to 200W. The LS520 nearly ties with Cougar’s Poseidon GT630 here, and cools slightly better than BeQuiet’s Pure Loop 2 FX.

Noise Levels and Acoustics

To test noise levels, I used the SLM25TK Sound Level Meter positioned 18 inches behind the rear of the Be Quiet Silent Base 802 PC case, and recorded early in the morning to achieve the lowest noise floor possible. The chart below shows averaged results, measured over the course of five minutes, to account for sudden variations in measurements.

Even while pushing over 230w, DeepCool’s LS520 doesn’t get very loud. At 50% fan speeds it’s a little louder than the BeQuiet & Cougar models, and at full speeds it sits between them in noise levels. 

Conclusion

With Alder Lake’s increased cooling demands, many coolers can’t handle the heat. DeepCool’s LS520 packs incredible cooling performance in a small package, able to handle Alder Lake without power limits in most situations. This is the best performing 240mm AIO I have tested thus far, and at only $109 its value is unbeatable.

• MORE: How to Buy the Right CPU Cooler
• MORE: How to Overclock a CPU
• MORE: How to Check CPU Temperature
• MORE: All CPU Cooling Content

German component company be quiet! (henceforth Be Quiet) has long shied away from RGB lighting. But in conjunction with the company's 20th anniversary, it launched an FX line of new and modified cases, air coolers and AIOs that embrace colorful lights, mostly in the form of the company's Light Wings fans. 

We've got one of the new FX coolers on our test bench, specifically the Pure Loop 2 FX 360mm. It's the larger of three new FX AIOs, with a 280 and a 240mm model also available. Aside from the RGB-ringed fans, the company also includes some rainbow glow in a ring around the cold plate, so if you're looking to light up the inside of your case in your color(s) of choice as well as keeping your CPU cool, Be Quiet has you covered here.

Most liquid coolers today are based on Asetek designs, which have the pump included in the CPU block, but this cooler features an in-house design by Be Quiet, which places the pump along the cooling lines near the radiator. Does Be Quiet's big and bright cooling beast keep CPU temps and fan noise low enough to earn it a spot on our Best AIO Coolers list? We'll have to put it through out testing regime to find out. But first, here are the specs, from Be Quiet.

Specifications for the Be Quiet Pure Loop 2 FX

New Testing Configuration

I'll be testing the Pure Loop 2 FX with Intel's i9-12900K. Due to the increased thermal density of the Intel 7 manufacturing process, as well as changes to core and component layouts, Alder Lake CPUs are more difficult to cool than previous generation CPUs in the most heat-intensive of workloads. This means that coolers that kept previous generation products like the i9-10900K nice and cool sometimes struggle to keep Intel's i9-12900K under TJ max–the top temperature before the CPU starts to throttle. Many coolers I've tested aren't able to keep the i9-12900k under TJ max when power limits are removed in workloads like Cinebench and OCCT.

Please note that there are many factors that can influence your cooling performance. A system's motherboard can influence this, as there are motherboards on the market with CPU sockets that are not up to Intel's spec, which can cause warping or poor contact with the CPU. The case you use will also influence cooling results.

With this in mind, I'll be rating CPU Coolers in 3 different tiers.

Tier 1: These coolers are able to keep the i9-12900K below TJ max in most loads, with no power limits enforced. I expect only the best liquid coolers to meet this standard.

Tier 2: These coolers are able to keep the i9-12900K under TJ max with CPU power limits of 200W enforced. I expect most liquid and air coolers to meet this standard.

Tier 3: These coolers are able to keep the i9-12900K under TJMax with CPU power limits of 140W enforced.

Packing and Included Contents

Be Quiet's Pure Loop 2 FX is packaged in a large box that's approximately 2 feet in length, with molded cardboard for protection.

Included with the package are the following:

• 360mm Liquid Cooler
• 3x 120mm Light Wings Fans
• Mounts for all modern CPU sockets, including LGA1700 & upcoming AM5 motherboards
• Zip Ties
• Thermal Paste
• User Manual
• aRGB & Fan Controller Hub
• Extra Coolant

Cooler Installation

Installing the Be Quiet Pure Loop 2 FX was fairly simple. To begin, you secure the backplate screws to the backplate using the O-rings. Once the backplate is pressed against the motherboard, screw in the standoffs to secure it. Next, use the screws to secure the mounting brackets to the standoffs. Finally, attach the CPU block.

What's different than other coolers?

The Pure Loop 2 FX is user-refillable and includes extra coolant.

Most AIOs are not user serviceable – which means if/when a certain amount of coolant escapes (via evaporation or leaks) they have to be thrown out. Be Quiet not only allows you to refill the coolant using an easy-to-access port covered by a screw, but also includes spare coolant in case you ever need it. That said, unless you plan on using your cooler for several years, across multiple platforms –which tends to be difficult given socket changes requiring new mounting hardware– coolant loss isn't usually a major issue with AIOs.

In-house Pump Design

The vast majority of Liquid Coolers on the market today are based around Asetek designs (licensed or not), with pumps integrated into the CPU block. But the Pure Loop 2 FX incorporates an in-house design from Be Quiet, where the pump is located near the radiator, along the cooling lines.

There's more to a liquid cooler than just its radiator and pump. The fans have a huge impact on cooling performance and noise levels. Included with the Pure Loop 2 FX are Be Quiet's latest Light Wings fans, which include ARGB lighting in a ring around the blades – a first for a Be Quiet product, although the company launched several products with its Light Wings fans as part of a new FX lineup.

New Testing Configuration

I'll be testing the Pure Loop 2 FX with Intel's i9-12900K. Due to the increased thermal density of the Intel 7 manufacturing process, as well as changes to core and component layouts, Alder Lake CPUs are more difficult to cool than previous generation CPUs in the most heat-intensive of workloads.

This means that coolers that kept previous generation products like the i9-10900K nice and cool sometimes struggle to keep Intel's i9-12900K under TJ max. Many coolers I've tested aren't able to keep the i9-12900K under TJ max when power limits are removed in workloads like Cinebench and OCCT.

Please note there are many factors other than the CPU cooler that can influence your cooling performance. A system's motherboard can especially influence this, as there are motherboards on the market with CPU sockets that aren't up to Intel's spec, which can cause warping or poor contact with the CPU. The case you use will also influence cooling results.

With Alder Lake's cooling demands in mind, I'll be rating CPU Coolers in 3 different tiers.

Tier 1: These coolers are able to keep the i9-12900K below TJ max in most loads, with no power limits enforced. I expect only the best liquid coolers to meet this standard.

Tier 2: These coolers are able to keep the i9-12900K under the TJ max threshold with CPU power limits of 200W enforced. I expect most liquid and air coolers to meet this standard.

Tier 3: These coolers are able to keep the i9-12900K under TJ max with CPU power limits of 140W enforced.

Testing Methodology

To test the limits of a cooler's thermal dissipation capabilities, I run two primary stress tests: Cinebench and OCCT each for 10 minutes. While this may be a short amount of time, it is sufficient to push most coolers - air and liquid - to their limits.

While stress testing in Cinebench, I run both with power limits removed and with an enforced 200W CPU power limit. In this test setup using MSI’s z690 A Pro DDR4 Motherboard and Be Quiet’s Silent Base 802 Computer Case, only the best coolers are able to pass Cinebench testing when power limits are removed.

I don’t test OCCT without power limits because attempting to do so results in CPU package power consumption jumping to over 270W and instantly throttling with even the best AIO coolers. Instead, I test at 200W to give coolers a chance at passing. I also include 140W results to give data closer to a lower-end CPU, such as AMD’s Ryzen 5600x or Intel’s i5-12400.

Core i9-12900K Thermal Results

Cinebench Test Results

Running Cinebench without power limits is the most thermally demanding load in my testing, and most coolers don't pass this specific test. The Pure Loop 2 FX managed to pass – but just barely. It did peak at the TJ max temp, but the CPU didn't throttle.

When power limits are restricted to a more reasonable 200W, both with the default fan curve and while limited to 50%, the Pure Loop 2 does well. Here it was 2 degrees Celsius behind Cougar's Poseidon GT360 at the default fan curve, and 2 degrees ahead when 50% speeds are enforced.

OCCT Test Results

I usually like to run OCCT's small set stress testing for stability when overclocking, but on Alder Lake I haven't found a cooler that's capable of handling OCCT without throttling unless power limits are enforced.

I test OCCT at 200W to demonstrate a thermally demanding load, but also with a 140W power limit enforced to show how these coolers might perform with a CPU that's easier to cool, like Intel's i5-12400 or AMD's Ryzen 5600X.

OCCT's thermal results were a bit different than the Cinebench results. Across all power limits and fan settings, the Pure Loop 2 FX performed slightly behind Cougar's Poseidon GT360, but it also ran quieter than Cougar's AIO in all of these tests.

Noise Levels and Acoustics

To test noise levels, I used the SLM25TK Sound Level Meter positioned 18 inches behind the rear of the Be Quiet Silent Base 802 PC case, and recorded early in the morning to achieve the lowest noise floor possible. The chart below shows averaged results, measured over the course of five minutes, to account for sudden variations in measurements.

In most situations, the Pure Loop 2 FX will run rather quietly. When limited to 50% fan speeds, it is the quietest cooler of the three units tested for this review. When run at maximum fan speeds, the Pure Loop 2 isn't exactly silent – but it does run quieter than both DeepCool's and Cougar's AIOs. The company is true to its name, it seems.

Conclusion

I wondered if the Pure Loop 2 FX would pass my testing because when I tested the first-generation Pure Loop AIO, my results weren't the greatest. But I was pleasantly surprised to find Be Quiet's Pure Loop 2 FX greatly improved and capable of cooling the i9-12900K even in demanding workloads. Lovers of silence will be pleased to know that this is the best-performing cooler I've tested thus far when fan speeds are limited to 50%.

During its initial launch, the Pure Loop 2 FX will be on sale at various retailers for up to $30 USD off the MSRP of $154.90 USD, through the end of September 2022 (or while supplies last). If you can find this cooler at that price, it's a steal if you like good, quiet cooling performance and lots of RGB.

• MORE: How to Buy the Right CPU Cooler
• MORE: How to Overclock a CPU
• MORE: How to Check CPU Temperature
• MORE: All CPU Cooling Content

Sycom, a Japanese PC maker, has begun selling its unique GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphic card featuring a custom-built hybrid cooling system that uses as many as five fans. Sycom's special graphics board can ensure a GPU clock of 1.80 GHz at 65 Celsius and is exclusively available as a built-to-order option for the company's G Master Hydro high-performance desktops. 

The Sycom GeForce RTX 3090 Ti comes with Asetek's GeForce RTX 3080/3090 Hybrid liquid cooling system with a 240-mm radiator equipped with two Noctua's NF-A12x25 ULN fans to ensure quiet operation, reports Hermitage Akihabara. Asetek's LCS is used to cool down the GPU and GDDR6X memory via a dedicated memory cooling plate that has direct contact with the water block. Meanwhile, to cool down the voltage regulator module (VRM) of the board, Sycom uses another triple-fan cooling system.

Since Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3090 Ti is rated for up to 450W thermal design power (TDP), it requires cooling for the GPU, GDDR6X memory, and VRM. Therefore, Sycom's hybrid cooling system with five fans makes a lot of sense for this card, especially for end-users planning to overclock the board further. The manufacturer says that its cooler reduces temperature of an air-cooled GeForce RTX 3090 Ti by 10 to 15 Celsius. 

As for performance advantages enabled by the new hybrid cooling, Sycom claims that the board can maintain an average of 1.802 GHz frequency in the Final Fantasy XV benchmark for about 30 minutes at 65 Celsius.

Without any doubts, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 Ti is a product for die-hard enthusiasts with deep pockets that want every last bit of performance that can be squeezed out of a GPU (as they are not satisfied with out-of-box performance of today's best gaming graphics card). To that end, it is not surprising that there are makers of custom solutions that equip these boards with even more extreme coolers than those designed by Nvidia or its partners.

NZXT introduced placing a small LCD panel on an AIO CPU cooler to the market, and people seem to be taking well to it. We also started seeing GPUs with small screens on them, but now, it appears the real winner of this popularity contest will be Asus.

Asus recently showed off a CPU cooler with such a big screen (spotted by @momomo_us), it kind of had us scratching our heads. I mean, just look at the thing... why does a CPU block need a 3.5-inch LCD panel on it?

Cool factor aside, the unit is called the ROG Ryunjin II 240, and it comes in as a successor to the original ROG Ryunjin 240, which had similar styling and a large CPU block, but a much smaller OLED screen.

Chances are this unit will also be based on an Asetek design, and it looks like Asus decided to stick to using Noctua fans on the Ryunjin II, equipping the AIO with two black 120mm Noctua NF-F12 industrialPPC fans.

Not a Lot of Information...

The exact specs are unknown at this time, so we can't comment on which exact fan models they are (for RPM), nor the resolution of the screen, or pump type and speeds. We also don't have any other pictures, but I think we can all imagine quite well what this will look like in a system.

All we know is that this joyfully ridiculous monstrosity is coming, and in all honestly, I'm looking forward to it. 

There are a number of GeForce RTX 30-series graphics cards with a hybrid all-in-one liquid cooling system on the market today (well, kind of). Many of these products use custom designs, but their cooling systems are mostly standard, tailored for a particular printed circuit board (PCB). MSI decided to team up with Asetek to design a custom cooling system for its GeForce RTX 30 Sea Hawk graphics cards that the company introduced at CES, and we spoke with MSI about the new cards on our Tom's Hardware Live CES stream.

MSI's GeForce RTX 30-series Sea Hawk graphics cards based on Nvidia's GA102 GPU announced at CES will use a proprietary PCB design as well as an all-new hybrid closed-loop cooler developed by MSI and Asetek. So far, MSI has only said that the LCS will be used exclusively on the GeForce RTX 3080 Sea Hawk and the RTX 3090 Sea Hawk graphics cards, but something similar could be adopted for other products.

The custom hybrid liquid cooling system uses a special copper cold plate with micro fins that covers not only the GPU, but also GDDR6X memory (albeit using thermal pads), which could help with VRAM overclocking. The copper base is equipped with Asetek's low-profile pump that circulates warm liquid back to the 240mm radiator with two MSI Torx 4.0 120-mm fans. The third fan — which is located on the graphics card itself — helps to cool down the board's voltage regulating modules (VRMs) to further improve overclocking potential of the product.

All the fans support MSI's Zero Frozr technology and stop when the GPU is under light load and its temperature is low. Meanwhile, even when the fans are idling, the pump keeps operating, whicking the heat away from the graphics processor. In addition, the custom LCS has a backplate that strengthens the PCB and improves design of the graphics card.

MSI has not announced the pricing and availability timeframe of its GeForce RTX 30-series Sea Hawk graphics cards, which is not particularly surprising given scarce supply of Nvidia's latest Ampere GPUs and overpriced graphics boards. We expect them relatively soon (within a few months), but customs and shipping are also a factor.

MSI already has its hands in graphics cards, motherboards, laptops, desktops and peripherals, but it looks like that's not enough for the vendor. Its latest experiment is the MAG CoreLiquid series, which is MSI's go at liquid cooling. After showing off the MAG CoreLiquid 240RH and 360RH at CES 2020 in January, MSI today announced the coolers alongside the 360R and 240R variants.

Getting around Asetek's patents, MSI implemented a creative solution here: The coolers' water pumps are implemented into the radiator. According to MSI, this reduces vibrations and increases the products' life expectancy.

This design makes the water block itself a little simpler, though MSI hasn't skimped on aggressive design elements. What we do like to see is that the logo on top can be rotated 270 degrees to match your system's orientation. This means you can mount the water block with tubing coming out at your ideal location, rather than where the tubes happen to turn out when orienting the block's logo correctly.

The fans on the coolers spin at between 500 and 2,000 RPM, pushing up to 78 CFM. The 240 and 360 designations in the names refer to the radiator sizes for carrying either two or three 120mm fans; however, MSI hasn't clarified the differences between the R and RH versions of the coolers.

The loops are compatible with all modern CPU sockets. MSI hasn't announced pricing for the MAG CoreLiquid series yet. 

Just yesterday Alienware announced its new machines, among which the Aurora R11 gaming desktop that comes with liquid cooling. We hadn't noticed at the time, but as tweeted by Asetek, it looks like the GPU will be liquid-cooled with a radiator built into a PCI-Express slot below the graphics card, which Asetek is calling the Rad Card.

We've seen some creative solutions to build GPUs into AIO loops, but this is something we haven't seen before, and is certainly even more unusual than what AMD did with its Radeon R9 Fury X.

According to Asetek, this setup reduces noise by 69% and temperatures by 20%. In the tweet thread, Asetek also explained that the Rad Card draws its power and fan curves from the GPU, which makes it extremely easy to operate.

However, Asetek made the decision to use blower-style coolers. For the graphics card itself, we can understand as after cooling the GPU externally, the blower doesn't need to do much work to keep the memory and VRMs cool. However, for the GPU, we would imagine that the blower on the Rad Card would still have to do quite a bit of work to dissipate the heat. Of course, the Alienware Aurora R11's chassis doesn't lend itself to huge amounts of airflow, so this might be the only way to effectively extract the heat buildup from the case.

That being said, the finish looks quite nice, and all the fan cables are integrated neatly into the sleeves of the liquid cooling hoses, creating a very clean appearance.

For the time being, Asetek is only providing the Rad Card solution to Alienware, which is currently only using the solution for an RTX 2080 Super, but did mention that it is always listening to the community. So, do you think this should become something available freely on the DIY market?

Gigabyte launched its new Aorus Liquid Cooler 240, the first in a new series of closed-loop CPU cooling. Featuring two 120mm RGB fans with a maximum 2500 RPM at 39.5 decibels (each), the 272 x 121 x 27mm radiator is fed by a 80 x 80 x 60mm pump with integrated cold plate and RGB top-cover display.

Several programed patterns show the Aorus logo and system stats, though users can also program their own patterns through RGB Fusion 2.0 software. The firm hasn’t detailed the limits of the display, but does show that its patterns can be rotated to match your system’s orientation.

An aluminum housing that Gigabyte describes as both a textured extrusion and a shell connects the copper base to the pump and RGB cap. Included mounting kits use the standard Asetek design to support recent Intel desktop LGAs up to LGA 2066 and recent AMD CPU sockets up to TR4.

As this first model has already been released, we expect to find it available as soon as retailers receive their shipments. Gigabyte hasn’t detailed availability of the Liquid Cooer 240’s larger 280 (2x 140mm) and 360 (3x 120mm) variations.

Photo Credits: Gigabyte

Asetek, the creator of the all-in-one (AIO) liquid cooler, has announced the 645LT, an AIO liquid cooler specifically targeting small form factor (SFF) PC cases. In order to fit within some of these small chassis, including the diminutive Dan Case A4-SFX which it was designed for, the cooler uses a 92 mm radiator, along with 90-degree swivel connectors where the tubing meets the radiator. This gives the device a smaller footprint when compared to the more common 120 mm and larger radiators. 

The 645LT uses Asetek’s 6th generation pump (its newest), which runs up to 2,800 RPM. The tube is 250 mm, allowing for flexibility and ease of installation. The 92 mm radiator uses a 92 mm fan with a maximum height of 15 mm, yielding a small footprint in all dimensions. Asetek didn't specify if a fan is included, but its website shows a Noctua fan in one of the images. Total power use for the unit comes in at just over 2 W - sipping on power and not adding a lot of heat into the loop. The AIO supports Intel's LGA 115x, 1366, 2011, 2011-3 and 2066 CPU sockets. For AMD CPUs, only AM4 is listed as compatible.

Performance on the 645LT is rated at a 38.5 delta T in Cinebench and 3DMark Time Spy (63 degree Celsius temperatures), while Prime95 Small FFT has a 48.5 delta T. No mention of the wattage load to get those values, however. A single 92 mm radiator, depending on many factors, should be able to keep most CPUs cool, but overclocking may be limited. Such is the trade-off with a SFF system at times.

The Asetek 645LT AIO CPU Cooler is said to be available now at Overclockers.UK (there was no listing yet at the time of publishing), as well as SFFLab for $99.

Pump up the Voltage

If you're looking for the most extreme CPU available, Intel's overclockable 28-core, 56-thread Xeon W-3175X is the chip for you (provided you can come up with $3,000, plus the cost of an expensive platform). In comparison, AMD's massive Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX is downright affordable at $1,800.

Xeon W-3175X doesn't even match the core count of AMD's flagship. But Intel thinks its Skylake-SP silicon can beat AMD's finest in every type of workload, particularly the heavily-threaded tasks such a CPU was designed for. Think architectural and industrial design, or professional content creation. 

As if the processor's hefty price tag wasn't enough, Intel's workstation-oriented Xeon W-3175X needs exotic accommodations for overclocking, too. The company's existing Xeon W models top out at 18 cores and drop into familiar LGA 2066 interfaces. But introducing the highest-end server silicon to workstations required stepping up to the complex LGA 3641 socket, which hasn't seen the light of day outside of data centers.

In order for us to test its Xeon W-3175X, Intel sent over a pre-built PC armed with the gorgeously-appointed $1,500 Asus ROG Dominus Extreme motherboard, featuring two 24-pin ATX connectors, a quartet of eight-pin inputs, and a pair of six-pin connectors for feeding the 255W chip through a ridiculous 32-phase power delivery subsystem. The company also shipped two 1600W EVGA T2 PSUs to serve up sufficient power for overclocking.

If that all sounds extreme to you, then we wholeheartedly agree. If ever there was a CPU able to inspire envy among enthusiasts, this is it. Intel is obviously going all-out to quell the Threadripper uprising. And while our testing determined that the W-3175X offers far more performance in most workloads without the compromises imposed by AMD's 2990WX, Intel still isn't as competitive on the pricing front. Of course, cost is usually a secondary consideration for professionals when time maps over to dollars, and the chip's overclockability will certainly find plenty of fans in high-frequency trading circles. This grants Intel the license to charge big bucks for the best CPU for desktop applications that money can buy.

Intel Xeon W-3175X Specifications

The Xeon W-3175X wades into a increasingly crowded workstation market. While AMD's Threadripper processors aren't officially aimed at that space, their combination of lower prices, higher core counts, and largely unrestrained feature sets (like unlocked multipliers, support for ECC memory, and 64 third-gen PCIe lanes on every model) is attractive among professionals.

In contrast, the Xeon W-3175X is designed for workstations. It supports ECC memory, Intel's vPro management suite, and advanced RAS (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability) features. But its design feels more like an enthusiast part due to an unlocked multiplier. That's a tactic the notoriously-stingy Intel hadn't previously explored in the Xeon W family. Thanks to AMD's enthusiast initiative, though, Intel finds itself playing with new knobs and levers. 

Intel recently split its server chips out onto their own platform with a larger interface and a different chipset. However, the first round of Xeon Ws, spanning from four to 18 cores, drop right into the LGA 2066 socket we know from the company's high-end desktop motherboards (albeit paired with a server-specific C422 chipset that prevents Xeon W from working in consumer platforms). Unfortunately, that left Intel's CPUs with 18+ cores stranded on server platforms with the massive LGA 3647 interface. To bring the 3175X to workstations, Intel had to repackage that bigger socket and C620-series chipset for a more accessible form factor. As a result, we end up with a much larger CPU than we're used to seeing in a desktop system. Check out the Core i5-8086K, to the left, and the HEDT-class Core i9-9980XE, to the right, in the picture above.

The Xeon W-3175X has 28 physical cores with Hyper-Threading technology, allowing it to operate on 56 threads at the same time. A $3,000 price tag means that the 3175X only competes with AMD's 32C/64T Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX in terms of core count. Otherwise, it stands alone as the most expensive chip outside of Intel's full-on Xeon Scalable data center line-up.

Although $3,000 is decidedly steep, bear in mind that the W-3175X is eerily similar to Intel's Xeon Scalable Platinum 8180, which sells for $10,000. Of course, Intel strips features from the W-3175X to prevent data centers from using these chips en masse. For instance, the UPI (Ultra Path Interconnect), which allows multiple Xeons Scalable processors to work together, is disabled.

Like Intel's data center-oriented model, the W-3175X also features a familiar Skylake-SP microarchitecture, Mesh Topology, support for AVX-512, a 28-core XCC die and a rebalanced cache hierarchy that includes 1MB of private L2 cache per core and 38.5 MB of total shared L3.

Intel's Xeon processors are based on one of three dies: XCC (up to 28 cores), HCC (up to 18 cores), or LCC (up to 10 cores). Recently, the company used its HCC die for Core X-series CPUs with more than 10 cores and the LCC die for models with 10 or fewer cores. Now Intel uses the HCC die for all of its Core X-series models and the XCC die for its W-3175X.

The W-3175X also features a six-channel memory controller that supports up to 512GB of DDR4-2666 memory (less than standard Xeon's support for 768GB) in both ECC and non-ECC flavors. AMD's Threadripper platform supports up to 1.5TB of memory per chip, though its quad-channel controller can't provide as much throughput as the W-3175X (~35GB/s vs. ~59 GB/s).

Threadripper exposes 60 native PCIe lanes. Although Intel fires back with 68 "platform" lanes, that number includes additional lanes carved from the C621 chipset. The W-3175X actually only exposes 52 native PCIe 3.0 lanes. Four are dedicated to the DMI 3.0 connection between its PCH and CPU, meaning you get access to 48 native lanes.

As you can see above, the W-3175X's base and Turbo Boost frequencies are considerably higher than the 205W Platinum 8180, which isn't surprising given the W-3175X's 255W TDP rating. The improvements are apparent in Intel's multi-core Turbo Boost 2.0 clock rates, which increase between 700 MHz to 1 GHz depending on the number of active cores. That should yield big gains in games and productivity apps, along with sizeable speed-ups in content creation and rendering workloads.

Whereas the Core i9-9980XE uses a solder-based thermal interface material (STIM) to improve thermal transfer between its die and heat spreader, Intel's Xeon W-3175X uses the company's garden-variety thermal grease. We'd expect that to negatively affect overclocking, particularly in light of this CPU's prodigious power draw. Even at stock clock rates, expect to invest in a premium motherboard, high-capacity power supply, and beefy cooler to get the most out of the Xeon W-3175X. Intel goes so far as to recommend water-cooling.

The Xeon W-3175X's $3,000 recommended price (per 1,000 tray units) means you pay a lot more per core than anything in AMD's Threadripper line-up. Intel obviously believes that its architecture, which doesn't require swapping between different modes for optimal performance across disparate workloads, like Threadripper, a more robust feature set, and six channels of memory throughput are worth the premium.

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The Test System, ROG Dominus Extreme, and Test Setup

Intel sent an Anidees evaluation system for us to review. It came decked out with RGB lighting on the five 120mm case fans and an Asetek 690LX-PN 360mm AIO cooler, which hails from the enterprise space. The cooler's Gen6-s pump, which is typically found in supercomputing clusters, operates at 3,800 RPM.

Intel designed and approved the cooler design, which Asketek says is tailored for enthusiasts and gamers with up to 500W of thermal dissipation. Intel also sent over an unreleased EKWB EK-Phoenix 360 Annihilator AIO cooler for our overclocking experiments. We stuck with the Asetek solution and six 8GB sticks of Samsung DDR4-2666 ECC memory for our stock tests, and then switched over to the EKWB water-cooler and six sticks of Corsair's Vengeance RGB DDR4-2666 for our overclocking efforts.

For most Socket-P coolers, you first snap the processor into the heat sink, where two plastic clamps hold it tight. A pair of guide pins on the socket ensure correct sink and processor placement. Then, you secure the heat sink with four Torx screws. The socket mounting mechanism also has a large gap on one end to accommodate an Internal Faceplate-to-Processor cable that plugs into Omni-Path-enabled Xeon processors for the data center. Naturally, you won't see that feature in the workstation space.

The EKWB cooler doesn't come with a plastic mounting mechanism attached, so after removing our system's poorly-applied TIM, we placed the processor in its socket and allowed it to "float" as we tightened down the EKWB cooler. With things looking decidedly more enthusiast-y, we then swapped out the memory.

Delivering enough power to operate the CPU at stock settings is a challenge, so the system came with a single Supernova 1600 T2 power supply. According to EVGA, the 80 PLUS Titanium-certified PSU is rated for up to 133.3A on the +12V rail. For more info on this power supply, head over to our full review. Intel also sent over an additional 1600W T2 to ensure we could feed the Asus ROG Dominus with enough power for overclocking.

Asus ROG Dominus Extreme

The ROG Dominus Extreme lives up to its extreme branding. Asus turned to the EEB form factor to make room for its massive power delivery subsystem. As a result, the board measures an incredible 14" x 14". That means you need a case able to accommodate the spacious board, which flanks the LGA 3647 interface with 12 DIMM slots that feed the W-3175X's six-channel memory controller. 

The Dominus hosts four full-length PCIe 3.0 x16 slots that operate at full bandwidth, creating plenty of room for multi-GPU configurations. Those setups are no longer popular in the enthusiast space due to a lack of game support. But they do prove useful to professionals who lean heavily on GPU-accelerated applications and AI workloads. High-speed networking adapters also benefit from the extra throughput.

The Dominus has two 24-pin ATX power connectors, four eight-pin, inputs, and a pair of six-pin connectors that feed a 32-phase VRM arrangement. Asus also equips the power delivery subsystem with active cooling composed of four fans hidden under the aluminum heat sink cover. These fans spin up or down based on thermals, so forced air cooling on the VRMs shouldn't be necessary outside of the most extreme overclocked setups.

Asus says the board is designed to accommodate custom water-cooling solutions, which is evident from the two water pump PWM connectors and 12 PWM fan headers. An enterprise-class 15W "Lewisburg" C621 platform controller hub adds another 20 PCIe 3.0 lanes to the CPU's native 48 lanes, though four of those lanes are set aside for the DMI 3.0 connection.

What good is an over-the-top board without some bling? Asus equips the ROG Dominus Extreme with RGB lighting on the large chipset shroud, along with support for Aura Sync. A 1.77-inch color LiveDash OLED occupies the top of the I/O shroud. Temperature, flow, and leak detection sensor support helps facilitate custom water-cooling setups, too. 

Surprisingly, the Dominus doesn't come with M.2 slots. Instead, it has two DIMM.2 slots that support riser cards housing two M.2 SSDs apiece. You also get two U.2 and eight SATA connectors, meaning you can load this board up with plenty of storage.

Networking comes courtesy of a 10G Aquantia AQC-107 LAN chip and Intel's I219-LM gigabit connection complemented by an Intel wireless AC-9260 controller supporting 802.11ac. The board exposes five USB 3.1 Gen 2, 12 USB 3.1 Gen 1, and four USB 2.0 connections.

Comparison Products

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Test Setup

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Overclocking and Thermals

We connected the second EVGA power supply for our overclocking testing, but after attaining a reasonable overclock for a water-cooled system and measuring power consumption, we determined that the extra PSU wasn't necessary. We're told it really becomes a requirement for systems that push higher frequencies via exotic cooling solutions like water chillers and liquid nitrogen.

The Xeon W-3175X was surprisingly easy to overclock through Intel's eXtreme Tuning Utility, though we prefer to overclock in the BIOS.

An all-core 4.6 GHz overclock delivered a nice balance of performance and thermal output under our EKWB cooling system. AVX-based workloads did overwhelm the thermal solution, so we dialed in AVX offsets that throttled back to the stock 3.1 GHz during those taxing workloads. Temperatures rarely exceeded 75°C in either case.

We dialed in a 1.9V VCCIN and 1.17V Vcore to stabilize our 4.6 GHz overclock, then bumped up the VCCSA and VCCIO to 1.3V to help stabilize our memory overclock. We topped out at DDR4-3200 with the Corsair Vengeance RGB sticks. We also bumped the mesh frequency up to 3.2 GHz (1.3V Vmesh) to give us an extra performance boost via lower cache latencies.

Plotting temperatures revealed that we rarely exceeded 80°C during our AIDA stress test with AVX disabled. Switching over to an AVX-enabled Prime95 stress test pushed our thermals up to ~88°C, though the CPU merely ran at its stock 3.1 GHz AVX frequency. We did experiment with clock rates as high as 3.6 GHz in AVX-enabled apps. However, that pushed the processor up to 110°C within a few moments, tripping its thermal throttling algorithms.

It's noteworthy that we were able to attain a higher overclock with the W-3175X than we've seen from some of Intel's other HEDT models with fewer cores, like the Core i9-9980XE. The Xeon W-3175X's larger heat spreader likely helps to alleviate thermal density issues that constrain cooling efforts on the smaller chips. Still, solder TIM would have been a welcome addition.

Power Consumption

Power consumption measurements are always a bit tricky. But as long as your 12V supply (EPS) readings, motherboard power supply sensor values, and voltage transformer losses plausibly coincide, everything is fine. Therefore, we're using pure package power to avoid possible influences from our motherboard. Results from the PWM controller are very reliable if you take them as averages over a few minutes.

The Dominus Extreme does present power measurement challenges, however. In order to sidestep the CPU's power limits, Asus offers a secondary power reporting option in the BIOS. Intel's recommended setting (default) reports current by dividing the value by 1.25x, meaning that we have to multiply the power values we receive from the sensor loop by 1.25x to calculate the final value. Overclocking requires a 4x divider, meaning the software reports 1/4 the actual power consumed to avoid tripping the chip's internal protection mechanisms. Simply multiplying the output by four gives us the correct value.

We expected high power consumption from the Xeon W-3175X, and Intel's workstation flagship didn't disappoint. At stock settings, we recorded 318W from an AVX-optimized workload at 3.1 GHz and 319W in a stress test that didn't use AVX instructions.

Those numbers skyrocketed when we began overclocking. At 4.6 GHz, we observed 676W during an SSE-optimized stress test and 792W with AVX instructions in play, despite the AVX offset.

As with the Skylake-X processors we already reviewed, current has a big impact on both performance and heat. It's even possible to generate higher performance scores in threaded benchmarks like Cinebench by using a higher VCCIN voltage setting (at a given frequency).

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VRMark, 3DMark, AotS: Escalation and Dawn of War III

Unfortunately, Intel hasn’t sampled its other Xeon W processors. With that said, they largely mirror the capabilities and performance of our line-up's Skylake-X models, with the primary difference being reduced timings to accommodate ECC memory and locked multipliers.

We tested the Ryzen Threadripper processors in Game Mode, per AMD's suggestion, halving (or quartering) available execution cores. Company representatives tell us this facilitates optimal performance in games. Any mention of PBO in the charts indicates that we used AMD’s Precision Boost Overdrive, an automatic overclocking feature that wrings out maximum performance based upon our platform's power delivery and cooling capabilities.

Gaming performance is measured at 1920 x 1080, minimizing graphics bottlenecks. Naturally, as you step up to higher resolutions, the differences between processors shrink.

VRMark, 3DMark

We aren't big fans of using synthetic benchmarks to measure performance, but 3DMark's DX11 and DX12 CPU tests provide useful insight into the amount of horsepower available to game engines.

Xeon W-3175X trails Intel's 18C/36T Core i9-9980XE at stock settings in the DX11 test, and overclocking to 4.6 GHz doesn't reel in the Core i9-9980XE at 4.4 GHz. This benchmark typically scales well with core count, and given the W-3175X's 10 extra cores and 200 MHz-higher clock rate, those results don't align with our expectations. We'll see that same trend repeat in several other game benchmarks.

Intel's new mesh architecture does cause performance regressions compared to some previous-generation models, but both of these processors feature the same design. However, as on-chip interconnects scale they can suffer from higher latency as a result, and a mesh is no exception. Simply put, a larger mesh can lead to higher cache and memory latency under certain conditions.

Preliminary tests indicate a latency advantage of up to 10ns favoring the -9980XE over Intel's much larger W-3175X. As we learned from the Threadripper processors, games are exceedingly sensitive to memory and cache latency. We also have to wonder if today's game and benchmark engines are fully optimized for the many-core era. We theorize that mesh latency, or a lack of software optimization for prodigious core counts, could be the source of the disparity.

AMD's Ryzen Threadripper chips land quite a ways down our charts. With that said, we did test in AMD's recommended Game Mode.

Intel’s processors take the lead in VRMark, largely due to their impressive per-core (a mixture of frequency and IPC) performance. The tuned W-3175X fares better in this benchmark, essentially tying the Core i9-9980XE. 

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation is a computationally intense title that normally scales well with thread count.

It isn't surprising to see the W-3175X excel in our Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation benchmark given its generally solid optimization for threading and the chip's hefty allotment of 28 cores. But again, it scores a near-tie with the less complex Core i9-9980XE in spite of its higher frequency and core count. 

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III

The Intel Core i9-9900K takes a commanding lead, while AMD's Ryzen Threadripper 2970WX with PBO active competes readily against Intel's high-end desktop CPUs.

In stock form, the W-3175X trails other chips with higher stock frequencies. Overclocking propels the CPU into third place behind the tuned Core i9-9980XE, though.

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Far Cry 5

The Core i9-9900K at stock settings proves its mettle in this test, notching a solid lead over even the overclocked contenders. High end desktop models and Intel's new cream-of-the-crop workstation chip do offer plenty of horsepower for productivity tasks, but most gamers are best served by a mainstream desktop chip.

Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto V favors Intel architectures and, more generally, multi-core designs with high clock rates.

It’s no surprise, then, to see the Core i9-9900K take the lead in the Grand Theft Auto V benchmark. The Xeon W-3175X serves up impressive performance at stock settings, outstripping the tuned AMD models, and essentially ties the -9900K after we dial in a 4.6 GHz frequency. That's impressive for a multi-core beast, but the i9-9900K would run away with the lead after tuning.

Hitman

Hitman responds well to a mixture of high core counts and clock rates, which favors the W-3175X and -9980XE. Core i9-9900K continues to perform well, especially given its much lower price point. It's notable that even more economical Core i5 models are also very competitive in many of these titles, so unless you have intense multi-tasking needs (like streaming), mainstream desktop chips provide the best band-for-the-buck for gaming.

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Middle-earth: Shadow Of War

Shadow of War leans heavier on graphics resources than host processing, so we don't see large deltas between the fastest and slowest CPUs. That said, the Xeon W-3175X proves itself to be an adept challenger during this benchmark. 

Project CARS 2

Although Project CARS 2 is purportedly optimized for threading, clock rates obviously affect frame rates. Overclocking the Core i9-9980XE to 4.4 GHz yields an impressive speed-up, once again snatching the lead from the tuned W-3175X, albeit by a slim margin.

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Office and Productivity

We flipped the Threadripper processors into the AMD-recommended Creators Mode for these tests. This setting exposes the full heft of Threadrippers execution resources.

Adobe Creative Cloud

Even though this suite has a few parallelized workloads, its final score is heavily influenced by the lightly-threaded tasks common in most desktop applications.

The Xeon W-3175X joins the 2990WX near the bottom of the overall score chart, which isn't surprising given this tests suites preference for high clock speeds. Tuning proves to be a power addition to the W-3175X's tool box as it grapples with the stock i9-9900K in the overall score. Threadripper 2990WX takes a commanding lead in the Photoshop Heavy test, but the remainder of the subtests go the W-3175X's way.

Web Browser

The Krakken suite evaluates JavaScript performance using several workloads, including audio, imaging, and cryptography. Like most Web browser workloads, single-threaded performance reigns supreme.

AMD has made great strides in lightly-threaded applications with its second-gen Ryzen chips, but Intel's fleet of high core-count processors still dominate these types of applications. The W-3175X is particularly snappy for such a core-laden chip, which we certainly wouldn't have seen a mere few years ago with HEDT models.

Productivity

The application start-up metric measures load time snappiness in word processors, GIMP, and Web browsers under warm- and cold-start conditions. Other platform-level considerations affect this test as well, including the storage subsystem. Core i9-9900K remains a winner, but the Ryzen 7 2700X is also impressive given its lower price point.

Our video conferencing suite measures performance in single- and multi-user applications that utilize the Windows Media Foundation for playback and encoding. It also performs facial detection to model real-world usage. Mainstream processors offer the best value in these types of applications, and the tuned -9980XE once again steals the lead from the -3175X.

The photo editing benchmark measures performance with Futuremark's binaries using the ImageMagick library. Common photo processing workloads also tend to be parallelized, which plays well to the strengths of the Ryzen lineup. These types of tests expose the strengths of the Threadripper architecture, provided that the software is optimized to exploit the tremendous compute resources.

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Rendering

Multi-Threaded rendering workloads have long been the absolute strength of the Threadripper lineup, but Intel's W-3175X steps in and upsets the balance. The W-3175X wrests the lead from Threadripper 2990WX in several of these heavily-threaded applications, but the gains are slight in some cases. The slight gains may make a 66% price premium hard to swallow, but pairing that multithreaded heft with Intel's commanding lead in the single-core benchmarks proves to be a potent combination.

The 32C/64T Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX enjoys the core count advantage, but as we've seen in the past, accesses from its remote memory controllers can affect performance in weird ways, depending on the metric. The Windows scheduler only complicates matters. When the 2990WX can really utilize its array of execution resources, though, the performance-to-price ratio is compelling.

Encoding and Compression

Our compression and decompression tests work directly from system memory, removing storage throughput from the equation. Intel's six-channel memory controller provides more throughput to feed the cores, and paired with Intel's general lead in IPC, the W-3175X doesn't disappoint. Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX stretches its legs in the decompression test, but exhibits its bipolar personality during the compression workload.

y-cruncher, a single- and multi-threaded program that computes pi, is a great test for evaluating AVX-optimized performance. Intel’s Core i9-9980XE employs two 256-bit FMA units per core that operate in parallel, whereas Ryzen's Zen architecture divides 256-bit AVX operations across two 128-bit FMA units per core. Intel's AVX instruction prowess is impressive during both the single- and multi-threaded benchmark, with the slight performance bump in the former likely attributable to the increased mesh and memory frequencies. As expected, we logged the same performance for both W-3175X configurations during the multi-threaded y-cruncher benchmark due to the same all-core 2.7 GHz AVX-512 offset.

While our HandBrake x264 benchmark also leverages AVX instructions, the x265 test has a heavier distribution of the densely-packed instructions. Intel's lineup leads the pack in both configurations.

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SPECWorkstation 3 Test Suite

The SPECworkstation 3 benchmark is designed to measure workstation performance in professional applications. The full suite consists of more than 30 applications, but we've winnowed down the list to eight tests that focus specifically on CPU performance. We've included the processors we had time to test during this round, but we'll expand our test pool in future articles.

Calculix

This test is based on the finite element method for three-dimensional structural computations. This benchmark scales well across the Intel processors based on core count, but Threadripper's core count advantage doesn't equate to a win over the W-3175X.

Kirchoff Migration 

The earth’s subsurface structure can be determined via seismic processing. One of the four basic steps in this process is the Kirchhoff Migration, which is used to generate an image based on the available data using mathematical operations. Threadripper 2990WX performs well in this benchmark, only trailing the stock W-3175X by a slim margin.

Financial Services - Monte Carlo

The Monte Carlo simulation is used to project risk and uncertainty in financial forecasting models. Threadripper 2990WX beats the Intel W-3175X by 14%, which is impressive. The W-3175X eked past after tuning, but turning the knobs on the 2990WX would likely allow it to regain the lead.

NAMD

NAMD is a parallel molecular dynamics code designed to scale well with additional compute resources. Those optimizations are clear as the Threadripper 2990WX leverages its extra cores to pull ahead of the stock W-3175X during the three subtests of molecular interactions.

Sequential Reweighted Message Passing (SRMP)

SRMP algorithms are used for discrete energy minimization. AMD processors have traditionally struggled with these tests, suggesting the benchmark might be latency-sensitive.

Rodinia LifeSciences

SPECworkstation 3's Rodinia LifeSciences benchmark steps through four tests that include medical imaging, particle movements in a 3D space, a thermal simulation, and image-enhancing programs. Threadripper 2990WX trails the stock W-3175X by 9.4%, but as with many of these benchmarks, we have to take Intel's premium pricing into account. The W-3175X's high price tag means you'll pay 66% more for that sub-10% performance gain.

Python

The Python benchmark conducts a series of math operations, including numpy and scipy math libraries, with Python 3.6. This test also includes multithreaded matrix tests that would obviously benefit from more cores, provided the software can utilize the host processing resources correctly. Here we see the 2990WX trail the Intel W-3175X by a substantial margin.

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Conclusion

Intel’s Xeon W-3175X is Intel’s answer to Threadripper’s increasing popularity in professional circles, and it offers an impressive blend of performance without many of the compromises associated with the Threadripper lineup. AMD’s Threadripper processors exposed a weakness in Intel’s workstation-focused Xeon W lineup. Aside from Threadripper’s higher core counts, they also came at significantly lower prices and offered plenty of extras, like 60 PCIe lanes and unlocked multipliers. Meanwhile, Xeon W processors were at a disadvantage with locked multipliers and 44 PCIe lanes.

Unfortunately, Intel hasn’t sampled its other Xeon W processors for evaluation, but they largely mirror the core counts and performance of the Skylake-X models in our lineup, with the primary difference being reduced memory timings to accommodate ECC memory and locked multipliers. As such, we’re using the Skylake-X models as stand-ins for Intel’s other Xeon W models.

We’re accustomed to lower frequencies on high core-count chips, but Intel has mastered pushing the limits of its mature 14nm process. That shows in the W-3175X’s surprisingly high multi-core turbo ratios. That extra power kicks in during demanding threaded workloads, like our rendering, encoding and workstation tests, to deliver an impressive amount of performance. Overall, the W-3175X matched or beat Threadripper 2990WX in most of our threaded tests. Intel’s superior performance in AVX-enabled workloads also led to larger deltas in applications that leverage the densely-packed instructions.

The W-3175X also comes with a 4.3 GHz dual-core boost that provides snappy performance in lightly-threaded apps, like web browsers and mundane office applications. The second-gen Threadripper processors have made great strides in this area, but they still can’t match Intel’s frequency and IPC throughput advantage.

We included gaming testing in our evaluation for the enthusiast crowd, but also to underline that ultra high-end processors aren’t a good value if gaming is your primary goal. In almost all cases, you’re better served with a mainstream or HEDT chip.

AMD’s Threadripper WX-series processors offer solid performance in some workloads, but the unique architecture also suffers from reduced performance in others. AMD developed a series of different settings that you can apply, and they do help with some applications, but constant reboots to flip between modes isn’t a tenable solution for professionals with established workflows. AMD also designed a background process that monitors workloads and adjusts accordingly, but the results vary based on the application, too.   

The W-3175X’s unlocked multiplier opens up another level of performance for those on the hunt for the bleeding edge, but as a result, it sucks more power than any processor we’ve tested. The processor consumed nearly 800 watts during our stress tests and often peaked at 700 watts during demanding threaded tasks. You’ll need a beefy power supply, or two, to really push the clocks. Our sample overclocked to 4.6 GHz with relative ease, albeit with the AVX frequencies left at stock settings. We dialed up the AVX frequencies in steps, but the extra thermal generation easily overwhelmed the high-end EKWB cooler.

As always, power consumption coincides with waste heat production, so prepare to foot the bill for an expensive watercooling solution, at a minimum, if overclocking is on the menu. Thermal output constrained our overclocking efforts, but you could expose more overclocking headroom with a custom loop or more extreme measures, like a water chiller or liquid nitrogen. That said, professional users and ‘creators’ aren’t the type of users that we would typically associate with overclocking, but AMD’s automated overclocking feature broadens the appeal by enabling an easily-accessible performance boost that even novices can exploit with the click of a button. It even dynamically adjusts based on the capabilities of your components. Intel offers its eXtreme Tuning Utility (XTU) for software-based overclocking, but it still requires manual tuning.

Intel’s ultra-premium platform is coming to market from system integrators first, with retail models slated to follow at an unspecified date. These systems will carry hefty price tags due to the components required, such as bulky watercooling loops and premium power supplies paired with expensive motherboards.

Professionals aren’t as sensitive to cost as they are to time: For professionals, minutes equate to dollars. The Xeon W-3175X will certainly find a market, albeit a niche one, in the professional segment. And perhaps with a few lucky well-heeled enthusiasts, too.

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AMD's Threadripper 2 announcement has the enthusiast community excited at the prospect of 32 cores and 64 threads coming to the desktop, but you'll need to top the processor with a capable cooler to bring the rumored 250W TDP under control. AMD told us at Computex that the new Threadripper 2 models will come with the Asetek bracket that provides compatibility with leading AIO watercoolers. But the company has also worked with Cooler Master to develop a new air cooler, Wraith Ripper, specifically for the Threadripper's TR4 socket.

Cooler Master will launch and sell the new air cooler separately. The Wraith Ripper cooler comes resplendent with fully-addressable RGB lighting for the Ryzen Threadripper logo and two LED strips that run down the center of the heatsink.

AMD's first-generation Threadripper came with two active die and two inactive 'dummy' die, but the new model comes with four active die. That will require a bit of extra cooling power, but the Wraith Ripper cooler provides full coverage of the large TR4 socket.

Seven copper heatpipes wick heat up into the hefty fin stack while a concealed 120mm fan in the center of the cooler provides airflow at a relatively tame 39dBA. The top of the housing features four Phillips head screw mounts that attach directly to the four threaded fasteners that mount into the TR4 socket, which eases installation. The cooler is quite heavy, as we would expect from a cooler that can dissipate roughly 250W of thermal output.

Neither AMD nor Cooler Master have released more details, such as pricing, but we're sure that information will pop up when the new coolers come to market during the Threadripper 2 launch in Q3 2018.

We reported earlier this week on a new version of Alienware's Area 51. The enthusiast desktop PC, originally launched in 2014, will get internal transplants in the form of AMD’s ThreadRipper or Intel's Skylake-X or Kaby Lake-X high-end desktop CPUs. We learned a few more details while visiting with Dell/Alienware during E3.

First, Area 51 will be an OEM exclusive for AMD's ThreadRipper for 2017. You’ll be able to build your own of course, or buy made-to-order PCs from builders or systems integrators, but among the primary system manufacturers--Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer, Asus, etc.--Alienware will stand alone for this year. If it’s a feather in the cap of Dell to have this exclusively, it’s certainly a good sign for AMD, getting the whole-hearted support of a prominent OEM so early in the life of its new CPU. 

Area 51 is ultimately configurable. We saw a version with three AMD Radeon 580 GPUs, and we saw a version with AMD’s yet-to-be-released Vega GPU inside. A Dell representative opened the Area 51 so we could see, but we couldn’t touch, and we couldn’t take pictures. An AMD representative was on hand to condone the viewing.

We also pressed Alienware about cooling, given these new high-end desktop processors. The chassis hasn’t changed (it’s still that same trapezoid-ish shape, with no alterations for air intake or exhaust), but the system’s liquid cooling required for ThreadRipper and Skylake-X demanded fans spinning at higher RPM, a bigger radiator, and changes to the hoses. An Alienware representative at E3 couldn’t recite the exact details. 

Dell partners with Asetek on the cooler. The company designs and builds its own motherboard.

Alienware wouldn’t give us price ranges. You can guess that it’ll be expensive, given what’s going on inside and that you’re not building it yourself. However, Alienware said that the customer it's targeting with Area 51 is the so-called “mega-tasker,” a term onerously (criminally?) coined by Intel, and one that is sadly catching on. Don’t worry, though: you’re forgiven if you’re merely a multitasker. 

But Area 51 could also be favored by those conducting more high-end design work, and, yes, people with more money than sense. At least, that’s our interpretation of what Alienware said. What a representative actually said was that some people just want the fastest thing available, no matter if they need it and no matter the cost.

NZXT announced the Kraken G12 GPU cooling bracket, which allows end users to install all-in-one cooling solutions on their graphics cards. The company stated that the Kraken G12 is the successor to the G10 and features an updated design that allows for easier installation and broader compatibility.  

On the subject of cooling performance, NZXT’s founder and CEO Johnny Hou had this to say:

Being able to play the latest games at the highest settings, without sacrificing performance is something all gamers want. While aftermarket graphic cards have improved lately, most stock cooling systems still can’t reach the performance level of liquid cooling. That’s why we decided to design the updated Kraken G12 to be easier to install and support the latest liquid AIOs.

Although this is an NZXT-branded component, the Kraken G12 cooling bracket is not limited to NZXT-branded coolers. In fact, the Kraken G12 is compatible with more than thirty AIO coolers currently on the market. This broad compatibility is due to the fact that NZXT's line of Kraken coolers are designed by Asetek, the very same company that designs coolers for the likes of Corsair, Antec, Thermaltake, and others.

The bracket design utilizes the stock heatsink mounting holes around the GPU, making the Kraken G12 bracket compatible with a wide range of graphics cards from both Nvidia and AMD. The press release lists support for everything from the 5xx series GPUs all the way up to the latest 10 series GeForce GTX cards. There is support for current AMD video cards such as the RX 480 and RX 470, but as noted in the compatibility chart, due to die height some older AMD graphics cards may require the use of a copper shim (which is not included).

We inquired about the possibility of NZXT-branded memory or VRM heatsink kits, and although a company representative stated that there are currently no plans to offer memory or VRM heatsink kits, he noted that the Kraken G12 does offer support for most current aftermarket solutions.

Even though the G12 is offered in only two colors (matte black or matte white), industrious modders can easily customize the look of the Kraken G12's powder-coated finish with a quick repaint or added graphics.

The NZXT Kraken G12 allows those of you who have recently upgraded your CPU cooler from a 120mm /140mm AIO cooler to a larger 240mm /280mm unit to simply repurpose your old AIO cooler into a cooling solution for your graphics card without spending a lot of money.

The Kraken G12 AIO GPU cooling bracket has a two-year warranty and retails for $29.99 USD. Availability is listed as April 24, 2017, but you can preorder one now if you like.

Normally, if you want to cool a CPU and a GPU in a single water cooling loop, you need a custom loop. Recently, EKWB launched its expandable all-in-one liquid coolers, but it seems that the Slovenian manufacturer isn’t the only one to do so. At CES, EVGA showed off a new liquid cooling system – one that’s also expandable. For now, it’s called the EVGA QRC/QRG system, with the two abbreviations standing for Quick Release CPU and Quick Release GPU, respectively.

The parts are built with Asetek pumps, which are basically the same parts as we see in almost all the standard all-in-one coolers. The difference here is that each module has two quick-disconnect fittings. The CPU block has its own pump, as do the GPU blocks, so there will be no running into hydraulic restriction issues due to a single weak pump being bogged down. In fact, in longer loops, if one of the pumps fails, you may not even notice right away because the other pumps remain unaffected.

In this system, on the graphics cards, only the GPUs are cooled by the water loop. The memory and VRM circuitry are still air-cooled by the fan on the graphics card, exactly like how various graphics with pre-installed water cooling work.

Because of how EVGA has placed the quick-disconnect fittings, it is actually possible to use up to four graphics cards in a single loop. To cool these effectively though, you’ll also have to add a second, or maybe third radiator, but EVGA plans to make those too.

All the hardware will come pre-filled, so it will really just be plug-and-play.

Compared to EKWB’s Predator lineup, this setup offers a couple advantages. For one, it actually allows you to use multiple GPUs, and it will likely be a tad cheaper. In contrast, EKWB’s set actually uses the same hardware as in custom loops, so you can always take it apart and turn it into a true custom loop, which you won’t be able to do with EVGA's offering, because these parts do not use G1/4" threading.

EVGA also said that there will be software monitoring capabilities.

Sadly, EVGA did not reveal anything about pricing or about availability just yet.

Follow Niels Broekhuijsen @NBroekhuijsen. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.

In December 2014, Asetek won a case against Cooler Master Incorporated that awarded Asetek $404,941 in damage, which represented a 14.5 percent royalty fee on all sales of Cooler Master-branded closed-loop water cooling units that use a cold plate mounted pump from 2012 until the date of the judgement. Cooler Master appealed that decision, but the result of that effort was not a pretty one for the company.

On September 23, the court again sided with Asetek and denied Cooler Master's demands. Not only did the ruling remain in Asetek's favor, the court increased the fine from 14.5 percent to 25.735 percent on all sales from January 1, 2015 and later. Additionally, the court issued a permanent injunction barring Cooler Master from selling closed-loop coolers that use a pump mounted on top of a cold plate in the United States. 

Cooler Master has the option of appealing the decision, but when pressed for comment, the company declined to say whether it would do so or not. The company also declined to provide a list of affected products at this time.

An interesting twist in this story could be bad news for AMD. Cooler Master is the company behind the closed loop cooler installed in the Radeon R9 Fury X reference cooling solution. Cooler Master was not willing to confirm or deny if this cooler will be affected.

Follow Kevin Carbotte @pumcypuhoy. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.

In the world of all-in-one water cooling, it takes a lot to stand out, and one of the few manufacturers that has managed to persistently do so is Swiftech. The company announced its H140-X customizable all-in-one CPU cooler, which follows the company's latest trend for creating patent troll-proof coolers.

Before we continue, we must note one small detail. During the summer of 2013, Swiftech faced potential litigation from Asetek, which lead to Swiftech removing its rather excellent H220 liquid coolers from the U.S. market. Naturally, they still sold elsewhere in the world, and in the US they eventually sold under the Cooler Master brand, but Swiftech also wanted its own name in the US market. To make that happen, the company released the H220-X in the summer of 2014, which was such a radically different device that it couldn't possibly draw legal attention. The same went for its larger brother, the H240-X.

The H140-X features the same radical design, with the pump, radiator, and reservoir all molded together into a single unit. Tubing goes out from there to the LED-lit Apogee XL water block, which can be used to cool your CPU. The 140 mm fan on the unit is PWM-capable and will spin at speeds between 700 and 1800 RPM, pushing between 35 and 90 CFM, and making between 8.3 through 28.8 dBA of noise. At max speed it will generate a static pressure of 2.29 mm of water. The fluid is pushed around inside the loop by an MCP30 pump, which operates with a maximum power draw of 6 W.

Of course, the biggest advantage of Swiftech's all-in-one CPU coolers, aside from the quality, is that you can disassemble them and expand the loop. This is useful if you want to, say, add a graphics card, or another radiator. That said, we likely won't see a lot of folks opening this one up and expanding the loop, as anyone who's planning to do that will likely get the 240 or 280 mm variant, which provides more cooling power. Running a graphics card and a CPU on a single 140 mm radiator just doesn't make sense in most situations.

"The release of the H140-X closes the first chapter of a promise we made at CES 2014: to offer a complete range of low noise, high performance, enthusiast grade, all-in-one CPU Coolers based on our Patent Pending Technology," said Swiftech's CEO, Gabe Rouchon. "It took us a little longer than anticipated, but the overwhelming market response and total customer satisfaction we are seeing now prove that it was worth the wait."

Swiftech priced the H140-X at $129.95, which is pricy for a 140 mm liquid CPU cooler, but it isn't half bad considering the gear you get for that money – this is essentially a pre-built custom liquid cooling loop.

Follow Niels Broekhuijsen @NBroekhuijsen. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.

When the R9 290 and R9 290X came along, one of the biggest complaints about the cards was their cooler. The reference cooler was, simply, not good. It didn't allow the GPUs to run at their full potential, and it was very, very loud. On top of that, it let the GPUs run at 95 C, which a lot of users simply weren't comfortable with.

AMD addressed these issues when it built the R9 295X2, as it was cooled with both air and water. The result? A superb cooler, for which almost no vendors built aftermarket solutions. That last bit may have had something to do with vendor restrictions, but there simply wasn't a need – it kept both of the fully-enabled Hawaii GPUs running at their stock speeds, and it wasn't noisy while doing so.

There is now a rumor on the web, based off an image and an announcement from Asetek, that AMD is building its next Radeon R9 390X graphics card with a similar cooler. Yep, that's right; we might be looking at the first single-GPU reference design that's liquid cooled.

The image of the cooler shroud that was leaked on the Baidu forums is clear, although what isn't clear is the announcement from Asetek: the company announced on August 14 that it had secured the biggest design with 'an undisclosed OEM.' This win would result in $2 - $4 million dollars of revenue for this undisclosed OEM, and the undisclosed product in question would start shipping during the first half of 2015. The announcement did indicate that it would help Asetek's success in the graphics liquid cooling market. So take these two details, put them together, and we can say that there's a good chance that the R9 390X reference design will be partially liquid cooled. (One plus one equals, two, you know.) Of course, this is still a rumor, so do be sure to take it with a pinch of salt.

So, what do you think? Would you like to see this happen, or do you think it's going a little far for a single-GPU solution?

Follow Niels Broekhuijsen @NBroekhuijsen. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.

Building a Budget Intel-Based MicroATX Gaming Cube

Back in May, we published a story called Build A Balanced AMD-Based Gaming PC On A Budget, which showed you how to construct a low-cost system using AMD's Athlon X4 750K CPU and appropriately-quick graphics cards, all housed in an attractive case. After all, just because you kept an eye on your budget doesn't mean your gaming box needs to be ugly.

This time around, we wanted to do something similar on the Intel side, particularly in light of the good press its Pentium G3258 has been receiving. Our own coverage (Intel Pentium G3258 CPU Review: Haswell, Unlocked, For $75 and The Pentium G3258 Cheap Overclocking Experiment) shows that, even though the Pentium is a dual-core processor lacking Hyper-Threading technology, overclocked, it's still able to out-perform the quad-core Athlon in a great many workloads. It's cheaper, too, which we like.

Component vendor Deepcool has been offering to send us hardware for years, and we typically declined because the company's products weren't readily available in the U.S. More recently, however, it scored a spot on Newegg, and so the Steam Castle enclosure we're using today is something you can actually go out and buy. We thought we'd give the $100 enclosure a test run.

In addition, we have the company's Maelstrom 120 closed-loop liquid cooler. That one isn't available yet, though we're assured it will be soon.

The core of this DIY project is MSI's H97M-G43 motherboard, which sells for about $90, and Intel's overclocking-friendly, multiplier-unlocked Pentium G3258, available at $70 on Newegg.

We don’t blame you if you do a double-take: overclocking on a H97-based board? Yup. You've already seen us do this on an inexpensive H81-based platform using beta firmware. So we can't guarantee that Intel won’t kill this feature through some upcoming microcode update. But given the overwhelmingly-positive community response, we've only heard a token protest from the chip giant (and not even through official channels). 

Our overclock was an overwhelming success, peaking at 4.7 GHz through a massive voltage increase. This is neither reasonable nor practical, though, and we've trolled the G3258 user reviews, noticing a great many power users hitting ceilings around 4 GHz, too. As a result, we settled in on a 4.4 GHz clock rate, which requires very few changes in the BIOS and should be possible with most Pentiums.

Then we added a $160 MSI GeForce GTX 750 Ti Twin Frozr Gaming graphics card, completing our well-proportioned budget-oriented gaming machine. It has no trouble handling AAA titles. Just don't expect to run at the highest resolutions with overly taxing detail settings. Not everyone needs a high-end system and its associated price tag. With that in mind, we're happy to present this alternative to our previous AMD build, which should give you years of great performance, despite its conservative cost.

Deepcool Steam Castle

Unboxing

Deepcool packages its unique-looking Steam Castle in foam. You can easily grab both pieces and dump them into the recycling bin.

All necessary accessories are enclosed. There is an instruction booklet, screws, a tiny wrench for the motherboard stand-offs, lots of cable ties, and even a piezo speaker. The bundle covers the bases; nothing is missing.

Technical Specifications

Exterior: Look And Feel

This Deepcool case is attracting case modders who associate its shape with steampunk and fancy jukebox designs. But even if you don’t alter the enclosure, it's unique enough to stand out from the crowd and draw attention.

Yes, we understand that its looks are polarizing. While the German online retailer Caseking deemed the case unsellable and refused to stock it, apparent successes in other countries suggest that there's at least a market for the Steam Castle.

Let’s take a look at the exterior of the case:

The dull rubber-coated surface is homogenous and easy to work with; you can remove stains and fingerprints with a soft cloth. It looks much better than brushed or dull plastic. We suggest going with the black model. More brightly-colored alternatives may lack the dark finish's higher-end appeal.

Interior and Construction

The interior warrants a closer look as well. Deepcool went for a feature-rich cross between mid-tower and cube, and appears to have achieved its goal.

Frankly, we view the 3.5” drive bay not as a feature, but a nuisance. Most problematic is when it interferes with long, thick graphics cards, though some folks will understandably want a single high-capacity storage drive in a machine like this one.

The back plate for the motherboard seems perfect, and the PSU mounting bay is at the bottom of the case, allowing your power supply to draw intake air through openings down there. A filter keeps the dust out.

Since this is a particularly wide case, a cage for two SSDs sits behind the PSU. Solid-state drives can be mounted without tools, which is something we really appreciate.

The front bezel and lid are easily removed. You need to do the former when you want to install an optical drive, though removing the lid is only necessary if you want to install two additional fans or a radiator.

For what it's worth, what appear to be four small wind turbines up top, well, aren’t.

Instead of four fans, those domes house multi-color LEDs. They're purely for show. Several different light effects can be selected. There really are slots in the top though, which may help with ventilation.

Fans, Fan Control, and the Front Panel

Speaking of air, two fans comes installed in the case, and their speeds can be electronically controlled. While the rear fan is all but inaudible, the front fan is, paradoxically, quite noisy at low RPM settings and nearly quiet at full throttle.

The front panel is really a side panel, which sits at the right side of the case and sports two USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports, HD Audio jacks, the on/off button, a reset button, and a knob for controlling fan speed. That knob doubles as a push-button for selecting different LED effects.

The rear side of the panel is nicely laid-out. If necessary, all cables can be unplugged.

Whether or not you like the Steam Castle's looks is a matter of personal preference. But Deepcool does manage to show us something new in a well-made product.

MSI H97M-G43 and Intel Pentium G3258

Small and Overclockable: Intel Pentium G3258 Anniversary Edition

For the 20^th anniversary of the Pentium, Intel released a cool entry-level CPU for hardware enthusiasts. We've already established in our previous stories about the processor that this is a rare piece of equipment from the more conservative company.

Previously, if you wanted to overclock a budget CPU, AMD was your only outlet. Its Athlon X4 750K/760K fared well, even if it was hot at 100 W. Finally, Intel showed up to compete in this space, though.

Depending on your luck (where on the wafer your CPU die comes from, among other factors), up to 4.7 GHz can be achieved with the Pentium G3258 if you're willing to push crazy voltages. Aside from the two G3258s tested in our SoCal lab, the Tom's Hardware Germany team experimented with an additional five and found that all of them hit 4.4 GHz without a voltage increase. Only a multiplier adjustment was needed, and the motherboard automatically increases the core voltage, if needed.

A Suitable Platform: MSI's H97M-G43 + Custom BIOS

For the record, Intel only allows mainboards with the more expensive Z-series chipset to sport overclocking functionality. But for end users, it doesn’t make sense to put a $67 entry-level CPU on a high-end motherboard. Find out how to use an inexpensive H-series motherboard anyway, with this one weird trick:

You can use this motherboard for overclocking if you flash it with the BIOS from one of the following download links. This BIOS is not officially supported by MSI and was purportedly leaked from MSI’s R&D department.Using the leaked, unofficial BIOS may void your motherboard’s warranty and MSI support cannot be contacted about any issues arising from its use. You have been warned!

While not officially supported, it worked perfectly. We found the unofficial BIOS at various file hosting sites, all of which hosted the very same image:

Naturally, a $90 motherboard doesn’t sport a luxury-grade bundle, but everything you need is there: an ATX I/O shield, two SATA cables, a comprehensive manual, a quick-start guide, and a CD containing drivers and tools.

Since the two 16x PCIe slots are amply spaced, a CrossFire setup seems possible. However, the USB and HD Audio connectors would interfere with the second graphics card. Plus, most mATX enclosures have room for only four expansion slots; that bottom card could only be one slot-wide to work.

Then again, if you're on a budget, buying a Pentium and an inexpensive motherboard, multi-GPU arrays probably aren't on the menu anyway. Rather, this platform is aimed at a more value-oriented demographic.

Apart from the typical six-channel analog audio jacks, you also get an optical output. There are four USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports, one combined PS/2 port for a keyboard or mouse, and one GbE jack.

Deepcool Maelstrom 120: Closed-Loop Liquid Cooling

Deepcool Maelstrom 120

We're told that this is an original design from Deepcool, and not another Asetek clone. The pump's resemblance to Asetek's design is purportedly coincidental.

Be that as it may, we're also told that, due to the patent situation in the U.S., certain design changes have to made before this closed-loop liquid cooler can be sold here. Right now, it's only available in Europe.

Deepcool has a Maelstrom 120 and a Maelstrom 240. The latter sports a double-wide radiator, but both models have the same pump. It goes without saying that we picked the smaller cooler for the entry-level Intel Pentium CPU. The water cooler comes with a complete accessory set, including mounting kits for all current AMD and Intel interfaces, screws, a manual, a fan, and the water cooler assembly itself.

Depending on your processor and interface, you need to pick the corresponding bracket and mount it on the pump. Then, you attach four screws to the one-size-fits-all back plate and secure the screws with plastic shoes. An audible click confirms that a screw is locked in place.

Next, you stick the screws through the motherboard’s holes (on AMD motherboards, you need to remove the back plate first).

Then, you place the pump/water block combination on the four screws and secure it with as many thumb nuts.

In order to mount the motherboard into the case, remove the enclosure's rear 12 cm fan and install the I/O shield. Complement the installed motherboard standoffs as needed. The case comes with a tiny thumb tool for tightening them.

Carefully lower the mainboard onto the standoffs and attach the radiator to the rear wall of the case.

Finally, you put the case on its back and mount the water cooler’s red fan with the enclosed long screws.

Attach the pump’s cable to the motherboard’s case fan header, boot the board into the BIOS, and ensure that the water pump is not subject to automatic fan control. The pump requires a steady, unmodulated +12 V supply.

The fan’s cable is attached to the motherboard’s CPU fan header, but perhaps you want to set the fan to run a tad faster than the default, as it also has to handle some of the graphic card’s heat. For the GeForce GTX 750 Ti, however, we found this not to be necessary. When we tried a Gainward GTX 760 Phantom for test purposes, it was.

Storage Installation

3.5” Cage: Hard Disks

A maximum of two 3.5” hard disks can be mounted on frames and inserted into the cage. No tools are necessary. Deepcool came up with a nifty design for these.

Typically, the mounting frame has to be bent out of shape in order to insert a drive. Deepcool's frame, however, slides apart, whereupon the hard disk is inserted. Then the frame is collapsed, trapping the disk in place. From there, the complete assembly is inserted into the cage.

2.5” Drives (SSDs and HDDs)

Deepcool also cam up with an innovative design for the 2.5” cage. First, four rubber standoffs are screwed into the SSD (or 2.5” hard disk). You don’t need a screwdriver, as there is very little friction.

The SSD cage is at the bottom of the case, behind the PSU. It sports an interesting latch mechanism.

The latch allows you to clamp the SSD into place.

Slightly lift the lever if you want to remove the SSD again.

5.25” Bay: Optical Drive

In order to access the 5.25” bay, the front bezel has to be removed. While this may sound difficult, it isn’t. Just pull the bezel off. It grabs the sheet metal with four hooks.

The 5.25” bay is right underneath the top cover, and the optical drive interferes with the optional top fan. You have to choose between one or the other.

Alas, the optical drive cannot be mounted without a tool. use one screw on each side, at minimum, to secure the optical drive.

PSU Installation and Cabling

PSU Installation

While we're happy the folks at Deepcool were able to make inroads making their Steam Castle available in the U.S., it apparently hasn't done as well with power supplies. The DA500 sent over to our German office doesn't show up for sale. Fortunately, there are a lot of good alternatives in the 500 W range. Corsair's CX500 is one. SilverStone and Cooler Master also have strong offerings.

Nevertheless, the DA500 Tom's Hardware Germany received is manufactured at CWT and based on the GPA design. We loaded it up to a mere 300 W and at that wattage it ran quietly.

Only the motherboard cable is sleeved; the other leads are bare. You'd want to make judicious use of cable ties to achieve a visually appealing result. The PSU’s rated output is more than sufficient for this build, and there is even leeway for a more powerful graphics card.

The capacitors on this power supply's secondary side are made by CapXon, and are adequate by our standards. For a low-end PC like this one, you could even dip down into the 300-350 W range. But again, good 500 W units go for as little as $50 online.

One thing we don’t like about the Deepcool PSU is that it is way too large for its rated output. Then again, it served its purpose, fit inside the Steam Castle, and skates by as acceptable if you're in a country where it's available.

Cabling the PC was quick and easy. Short PSU cables can be an asset when the case is a compact one.

Installing the Graphics Card and Finishing Touches

Picking the right graphics card for a low-end PC can be tricky. Some inexpensive boards even work without an auxiliary power input. If your card of choice does need more than the PCIe slot's 75 W, they're going to be too short to run behind the motherboard. You need to run them up and over instead. If your card doesn't need that much power, run the leads from your PSU where they won't be seen using cable ties.

Mounting a graphics card is easy: loosen the slot bracket’s screw, remove one or two slot shields (depending on the width of your card), and then carefully insert the graphics card. Clamp it into place using the slot bracket. Finish by tightening the bracket's screw.

MSI's surprisingly long GeForce GTX 750 Ti Twin Frozr Gaming card demonstrates that longer high-end boards would bump into the obsolete and useless externally-facing 3.5” bay.

Overclocking Temperature and Sound

If you end up buying MSI's H97M-G43 and the download the BIOS from one of our links, CPU overclocking is completely straightforward. And remember that MSI has several other models that have seen beta firmware leaked (the $45 H81M-P33 used in The Pentium G3258 Cheap Overclocking Experiment, for example).

We picked a low-hanging goal of 4.4 GHz because none of our five test CPUs required an increased voltage to support it stably. At 4.5 GHz, the processor's power consumption increased noticeably since voltage had to go up (1.3 V or more was necessary). The small performance bump just didn't justify the extra time messing around in the UEFI and subsequently troubleshooting crashes.

Simply increase the processor's multiplier to 44, exit the setup screen, and save the changes. Don’t use MSI's OC Genie for this basic overclocking process.

If necessary (for instance, when you use faster graphics cards), enter a more aggressive fan curve in the BIOS. In case of the GeForce GTX 750 Ti, we didn’t need to do that.

Test Results: Stress Test

And now let’s put the pedal to the metal with 20 minutes of LinX. Prior to this test, we already tested the stability of the overclocked system with Aida64. Here is a look at the core temperatures:

Just one core hits 60 °C, and only barely. The average is well below that. Even at 4.7 GHz using a 1.325 V core voltage, we did not top 75 °C. This proves the mettle of closed-loop liquid cooling. Of course, most value-minded gamers aren't going to spend that much, which is why we revisited Pentium G3258 overclocking in the previously-linked experiment.

What about the core voltage at 4.4 GHz? We measured 1.2015 V at the socket, since the motherboard applies some voltage automatically. You don't need to increase this setting manually.

How much power does the overclocked system draw? Occasionally, the 4.4 GHz system reached 70 W, which is completely acceptable. Had we manually raised the CPU’s core voltage, the wattage would be much higher.

At 4.7 GHz, we saw power peaks in excess of 90 W. While power consumption rises dramatically, the system's performance doesn’t keep pace. We may publish a separate article on extreme overclocking of the Pentium G3258 at a later time, but that's not the focus today.

Test Results: Sound Level

We measured the sound level diagonally from the left side towards the upper-right corner of the case at a distance of 20” and an angle of 35 degrees. This simulates a system under the right side of the desk you're sitting at.

A mere 37.3 dB(A) after 20 minutes of full load is impressive, though the pump's rumble is somewhat annoying. You can experiment with throttling that component, or simply do without the expense of liquid cooling altogether. Just keep an eye on the CPU's temperature as you swap parts in and out, or alter settings associated with performance.

If you can live with 70 to 72 °C core temperature during a stress test, the sound level drops to a mere 33.5 dB(A). That's barely audible.

Picking Parts For Your Own Build

This project demonstrates several things. To begin, so long as you don’t buy too much graphics card (as in, a board that's far more powerful than the rest of the platform), an overclocked Pentium G3258 is a great value, even if it's never going to be a truly high-end processor. Cap your goal at a reasonable 4.4 GHz or so and you'll find that little effort needs to go into overclocking.

Once again, we want to emphasize that a reasonable balance between graphics card performance and the CPU should be sought.

MSI's H97M-G43 is a relatively inexpensive option for overclocking the Pentium if you don’t want to spend more money on a Z97-based board. Granted, the firmware that allows overclocking is an unofficial, leaked version, so going down this path is not without risks. And if you want to save even more money, there's always the B81-based MSI motherboard used previously in our Pentium overclocking experiment, which sells for a scant $45.

With that, the CPU, motherboard, and graphics card are a great match. Anything else?

It's certainly not going to appeal to everyone, but Deepcool's Steam Castle is at least something different. Whether you plan to mod it or not, functionality-wise, this is a good case. It sports plenty of nifty details, and we enjoyed building with it. Conversely, the externally-facing 3.5" drive bay is unnecessary and would prefer the audio jacks to be marked. We also found that the front fan slightly rumbles at low RPMs.

We wish we could say it was possible to build an identical copy of this system. However, some of the components that are readily available oversees haven't shown up yet in the U.S. Still, the ideas we're presented translate over. In every country, Nvidia's GeForce GTX 750 Ti is an efficient little card that's plenty fast, even if you're forced to pay a premium for its compact dimensions and Maxwell architecture. Intel's Pentium G3258 makes for an idea complement. And going any faster on the graphics side with such a mainstream platform just wouldn't make sense. Keep balance in mind as you build.

Deepcool's Steam Castle is a visually interesting case that offers some interesting features. You can't get the Maelstrom 120 here, though even if you could, we're not convinced you'd want to spend big on closed-loop liquid cooling for a $70 CPU anyway. Our already-published experiments show you can hit 4.4 GHz using Intel's bundled cooler with a bit of luck.

Regardless of which way you go with your own components, there's lot of fun to be had building your own entry-level PC. It doesn't always have to be all about high-end hardware.

PowerColor Cools Two Hawaii GPUs Using Air

To call PowerColor’s air-cooled dual-GPU project daring would be an understatement. We know darned well how hot AMD's Hawaii GPU can get. Just one is enough to push most thermal solutions to their limits. That's why AMD went with liquid cooling for its Radeon R9 295X2 (a card we found to be well-built, by the way).

Now, PowerColor is trying to improve upon the first workable reference design we've seen from AMD in years with a gigantic air cooler. Is this an act of deft engineering or blind ambition?

Since AMD's sampling policy (at least over in Europe where they tested these cards) is best described as weird, we went the extra mile to make this head-to-head comparison and bought our own Radeon R9 295X2. It performs a little worse than the card we have in the U.S., but the difference is small. There's no reason to suspect anything other than normal variance between them. 

Air versus water. A huge chunk of metal versus hoses and a radiator. We can hardly wait.

The three-slot bracket on the back of PowerColor's Devil 13 Dual Core is the first hint that this card means serious business. Picking it up, the thing appears built like a tank, and you have to wonder if your motherboard's PCI Express slot will take all of the weight. This is a graphics card you need to hold with two hands.

PowerColor is asking the same $1500 that AMD wants for its own Radeon R9 295X2. But the Devil 13 board attempts to differentiate itself by including a Razer Ouroboros in its bundle. That's a nearly $140 add-on. And the mouse is extremely comfortable, too. What's more, at least at the time of writing, Newegg is running a special on the Devil 13 that includes a 120 GB Samsung 840 EVO valued at $100.

Before we get started, let’s take a look at the specifications we're dealing with. After all, PowerColor promises us the world’s fastest graphics card, even though the Devil 13 operates at 18 MHz below the peak clock rate of AMD's Radeon R9 295X2. But company representatives are sure they can compensate for this small disadvantage with a higher memory frequency.

In The Box, Dimensions, And Weight

In The Box

There’s a lot of stuff in this box. Apart from the driver CD, there are two 6-to-8-pin adapters and a kind of graphics card stand that can be fastened between the Devil 13 board and chassis floor (or power supply) so the PCI Express slot doesn't have to bear all of the weight. Later, we'll get everything set up to determine if this works. Of course, then there's the previously-mentioned Razer Ouroboros gaming mouse.

A Bonus: Razer's Ouroboros Gaming Mouse

Peripherals are highly personal, so however you feel about the Ouroboros, we can't really pass judgment without an in-depth review. Regardless, this is a high-end mouse with a price to match and plenty of enthusiasts will appreciate its inclusion. Razor gives the device's body a number of configuration options, allowing it to be individualized. It's wireless, too, which comes in handy.

Dimensions and Weight

It’s important to note that the height of the PCIe power connectors and their protruding cables need to be added to the net height of the card.

A massive weight of more than 2.3 kg makes PowerColor's Devil 13 the heaviest board we've ever reviewed by a wide margin.

Pictures And Features

The incredibly heavy PowerColor Devil 13 employs a true three-slot design. After all, the two separate heat sinks (one for each of the GPUs) need a lot of space. Using three 86 mm fans was quite certainly unavoidable to provide the needed airflow, but all of that cooling could also lead to audible turbulence, especially from the center fan. We’ve made a video about this that we’ll get to later. Five heat pipes per sink dissipate thermal energy quickly from the base to the fin arrays.

The board itself was developed by PowerColor in-house but, just like the reference design, uses a PLX switch for communication between the two GPUs. Power circuitry is split between both processors, also similar to AMD's reference card, enabling separate power supplies. Part of our testing covers why this doesn't work out as well for PowerColor as it does for the Radeon R9 295X2.

The frame that stabilizes the Devil 13 doubles as cooling for the power circuitry and memory packages. We have a picture of a pre-production sample, but PowerColor's retail offering is finished in black.

Around back, the Devil 13 sports another elaborately-designed frame as a backplate and counterpart to the internal frame.

Up top you'll find an oscillating red Devil 13 logo, auxiliary PCIe power connectors, and an illuminated BIOS switch.

This is going to blow your mind: PowerColor's Devil 13 Dual Core employs four eight-pin power connectors, which is to say two per GPU. That should be plenty (considering AMD only arms the 295X2 with two).

The BIOS switch activates a performance mode when it's pushed down. In essence, the fans react more aggressively, though the clock rates do not change.

There's nothing notable about the card's bottom edge. You'll find a few spots for exhaust, but that's about it.

A closer look at the back gives you a view of the copper heat pipes, as well as the stabilization and cooling frame, the cooler’s cover, and the fans.

The display outputs are standard fare, and include two digital dual-link DVI connectors, DisplayPort, and HDMI.

How We Tested PowerColor's Devil 13 Dual Core R9 290X 8 GB

Measurement Apparatus and Procedure

We’re using a standardized PC platform for our performance and power consumption measurements. It has an overclocked Intel Core i7-4930K processor that’s clocked depending on the task in question at 3.6 GHz (workstation), 4.2 GHz (VGA charts), or 4.8 GHz (extreme).

We switched out our power supply after our experience reviewing the Radeon R9 295X2. The new one gives us a little more headroom.

Power Consumption

The German power consumption test system for consumer and workstation graphics cards was developed in cooperation with HAMEG (Rohde & Schwarz) to provide the most exact measurements possible at the smallest time intervals possible. It’s capable of temporal resolutions all the way down to one millisecond.

Only sophisticated technology like this can rise to the challenge posed by the demands of AMD’s PowerTune (which can change the core voltage in a time frame of less than 10 ms) and Nvidia’s GPU Boost, and their resulting fast and large load fluctuations. Consequently, we evaluate all current and voltage measurements with a 500 MHz digital multi-channel oscilloscope, the HAMEG HMO 3054, which also allows the collection and storage of all data in one place, as well as meaningful remote control.

The measurements of the first two of the three high-resolution HAMEG HZO50 current probes are completed using a riser card that was specifically constructed by us for the 3.3 and 12 V rails. The riser card supports PCIe 3.0 and features short signal paths. The third current probe does its job via the PCIe power cable that we’ve modified accordingly.

We’re measuring the voltages directly at the PSU after modifying it a bit. For the most detailed measurements, we’re generally working with a temporal resolution of 2 ms, which is enough to cumulatively record all of the power fluctuations caused by AMD’s PowerTune and Nvidia’s GPU Boost technologies. The duration of these tests is limited to two minutes due to the large volume of data across all the measured channels. We only lower the measurement intervals to their physical minimum if we want to look at something specific in yet more detail.

Power Consumption: A Detailed Look At Idle

ZeroCore Power is an interesting feature that represents the best solution for minimizing idle power draw in dual-GPU systems. At least in theory, the graphics card that isn’t needed can simply be turned off. PowerColor tries to illustrate the concept on the back of its Devil 13 board using two LED panels indicating each GPU's consumption.

Clearly, PowerColor put a lot of emphasis on its power handling, so we were fairly surprised by our measurements. At 36 W during idle, that's higher than we'd expect, especially considering that AMD's Radeon R9 295X2 idles more than 10 W less without ZeroCore Power. Once the 295X2 partially shuts down, it drops under 14 W (which is less than half of PowerColor’s result).

These numbers were repeated several times and the outcome is consistent: PowerColor's power supply is definitely different from AMD’s. Let’s first compare the Devil 13 Dual Core to the Radeon R9 295X2.

The first eye-opening result is that the Devil 13 draws 14.8 W from the motherboard slot alone, which is already more than AMD's dual-GPU Radeon when one of its GPUs is disabled.

Since this portion of the power draw is independent of ZeroCore, it results in an extremely high constant minimum power draw just based on component choice and layout. Conversely, AMD doesn’t use the motherboard's 3.3 V rail at all.

Now we'll compare power consumption at the two pairs of eight-pin auxiliary connectors, each of which corresponds to one GPU. The active processor draws just over 10 W through PCI Express, whereas the turned-off GPU still eats up 8 W. Tack that onto high power use from the motherboard and you end up with use reminiscent of AMD's Radeon HD 6990.

Power Consumption: Idle, All Cards

Unfortunately, in this day and age of efficiency, these idle results aren't acceptable. They're considerably worse than AMD's reference-class graphics cards, landing PowerColor's Devil 13 Dual Core at the bottom of a list that includes the previous three generations.

Power Consumption: A Detailed Look At Gaming And Stress Testing

Gaming Power Consumption

Two things jump out when we compare PowerColor's Devil 13 to AMD's reference Radeon R9 295X2. First, PowerColor manages to limit the peaks in power consumption so that they’re barely above the average. Even though the Devil 13's PowerTune-based jumps are a bit more pronounced than the reference card, its sophisticated power supply smooths out the extreme peaks, relieving pressure on the PSU.

Second, it’s very noticeable that PowerColor uses the motherboard's 3.3 V rail to take care of components like the Devil 13's GDDR5 memory, whereas the reference card stays exclusive to 12 V.

Both solutions are very different. But PowerColor comes out ahead in the end. Our measurements also show that the two graphics cards have roughly the same ratio of power draw to performance. In the Devil 13's case, that means we observe lower consumption corresponding to slightly less speed.

Stress Test

Again, a direct comparison shows some differences. Even though the Devil 13 manages to sustain its clock rate in every scenario, some kind of measurable voltage clipping limits the maximum power draw to an average of 409 W (power target), which is barely higher than our gaming benchmark.

Lower compute-based stress test results confirm our findings. The power-to-performance ratio holds steady, which exposes the tricks used to avoid pushing this three-slot air cooler past its limits. Even though AMD sets a power target of 208 W per GPU (and sticks to it exactly with the Radeon R9 295X2), PowerColor's Devil 13 stays below that number.

Looking at the 12 V power supply through the four eight-pin PCIe connectors, the Devil 13's smoother curve is noticeable yet again. This consistent power draw is different from AMD’s reference design, which has been known to push PSUs beyond their limits. Certain supplies that weren't able to properly support AMD's Radeon R9 295X2 due to its peak power draw have no problem with PowerColor's board.

As for the 3.3 V rail through the motherboard slot, it's the same here as it was during our gaming workload. The wheel doesn't need to be reinvented.

Power Consumption: Gaming, All Cards

Power consumption under load is okay. We observe approximately 200 W per GPU of draw, which corresponds nicely to AMD's Radeon R9 295X2 when you take performance into account. PowerColor’s card pulls a little less power, while providing a little bit less speed; we can live with this compromise.

Temperatures, Noise, And Videos

Temperatures

The Asetek closed-loop liquid cooler AMD uses for its Radeon R9 295X2 performs as well as can be expected in spite of its miserly 120 mm radiator. It beats PowerColor's Devil 13 board without breaking a sweat. Though, that card, in turn, isn't bad for an air-cooled offering with two high-end GPUs.

We decided against testing the PowerColor Devil 13 inside of a case in order to protect our hardware. The card with the PCIe connectors on top is too tall for our reference chassis, and its included holder, the “PowerJack,” is too small for our alternative full tower, Corsair's Obsidian 900D. As you think about the hardware you'd pick to go with this graphics card, bear in mind that if PowerColor's PowerJack fits, the Devil 13 should sit securely. But you have to put more effort into coordination than most other configurations.

Fan RPM

In order to manage thermals effectively, the fans must provide a certain level of air flow, of course. This gives us a nice segue to our noise section. The fans on PowerColor's Devil 13 card behave interestingly in performance mode. A number of slow-downs are apparent in our log of rotational speed; these are reflected in the temperature curves, too.

Noise Measurement

Graphics cards noise measurements are performed using a calibrated high-end studio microphone (supercardioid) positioned perpendicular to the middle of the graphics card in question at a distance of 50 cm. This distance, in conjunction with the very strong cardioid directionality of the microphone, represents a compromise between avoiding noise due to fan turbulence and avoiding ambient noise, which can never be completely eliminated.

We performed measurements after each card reached its operating temperature in our gaming loop. Even though the Devil 13 offers both quiet and performance settings, you don't get a significantly better experience in quiet mode. The two firmware options have PowerColor's card competing with AMD's Radeon HD 6990 to become the loudest board we've tested recently.

Unfortunately, this noise level is truly unbearable, even with quiet mode activated and the card in a case. Again, we have to give AMD credit for its water-cooled Radeon R9 295X2. The Devil 13 ends up coming across as an interesting demonstration of what's possible, or what an air-cooled 295X2 might have looked like.

Comparison Videos

Finally, we'll give you a listen to how PowerColor's Devil 13 Dual Core compares to three generations of dual-GPU reference cards from AMD. The numbers don't tell the whole story, after all.

PowerColor Devil 13 Dual Core R9 290X (Quiet Mode)

Radeon R9 295X2

Radeon HD 7990

Radeon HD 6990

Results: 1080p With Max Settings

We're using the 2014 VGA Charts database for comparative benchmarking. This gives us a great basis for creating an index with all games and tests taken into consideration. If you want the individual test results, check out the charts section itself, where you'll find all of the individual numbers composing the index and have the option to create comparison tables.

Gaming at 1920x1080

We start by testing at FHD and maxed-out settings, even though that's well below the target market for a flagship dual-GPU board. PowerColor's Devil 13 lands right where we'd expect it relative to AMD's reference Radeon R9 295X2. That is to say the air-cooled model is just a bit slower given its more moderate power consumption. The only benchmark where the Devil 13 inches out its competition is 3DMark Fire Strike, due to the card's tuned memory subsystem. Unfortunately, you can't play a synthetic metric. But we still have to be impressed that traditional heat sinks and fans can keep up with two Hawaii GPUs.

Manually increasing the clock rate of PowerColor's Devil 13 to 1018 MHz and increasing its power target to match AMD's Radeon R9 295X2 yields almost identical benchmark results, interestingly enough.

Results: 2160p With Optimized Settings

Gaming at 3840x2160

We’re using this high resolution with optimized settings specifically chosen for our  benchmark charts. There's no point in generating unplayable frame rates for all cards; then again, it's equally fruitless to lower the bar so much that higher-end cards don't have a chance to shine.

PowerColor's Devil 13 Dual Core again shows up right behind AMD’s Radeon R9 295X2, which is hardly surprising given the technical differences we've already discussed.

PowerColor Devil 13 Dual Core R9 290X: An Interesting Tech Demo

PowerColor proves to us that it's possible to put two Hawaii GPUs on one board, run them without a dramatic reduction in clock rate, and cool them with heat sinks and fans.

The Devil 13 Dual Core's power circuitry stays under 70 degrees Celsius as well, which isn’t bad. As opposed to AMD’s reference Radeon R9 295X2, PowerColor's creation is also free from any extreme peaks in power consumption, even under full load. This suggests that, even though the card's power supply is different, it's implemented well and ideal for handling the quick load fluctuations experienced by high-end GPUs. Smoothing out those spikes takes stress off of the power supply, which is already taxed by such high-end hardware. That's actually an important point, since graphics card vendors increasingly don't temper those big spikes. Instead, they make them the responsibility of PSU manufacturers.

There's also a lot to like about the Devil 13's accessory package, which includes a Razer Ouroboros wireless gaming mouse and the PowerJack, designed to hold up and support this massive graphics card. For a presumably limited time, Newegg is also throwing in a 120 GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD worth $100.

Unfortunately, the Devil 13 Dual Core R9 290X is not quiet. Registering more than 58 dB(A) in quiet mode and more than 61 dB(A) in performance mode, this graphics card is a conversation piece only in the sense that it doesn’t allow conversations to happen anywhere near it. No doubt, this is the same challenge Nvidia faced with its GeForce GTX Titan Z. Ultimately, that company had to turn performance down through lower core clock rates in order to make the board's acoustics acceptable.

High power consumption at idle, which tops 35 W in spite of one of the GPUs being turned off, suggests that board layout wasn't a priority when the Devil 13 was designed.

Bottom Line

PowerColor's Devil 13 Dual Core R9 290X is a limited-edition graphics cards that will find a following, despite all of the reasons to avoid it. It's really not fit for everyday use, partly because of its price, and mostly due to its noise level.

For the same $1500 you'd spend on AMD's surprisingly elegant Radeon R9 295X2, you get that improved power delivery. But then you're forced to contend with the heat of two Hawaii processors dumped in your chassis by fast-spinning fans. Sure, there's a pretty sweet mouse bundled as an extra value. However, in the context of high-end graphics, the closed-loop liquid cooler on AMD's dual-slot 295X2 is more sensible.

Still, PowerColor's innovation deserves mention. The company managed to do something different. It runs two of AMD's fastest graphics processor at full speed on air cooling without throttling back GPU frequencies.

In the end, the Devil 13 Dual Core R9 290X is mostly a technology demonstration, we'd say. It shows that two Hawaiis can be cooled by air and that they'll run without overwhelming a built-up thermal solution. But that's really all it works for. PowerColor earns recognition for going out on a limb, even though liquid cooling would have been the quieter way to cool this monster. Then again, there's already a long list of partners doing that.

According to a press release issued by Asetek, the company has been granted a patent related to liquid cooling graphics cards. The release didn't give many details, but did tell us that the patent was granted for Asetek's thermal interposer liquid cooling system built for use on GPUs.

"As seen in the recently announced AMD Radeon R9 295X2, the graphics cooling market is one that we see as having tremendous growth potential for our desktop business," said André Sloth Eriksen, Founder and CEO of Asetek. "We continue to see increasing interest from GPU and graphics card manufacturers due to increased power use and demands for lower acoustics. Given this interest, it is possible that the GPU cooling business could rival our CPU cooling business in the coming years."

While it is great to see Asetek is working towards making GPU liquid cooling more mainstream, we don't know that many details about this patent so we find it difficult to get excited over this. Instead, find ourselves getting worried. If this is a patent simply on liquid cooling a GPU, or even just liquid cooling a GPU using a closed loop liquid cooler, competing vendors have something to worry about. From the image, it looks like a new concept for a liquid cooling water block, but the exact workings of it are unclear.

Hopefully, this doesn't result in a patent war.

Follow Niels Broekhuijsen @NBroekhuijsen. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.

Asetek, a manufacturer of various water cooling products, has won the 2013 Data Center Dynamics EMEA Award for Innovative Liquid Cooling.

"It is an honor to have our data center liquid cooling innovations recognized in this way," said André Sloth Eriksen, Founder and CEO of Asetek. "This award further validates our solutions' ability to address the growing problem of energy efficiency in the data center as made evident in our recent infographic."

One of Asetek's solutions, known as RackCDU, is an innovative solution for cooling data centers. The system allows each rack to have its own liquid flow, and has a heat exchanger to take the heat from the liquid in the rack to the facility's liquid. The facility liquid can then be cooled down externally, or used as space heating in other parts of the building.

Swiftech has voluntarily decided to withdraw its H220 liquid cooler from the US market in response to a claim of patent infringement from Asetek's lawyers who say the CPU cooler infringes on its patents, specifically US patents 8,240,362 (the '362 patent) and 8,245,764 (the '764 patent).

According to the company's press release, Swiftech maintains that it does not believe that the H220 infringes "any valid claim of the '362 and '764 patents" and has made the decision to withdraw the cooler to avoid litigation. The release also included a sincere "apology to its US customers for this extraordinary situation" and promised that full technical and warranty support will still be provided for the H220 and that the "product will continue to be sold in other countries."

I want our customers to know and expect with absolute confidence that Swiftech’s resourcefulness will once again be brilliantly demonstrated in the immediate future” - Gabriel Rouchon (Swiftech Chairman and CTA)

Finally, it is worth noting that Asetek filed suits against CoolIT in August 2012 and Cooler Master in January 2013 on similar grounds of patent infringement. Swiftech approached Asestek on June 27, 2013 for a "nonexclusive license for the asserted patents" but was denied on July 12, 2013 after receiving a response from Asetek's legal counsel that the company doesn't offer licenses.

Previously, we informed you that Asetek was suing Cooler Master. The problem in question was that, according to Asetek, the similarities between its cooling kits and Cooler Master's Seidon All-in-One liquid coolers were all a bit too present, thus it filed a lawsuit against Cooler Master: Suit No. 3:13-cv-00457-JSC.

The specifics of the suit came down to a request that Cooler Master must cease and desist the production and sale of the Seidon 120M, 120XL, and 240M kits. The biggest similarity that was argued over was the pump, which Asetek felt was far too similar to its own design.

In the meantime, Cooler Master has responded to these allegations with the statement below:

Whereas, Cooler Master’s customers are concerned about whether ourliquid-cooling radiator products (Seidon Serials) have infringed theAsetek’s patents, we hereby declare:In terms of Asetek filed the patent litigation in U.S. to Cooler Master on January 31, 2013, the said litigation is only on the preliminary stage. Cooler Master has started to understand and investigate the accused products for seeming patent issue. Apparently, Asetek will not assert its right in Non-US area now due to the patents -in-suit are US patents. Therefore, customers in Non-US area have no infringement issue. As you might know , it’s a typical means for competitor to bring a lawsuit against its rival. Asetek not only sued Cooler Master but Coolit. Its main purpose is to block its competitors to enter the market and gain the prime time profits. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or suffering incurred to our valued customers. Meanwhile, we assure that Cooler Master will be actively responsible for all the related legal liability if any IP issue arose herein.

The statement was released by Charles Chiu, Vice President of Cooler Master, on March 15, 2013.

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Following the release of Cooler Master's Seidon series of water coolers, many commentators noted the similarities between it and Asetek's own range of cooling systems. Asetek evidently felt that the similarities were a tad too uncanny and has filed suit against Cooler Master. Specifically the suit (Civil Action No. 3:13-cv-00457-JSC) alleges that Cooler Master violated patent numbers 8,240,362 and 8,245,764 (pictured below) and is seeking the following through a trial by jury:

• Cease & desist on production and sale of the Cooler Master Seidon 120M, 120XL and 240M
• Actual damages pursuant to 35 U.S.C. 284
• Treble damages due to Cooler Master's "willful copyright infringement"
• Payment of Asestek's costs and attorney fees

Aside from the case's clear financial implications, a verdict for Asestek could solidify their dominance of the liquid cooling market which would in turn reduce the market's competitiveness and overall consumer choice. Judging by Asetek's similar lawsuit against CoolIT, it seems probable that the companies could resolve this dispute through a patent licensing agreement.

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When It Comes To Cooling, Size Matters

We know from experience that cooling performance is mostly tied to the size of your sink and the air moving over it. The folks selling heat sinks know this too, which helps explain how our most recent round-up of air coolers grew to 14 samples (Big Air: 14 LGA 2011-Compatible Coolers For Core i7-3000, Reviewed). 

Anyone who's ever studied physics tends to get a little nervous when they see us supporting a couple pounds of copper and aluminum with a few inches of leverage over a delicate circuit board. Configurations that work marvelously on a system you build and leave at home are prone to failure when you move that machine around. Just think about the nightmare boutique builders face when it comes to mailing off an expensive system with an aggressively overclocked processor and multiple graphics cards inside.

Even we're affected by the problem of heavy heat sinks! We used to ship the winners of our System Builder Marathon giveaways fully-built PCs. Enough coolers broke loose (or broke motherboards) that we had to start taking them apart and boxing up the individual pieces first. Sometimes I'd experiment with water-cooling in my high-end SBM submission, and that was equally problematic when it came to shipping.

Fortunately, a more user-friendly form of cooling is available. Closed-loop liquid coolers rarely leak, they have no fill ports from which to spill, there is no separate pump or reservoir to break loose, and the small water blocks place little stress on the motherboard. Although they aren't as configurable as conventional water-cooling kits, sealed coolers boast superior portability, transportability, and maintainability.

The newest generation of closed-loop systems is even said to offer better performance than those that matched the air-cooling market a year ago. But heat sinks and fans continue evolving too, and there's a new sheriff in town. Are sealed liquid coolers really ready to stand up to a truly monstrous air cooler?

With four vendors ready to prove their worth, we needed only to find a suitable platform and high-capacity air cooler of similar cost.

Cooler Master Seidon 240M

Cooler Master’s double-wide submission is so new that it currently cannot be found for sale yet in the U.S. Pre-launch estimates pegged the Seidon 240M around $120. However, the company assures us that channel availability will happen mid-January, and that the cooler will sell for $100.

The Seidon 240M includes brackets for both AMD- and Intel-based motherboards, plus a power splitter, in addition to the expected screws, fans, and cooler. The pump and both fans each get their own three-pin connector, so the bundled power splitter may be a necessity for some builders.

Cooler Master’s reliance on three-pin leads allows your motherboard of choice to control fan speed (and consequently noise) based on CPU temperature. Leaning on motherboard fan speed control alleviates the need for software and reduces hardware complexity, though it limits control somewhat.

The Seidon 240M’s copper base appears to have been coarsely-sanded in one direction before receiving a medium-polish at a slightly different angle. Though already extremely flat, we’re sure that some users will want to make this mating surface mirror-smooth before installing it.

Seidon 240M Installation

Mounting brackets that secure the Seidon 240M’s pump/base assembly are designed to fit only one way. The Intel-style brackets shown below have screw positions for LGA 2011/1366, LGA 1155/1156, and LGA 775.

Rather than screw directly to our LGA 2011 bracket, the Seidon 240M’s mounting screws engage four standoffs. A different set of standoffs fits into the included support plates for AMD and previous-generation Intel processor interfaces.

The Seidon 240M’s radiator fits the top of our case perfectly. Most dual-fan cases now use the same spacing to allow nearly-universal support for this radiator style.

We connected the Seidon 240M’s pump to our motherboard’s CPU fan connector, and used the included power splitter to connect both of the Seidon 240M’s fans out our motherboard’s secondary CPU fan header. Alternative three-pin fan connectors would serve the same function, but usually with different thermal programming (depending on motherboard model).

We temporarily disabled our motherboard’s automatic fan speed controls during today’s tests, instead setting fan speed to maximum to assure test consistency.

Corsair Hydro Series H100i

Improved firmware, improved software, updated fans, and rubber coolant lines represent the most significant changes to Corsair’s H100i compared to its predecessor, though the new version lacks the older version's pump-mounted status bar. Instead, we find a simple logo top with soft blue backlighting.

The installation kit includes a pair of dual-fan connectors, the second one allowing builders to create a push-pull configuration using their own added fans, without sacrificing the unit’s thermally-controlled fan functionality.

A closer look at the pump's top allows us to also see its twin dual-fan lead connectors (left) and USB control interface connector (right).

The H100i’s mating surface is milled completely flat, though builders who don’t like mill marks will likely polish it.

Corsair is the first company we’ve seen to use an SATA power connector for a device that has nothing to do with storage. A pulse wire on an adjoining cable feeds a signal to the motherboard to prevent "fan not functioning" boot codes.

Installing The H100i

Corsair’s LGA 2011 standoffs are male on both sides, using nuts to secure the pump’s mounting bracket. Alternative standoffs are used to engage the H100i’s LGA 1366/1155/1156/775 support plate. The H100i’s included AMD bracket clips to the retention mechanism normally found on those motherboards.

The H100i’s top bracket installs over the pump’s integrated power cable, but beneath its USB and fan cables. This dictates that the detachable cables are installed last.

After installing the H100i’s radiator, we ran all of its power cables through an access hole at the top of our case’s motherboard tray and looped its fan speed-indicator lead back through that hole to the motherboard’s CPU fan header.

CorsairLINK 2 Control Software

Priced a bit higher than most of its competitors, Corsair justifies the H100i's added cost by including full electronic controls. Those electronics are configured through its CorsairLINK 2 application.

Clicking the gauge icons on the System status screen’s left side brings up a configuration menu on the right. Fans can be set to a wide variety of profiles, though we tested Default and Maximum.

The H100i’s software can create a graph of temperature and fan speed over time, and even log these events to a file.

While hardware settings are found under its System tab, CorsairLINK 2’s software settings are found under its Options tab. These software settings include the previously-mentioned logging feature.

Most CorsairLINK 2 features need no further description. Remaining screenshots are available in this article’s photo gallery by clicking to expand any of the above images.

Enermax ELC240

Not yet available in the U.S., an overseas price of around €90 roughly matches the $120 price estimated by Enermax during its launch. We imagine there will be some international vendors willing to ship here, but you'll probably want to wait until it shows up at a local distributor.

A round head and radial mounting tabs are reminiscent of the classic design offered by several of Asetek's OEM customers, but closer inspection reveals that none of the components Enermax is using are an exact match. Those design changes include a new base plate that Enermax says is more efficient than those previous versions.

The only cooler in today’s test that doesn’t have a lighted logo, Enermax instead focuses on functionality. Powered by a motherboard’s CPU fan header, a single three-conductor cable spits off to feed both fans and the pump. The pump itself has no RPM feedback wire, complicating detection should it fail.

We felt the pump to verify that its motor was working and checked CPU temperature to make sure liquid was flowing.

Installing The ELC240

The easiest way we found to install the ELC240’s head is to first attach its bracket loosely, then insert the cooler’s base between the grooves and twist to lock.

The ELC240’s so-called 240 mm radiator (actually, 2 x 120 mm) fits the standard screw holes adopted by many case manufacturers. In our specific configuration, we're able to mount it either centered or offset to one side, where offset mounting provides additional clearance for motherboard heat sinks and fan connectors.

After twisting the cooler head to engage its installation bracket tabs, we tightened the spring-loaded screws. It turns out, however, that the LGA 2011 screws provide insufficient pressure between the cooler’s base plate and our CPU’s heat spreader.

The problem we found suggests that either the screws are too long or the springs are too short. We tested it the way Enermax shipped it anyway, and then retested after adding some washers to increase spring pressure. You’ll find the word “modified” in our performance charts to indicate the setup we tweaked.

Zalman LQ320

Most companies don't make it a point to shout-out the ODM that manufactures its gear, but Zalman’s LQ320 bears an even closer resemblance to Asetek’s design than the Enermax ELC240. Perhaps this is an improved version of the CNPS20LQ?

Unlike Asetek's previous-generation offering, the LQ320 has a circular clip to secure its mounting brackets against the pump body. Zalman includes hardware for Intel's LGA interface and AMD's four-bolt motherboard pattern. If you have an LGA 2011-based processor, you get to ditch forgo a support plate altogether in favor of the built-in one.

Lighted on the logo side, the LQ320’s pump base is an almost perfectly flat, lathe-turned copper disk.

Spacers on the installation bracket can be rotated 180° to support either LGA 1155/1156 or 2011/1366 spacing. Intel’s older LGA 775 is no longer supported.

Installing The LQ320

The LQ320’s mounting bracket installs from the bottom. It slides past corresponding tabs on the pump body and is then rotated so that its hooks are aligned with those tabs. A large plastic locking ring prevents it from rotating again, and out of place.

Our case supports both 120 mm and 140 mm rear fans, and is shipped with a 140 mm fan installed. We had to remove it to make Zalman’s 120 mm radiator fit.

Sealed liquid coolers contain a small amount of trapped air, likely to allow room for coolant expansion, but perhaps a byproduct of the manufacturing process. Mounting the radiator with its hoses on the bottom would have allowed it to purge that bit of air from the pump body more quickly. That wasn’t possible with our case, though, because the end cap with coolant lines is also a little larger than the one at the radiator’s opposite end. As a result, we needed to mount it upside-down.

We placed the leftover fan that came with our case on its top panel, far away from the LQ320 to reduce the likelihood of interfering with its own fan. 

Test Hardware Configuration

We wanted to use a top-performing case from our recent Quiet Gaming Case Comparison, but also wanted the case’s configuration to be as close to average as possible. That meant we had to look past the Define R4’s unique front-radiator mounting option. The P280’s radiator mount could have made it a good second choice, except that Antec has its own closed-loop liquid cooler. There was another, potentially better candidate...

The Deep Silence 1’s top panel supports dual-fan radiators in both on-center and offset mounting holes, with the offset designed to enhance motherboard clearance. It even resembles a more common gaming tower design after removing its pop-up top panel. So, that’s how we used it.

The top panel was replaced when installing the air cooler, promoting front-to-back airflow. But which air cooler would we compare?

Our decision could have been a toss-up between the CNPS12X and Noctua’s NH-D14. Zalman's a competitor in today's story though, so we went with the Noctua to keep everything as balanced as possible. Both heat sinks are equally suitable as our air-cooled baseline.

Installing and removing CPUs and CPU coolers is a terrible thing to do to Intel’s LGA contacts. We try to stay consistent, though, which means we use the same components over and over. Even though it should have been expected by now, we were still a little disappointed when our much-used P9X79 WS sample finally failed. We passed the torch to Asus’ overclocking-friendly P9X79 while retaining the rest of that test platform’s hardware and software.

Cooling, Fan Speed, And Noise

Our biggest concern with sealed liquid coolers isn’t leaks, but the fact that they don't help dissipate the heat that builds up on a motherboard's voltage regulator circuitry. At one time, those components required a fan nearby when they were operating under a heavy load. Even now, airflow over power logic is a good idea. I’ve recommend devices like Antec’s Spot Cool for many years to combat hot spots, but part of today’s evaluation will focus on how each cooler performs without help.

Corsair’s H100i jumps out of the gate with a fairly significant cooling advantage, going so far as to match the NH-D14 when we look at voltage regulator temperature. With that said, all top-mounted radiators are going to an advantage over Zalman's LQ320 on our test bed. This is because the heat sink covering our motherboard's power circuitry is mounted directly beneath the case’s furthest-back top panel fan.

Remember how we modified the ELC240 with little washers so that its springs would pull tighter to the motherboard? Well, the chart above demonstrates that we didn't make any other changes to fan speed, while the chart at the top of this page illustrates how much more effective our little tune-up made Enermax's solution.

The ELC240 has the second-slowest fan speed, behind our air-cooling reference point, and the correspondingly-lower airflow explains why its temperatures are the highest of all liquid coolers.

Acoustics are different in every case you use, so we're including the noise levels of bare coolers, outside of a case. Unfortunately, that’s not a realistic test scenario for the H100i, since its smart controller spins down almost completely when there is no heat source. Don't worry though; we're using the full system noise levels for our final evaluation.

Lower fan speeds typically result in higher temperatures and less noise, but there's no direct scale between those three variables. Instead, the speed at which a fan achieves its optimal flow-to-noise ratio is based upon the shape of its fins. The ELC240’s low fan speed produces relatively little noise, but its acoustic advantage among liquid coolers appears smaller than its thermal disadvantage. Alternatively, full speed appears to be above the Seidon 240M's optimal RPM, with noise disadvantages exceeding cooling advantages. Cooling-to-noise is going to be a big consideration in our performance analysis.

Evaluating Performance

One of the liquid coolers in today’s comparison looks like it runs extra cool, while another model operates very quietly. In order to compare cooling to noise, we first take mathematical averages of the CPU temperature delta for all coolers and the noise level for all coolers. Changing to a percentage scale, we reflect higher thermal performance for lower temperatures (an inverse scale) by dividing the group average by each cooler’s actual temperature.

Larger denominators produce smaller percentages (one-eighth is half as much as one-fourth), so we put noise on a direct scale by dividing each cooler’s installed noise by the group’s average. Dividing the first calculation by the second produces an easy-to-read cooling-to-noise chart.

Nothing is more than 100% efficient, so we change the 100% baseline to 0% by subtracting 100% from each calculation. We see, for example, that Noctua’s NH-D14 is 22% more efficient than the average for today’s cooling contenders, while Cooler Master's Seidon 240M is 7% less efficient than the group average.

Corsair’s performance is a little harder to peg, since its automatic controller was tested at both default and maximum settings. Because the cooler operates in default mode right out of the box, we consider its higher (Auto) configuration as the second-place finisher among liquid coolers in Acoustic Efficiency. Zalman's LQ320 edges out the H100i in this chart.

Compared to the $120 dual-fan liquid cooling competition, Cooler Master's $100 Seidon 240M looks like a great value. Zalman's single-fan cooler takes second place, though we also have to consider that the design of its LQ320 resulted in excessively-high temperatures from our voltage regulator circuitry (only CPU temperatures are used in our calculation).

But there's a good reason not to fold in the power logic's thermal results. The heat sink our motherboard uses to cool its VRM is found along the top edge, putting top-mounted radiators at an advantage. Many platforms, however, have voltage regulation logic between the processor interface and rear I/O ports, favoring rear mounted radiators like Zalman's and/or air coolers like the NH-D14. Other motherboards have voltage regulators in both places.

Can Air Cooling Win A Round-Up Of Liquid Coolers?

Yielding CPU temperatures just a few degrees warmer than Corsair's top-performing H100i, generating less noise than the extra-quiet Enermax ELC240, and selling for less than any of the closer-loop liquid coolers in today's story, Noctua’s NH-D14 looks like the surprise winner in our analysis of value.

Unfortunately, if we accidentally knock our PC over, the NH-D14 might very well break our motherboard. Never mind trying to figure out the best way to ship it, installed, across the country. Even if we could guarantee that the folks at UPS and FedEx would handle our machine gently, the idea of having all of that weight rocking back and forth sounds like horrible torture for the delicate contacts of Intel’s LGA interface. From a portability perspective, big air is a bad idea.

Zalman's LQ320 takes second place in overall performance value. A look back at our performance data (before we factored in price) shows that Corsair's H100i is the best outright performer. We’re fairly certain that once we cross into $100+ territory, the $15 difference doesn't matter nearly as much.

Because many of the buyers shopping in this segment opt for closed-loop liquid cooling out of necessity and with less emphasis on price differences, we really have to consider awards for the top performing and best value liquid coolers, Corsair's H100i and Zalman's LQ320.

Our Tom's Hardware Approved recognition allows us to put the best performance and the best value on equal footing. If you're using the motherboard and the case in this story, specifically, the H100i becomes even more attractive. The LQ320 simply requires different hardware considerations to do its job well.

Background of the lawsuit is a liquid cooling patent that was filed as an application by Asetek in June of 2010 and was just granted by the USPTO on August 14.

The timing of the lawsuit indicates that Asetek has been waiting for the approval of this patent and there may not have been much discussion between the two parties as far as the validity of the patent and potential licensing fees are concerned. The granted patent appears to be covering the general design principle of a mainstream liquid cooling system in use today, with the main claim containing 15 individual claims:

- an integrated element including a heat exchanging interface - a reservoir - a pump, wherein the reservoir is configured to receive a cooling liquid from outside the reservoir through an inlet and pass the cooling liquid to the outside through an outlet - the reservoir including an upper chamber and a lower chamber - the upper chamber and the lower chamber being vertically displaced chambers that are separated from each other by at least a horizontal wall and fluidly coupled together by a plurality of substantially circular passages - at least one of the plurality of substantially circular passages being positioned on the horizontal wall - a boundary wall of the lower chamber being formed by the heat exchanging interface - the heat exchanging interface is adapted to provide separable thermal contact between the processing unit and the cooling liquid such that heat is dissipated from the processing unit to the cooling liquid as the cooling liquid passes through the lower chamber of the reservoir - the pump is adapted to direct the cooling liquid through the upper chamber and the lower chamber of the reservoir - the pump including a motor having a rotor, a stator and an impeller having a plurality of curved blades - the impeller being positioned within the reservoir - a heat radiator spaced apart from the integrated element - the heat radiator being fluidly coupled to the outlet and the inlet of the reservoir - the heat radiator being configured to circulate the cooling liquid therethrough and exhaust heat from the cooling liquid - a fan configured to direct air through the heat radiator, the fan being driven by a motor separate from the motor of the pump."

According to the patent, "it may be one object of the invention to provide a small and compact liquid-cooling solution, which is more efficient than existing air-cooling arrangements and which can be produced at a low cost enabling high production volumes. It may be another object to create a liquid-cooling arrangement, which is easy-to-use and implement, and which requires a low level of maintenance or no maintenance at all. It may be still another object of the present invention to create a liquid-cooling arrangement, which can be used with existing CPU types, and which can be used in existing computer systems."

Asetek recently stated that it has sold more than one million liquid cooling devices since the company's launch in 2006. The company recently added a "patented" logo to some of its liquid cooling solutions on its website and announced that " it has entered into a licensing agreement with a leading global marketer of integrated liquid cooling products that will enable the licensee to market both Asetek manufactured product and product utilizing Asetek Intellectual Property manufactured by certain other suppliers."

CoolIt did not comment on the lawsuit.

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Instead of the standard heat pipes, the system combines liquid cooling and heat exchange to provide room for CPU overclocking.

The system uses a 2.5 GHz / 3.5 GHz Intel Core i7-2920XM processor that runs at 4.4 GHz. The two GPUs were overclocked from 680 to 800 MHz. Asetek claims that the overclocking resulted in an 18 percent performance improvement in 3D Mark 11, 16 percent in PCMark Vantage and 23 percent in 3D Mark Vantage.

There was no information if and when this cooling system might be available and how much the modification may cost. However, a base M18x laptop lists already for $2000 and will cost at least $3300 if configured with a 2.5 GHz i7 2860QM processor (the i7-2920XM is not available in Dell's charts) and dual AMD Radeon 6990M GPUs.

Sealed Liquid Coolers Do Battle

The path to better PC component cooling has always involved bigger cooling surfaces, more airflow, or lower ambient temperatures. The problem with standard heat sink and fan designs is that the fans already hit the space limits of most systems, and making the cooler thicker can push its weight beyond the limits of the ATX form factor, causing bowing, bending, and sometimes even breaking. Noisy high-speed fans are required to maintain reasonable air velocity through the thicker sink, and pushing for the lowest ambient temperature often necessitates an acoustically-unfriendly chassis.

Liquid cooling conquers these challenges by relocating the heat sink to a more appropriate location, where it can be supported by the case and exposed to a cooler and/or higher-velocity airstream.

Moving the radiator away from the processor interface also benefits the builder, providing ample space to reach memory modules and on-board power connectors. And yet, maintenance issues often chase builders away from the custom cooling systems so often favored by our most enthusiastic readers. The alternative for low maintenance, sealed systems have become so reliable that they’re even being branded and sold by AMD (with its FX-series processors) and Intel (complementing the Sandy Bridge-E-based chips).

For as similar as the two coolers in the shot above seem, though, the included installation hardware is platform-specific. We decided that if we're going to spend big money on cooling, we want more universality than that. So, we chose to compare retail coolers able to support multiple platforms (two of which were produced by the same company as the platform-specific models).

Antec Kühler H₂O 620

In a partnership announced way back in January, Antec delivers the latest versions of Asetek’s LCLC cooling technologies in a retail package. The H₂O 620 represents its most-basic single-fan 1.1”-thick radiator version, intended for the rear panel of most performance-oriented ATX cases. Hoses are kept short to facilitate this installation cleanly.

AMD and Intel mounting kits are both included, though the version we received did not yet include the new LGA 2011 mounting screws previously seen in our PNY liquid-cooled GeForce GTX 580-based build.

Different holes in the socket support plate fit LGA 775, 1156/1155, and 1366 mounting holes. Plastic inserts in the top plate achieve the same purpose, while AMD gets its own support plates.

Factory-applied thermal compound covers the center of a finely machined copper cold plate beneath the H₂O 620’s pump. Tabs surrounding the pump body allow it to be installed in nearly any orientation.

A thin profile provides optimal installation space around the Kühler H₂O 620, even allowing access to our motherboard’s eight-pin EPS12V power connector. A lead on the pump facilitates automatic fan speed control, but this low-cost unit does not allow users to set a target temperature. Overclockers can achieve their best results by instead connecting the fan to a motherboard fan header.

Antec Kühler H₂O 920

With two times the fans and a radiator nearly twice as thick, the Kühler H₂O 920 is designed to be a big step up from its little brother. A push-pull orientation for the fans helps to overcome the reduced air velocity normally caused by a thicker radiator without a noticeable increase in fan speed.

The same CPU mounting hardware is used by both the 920 and 620 versions of Antec’s Kühler H₂O. Extra mounting thickness prevents us from reaching the motherboard’s EPS12V power connector, but we still had more than enough room to reach other motherboard connectors.

While dual fans and extra radiator thickness give the Kühler H₂O 920 its performance edge, the most interesting installation difference is the presence of a USB cable for controlling performance profiles. Users can select a wide range, from near-silence to stellar cooling from the Kühler H₂O 920’s software interface.

Antec Dashboard shows a coolant temperature that’s far below our processor’s internal thermal reading, along with the estimated noise level and speed of its fans and pump.

Graphing shows a brief history of liquid temperature and fan speed.

Default fan controls target a maximum coolant temperature of 50° Celsius. Evaluating the system’s maximum cooling potential requires setting the software's minimum selectable coolant temperatures of 20° to start and 25° max.

Corsair Hydro H80

January 2011 was a busy time for cooling companies. Corsair announced its switch to supplier CoolIT Systems at the same time as CoolIT released its improved cold plate design. Were that not enough to make our heads spin, Antec took Corsair’s place with Asetek. Phew!

The Hydro H80’s 1.5” radiator fits between its competitor’s single-thick and double-thick designs. And, it has a pair of fans similar to those of the competing double-thick solution. Selling for a Web price of $75, it also fits between the two competing models in price.

The H80’s Intel support plate uses slotted holes to fit a full range of LGA 775 to LGA 1366 coolers (with 1156 and 1155 in the middle). The first set of studs in the photo below holds the plate loosely in place behind the CPU socket.

A second set of studs holds the pump/water block atop LGA 2011-based CPUs, using the motherboard’s integrated support plate.

The H80 pump body ships with a matching set of Intel brackets installed. Included AMD brackets use wire hooks to engage AMD’s cooler clips. The pump body also includes a flow speed selector button and two four-pin PWM fan headers.

Thumb screws tighten the pump assembly’s cold plate against the CPU, pulling the socket support plate firmly against the back of the motherboard in this LGA 1155 installation. A small amount of space between the wider part of the stud and the motherboard prevents contact with any nearby circuit traces, which explains why the support plate was held so loosely in place.

Corsair Hydro H100

While the Hydro H80’s 1.5”-thick radiator was 50% wider than the 1” standard, the H100’s dual-fan radiator is nearly 100% longer. The top panels of many performance cases are designed specifically for this style of radiator, which is often called a two-by-120 mm design, abbreviated as 2 x 120 mm.

The H100 and H80 use the same pump style, though the H100 has four fan connectors as opposed to the H80’s two. Both have a finely-sanded copper cold plate with factory-applied thermal compound.

Both units also fit over the CPU in the same way, though the H100’s radiator is moved to the top panel.

The radiator’s top tank extends past the top of our rear fan, dictating its placement directly on the top panel.

Evga’s Air-Cooled Competitor

As seen in our previous Small Liquid versus Big Air comparisons, we wanted to include a high-performance air cooler to show what, if any, differences there are between the two technologies. Small liquid lost before, though this time we’re also considering noise, fit, and alternative radiator dimensions.

We picked Evga’s SuperClock CPU Cooler for its single 120 mm fan—which makes it a direct competitor to Antec’s Kühler H₂O 620—as well as its moderate price and good performance reputation.

Evga supports both AMD and Intel processor interfaces using the same installation plate. The firm has not added LGA 2011 mounting hardware yet.

Holes in the SuperClock CPU Cooler’s socket support plate fit most AMD and Intel processors. Thumb nuts make the included bolts stand up, while fiber washers insulate the motherboard from contact with the nuts. Evga even specifies adhesive film for the fiber washers to stick the plate in place, though we left the wax paper on this adhesive to ease removal.

The factory-installed mounting bracket supports everything from AMD’s old Socket 939 all the way up to Intel’s LGA 2011, though that'll require screws that Evga has not yet added.

The SuperClock CPU Cooler’s heat pipe-direct design reduces latent heat and weight. Several of our previous air-cooling comparisons have dispelled wild claims about this design’s performance advantages, though anything that can cut out weight without hurting performance is a benefit to us.

Spring-loaded nuts hold the SuperClock CPU Cooler tightly against the CPU.

Test Setup And Benchmarks

We loved our recent Liquid-Cooled Gaming System so much that we decided to use it again in today’s cooler tests.

We removed its liquid-cooled graphics system to make room for these coolers, and its original power supply was also moved to other projects. A single reference GeForce GTX 580 stands in for graphics cooling, while OCZ’s high-efficiency Z1000M gives it big power with little cable clutter.

Benchmark Results: Temperature, Noise, And Acoustic Efficiency

Because liquid cooling systems are designed to be mounted in a case, we closed our side panels before taking thermal and noise readings.

Voltage regulator cooling is always a big concern whenever fans are moved away from the processor. Fortunately, Asus’ Maximus IV Gene is designed specifically for this type of build. As a result, we only see important differences in CPU temperature, where Asus' “Auto” fan control mode isn’t adequate for our overclock. Thermal throttling forced us to give up on automatic controls for the H₂O 620, so we tested it only at its maximum fan speed.

With a wide dual-fan radiator, the H100 easily tops our thermal charts. Meanwhile, Evga’s SuperClock tower-style heatsink and single fan prove the adequacy of cooling without pumps.

Automatic modes require a hot processor for evaluation, so isolating the cooler noise could only be achieved at maximum speed settings by connecting the fans directly to a silent 12 V power supply. Full system noise is far more pertinent however, and this is where hot temperatures give way to quiet measurements with the Kühler H₂O 920.

We calculated the average temperature and noise level for all coolers and developed a cooling-to-noise-ratio chart by simple division, which made the average 100%. Subtracting one from the result gives us a 0% average, where the charted results show gains or losses compared to the average of all coolers in this test.

Bold claims by Corsair and CoolIT about their new cold plate design are proven true in our Accoustic Efficiency calculations, which partly cancel out the benefits of super-fast performance- or super-slow silence-oriented fans. The Hydro H100 tops the chart, followed closely by its shorter/fatter H80 sibling.

Which Cooler Is Right For Enthusiasts?

With middle-of-the-road performance at a low price, it’s easy to see why so many builders continue to choose proven air coolers to maximize value. On the other hand, most enthusiasts want more cooling capacity, quieter operation, or some balance of those two characteristics.

Thus, a value chart like the one above doesn't really matter to the high-end buyers willing to spend big bucks on hardware, since it’s so heavily skewed by price. A look at the previous page’s cooling and acoustic efficiency charts give us the most useful information. And clearly, power users who simply want the best low-maintenance solution will take the closed-loop liquid route.

That’s also where Corsair’s H100 shines, though its lengthy design requires a specifically-designed case. While many of those cases exist, most builders don’t pick an enclosure based on its ability to accommodate a really big radiator.

Corsair’s H80 was the runner-up in both performance and noise, followed by Antec’s low-cost Kühler H₂O 620. A less than $20 difference between them seems like a pittance by high-end hardware standards. But the percentage is significant.

We’d have no problem running the Kühler H₂O 620 in most of our systems, even though its automatic fan control methods are completely inadequate for our build. That’s because we know that its three-pin fan can also be controlled by the CPU fan headers present on a few of our motherboards. Yet, the cost of switching up to a four-pin fan to make this part more universal nudges us even closer to the price of Corsair’s better-performing Hydro H80.

It appears that Corsair really does have the proverbial “better mousetrap” in its Hydro H80 and H100. The H80 fits more cases and costs less, so it gets our general recommendation for builders who want the performance of extra-big air, without the extra-heavy motherboard-busting heat sink. Now, let's see if enthusiasts pave a broad, hard-beaten road to Corsair's house.

Intel has teamed with Asetek to provide an Intel-branded sealed liquid cooler for their CPUs. Intel becomes the first major CPU manufacturer to offer this as a base thermal cooling solution over the standard air cooler. In addition, it shows Intel's commitment to provided users with new, improved options, along with offering options designed with the overclocking community in mind. 

The cooler will be sold as a bundle option with their Sandy Bridge-E series CPUs. Users will be able to purchase the Sandy Bridge-E processors with or without the bundled cooler. This allows the end-user to determine what thermal cooling solution they want to utilize with their new CPUs, without having to deal with the "basic Intel heat-sink" utilized through the years. This does mean that the end-user will need to make sure they either go with the bundled option or have a 3rd-Party cooling option chosen for their new processor. 

Intel will sell its sealed liquid cooler as a stand alone option, as well. This provides user an option to utilize their new cooler with our platforms, within the Intel family. The coolers will sport the traditional Asetek-made water-block, as well as a large 12 cm fan and will be compatible with LGA2011, LGA1155, LGA1156 and LGA1366 platforms. Pricing of the new coolers is still unknown at this time.

Maximum Performance From MicroATX

It's not uncommon for PC enthusiasts to gravitate toward enormous cases that sit under their desks. Not only do those enclosures command attention, but they also have the extra space for installing add-ins and keeping them nice and cool.

And yet, our own case comparisons prove that extra space doesn't always translate into better airflow. Moreover, even a majority of enthusiasts don’t add more than a trio of three hard drives to their potent builds.

With that in mind, we're going to try something different today.

Harangued by lovers of multifaceted fascias, bright lights, and big windows, we decided to see how far we could push performance, while keeping our box's footprint as unassuming as possible.

As a frame of reference, we're comparing today's effort to our recent $2000 System Builder Marathon configuration. And like that build, we begin today's tale with a lovingly-chosen shopping list.

Unlike our System Builder Marathon machines, which are all sponsored by Newegg, this build was “off the books.” We pieced it together through some very helpful press contacts and and used a few parts we simply had laying around.

Our test results prove that we still didn’t cut any corners, even if some of the parts we picked aren't for everyone.

The Impetus: PNY’s Liquid-Cooled GeForce GTX 580 Graphics In SLI

GeForce GTX 580 round-ups are “so last-season,” and PNY’s parts arrived just as we were putting away the white summer wear. Fashion jokes aside, we simply didn’t have any more comparisons lined up when these parts arrived in our lab, but knew we could do great things with any GeForce GTX 580 factory-overclocked by 11% (to 857 MHz).

Simplified maintenance is a key advantage sealed liquid cooling has over do-it-yourself open loops, and increased radiator size is its key advantage over standard air-cooled parts. The biggest problem with sealed systems is that they can’t be disassembled and combined. So, if you have two kits, you have to find room for two radiators. Often, that simply isn't possible.

In case you didn’t notice (we didn’t at first), PNY included two different products for this build. Its XLR8 VCGGTX580XPB-LC-CPU is equipped with two fans, a double-thick (48 mm) radiator, and a CPU cooling block, while its XLR8 VCGGTX580XPB-LC has only a single-thickness radiator, a single fan, and no CPU cooling components.

The –CPU version of this GeForce GTX 580 includes mounting hardware for AMD’s Sockets AM2/AM2+/AM3 and Intel’s LGA 1155/1156/1366, plus an extra set of larger mounting screws for an upcoming Intel socket that uses a built-in support mechanism.

The Smaller Footprint: Fractal Design’s Arc Mini

A 16” case is barely tall enough to host a full ATX motherboard and PS/2 form-factor power supply. Fractal Design is a little kinder to its builders however, designing the Arc Mini for microATX motherboards, while leaving extra space at the top for cooling and cable management. At 8.25” wide and 19” deep, its footprint is nearly identical to that of competing 13.8” by 11.2” cube designs.

All that glitters is not gold, or even metal for that matter. Fractal designed its Arc Mini with a high-definition brushed-finish molding into a plastic face to give the appearance of aluminum at reduced cost.

Though the front panel might not win any design awards, the steel parts behind it are just as thick and sturdy as those of the Arc Mini’s bigger siblings. Scratch-resistant textured paint is also used, as durability and longevity are hallmarks of every Fractal Design chassis we’ve sampled.

A single 120 mm fan fills one of two front-panel mounts, while another resides in the back. Similarly, the top panel’s dual 140 mm fan mount includes a single fan.

The Arc Mini is designed to host a 2 x 120 mm dual-fan radiator, which is offset approximately 2.5” from the motherboard support plate to increase clearance for tall memory modules and large motherboard heat sinks. It’s still not wide enough to hold PNY’s pair of single-120 mm radiators side-by-side, but be assured that there is a method behind our apparent madness.

Overcoming Overclocking Ordeals: Asus’ Maximus IV Gene-Z

This editor always tries to keep his Sandy Bridge-based CPU core voltage at or below 1.40 V to assure longevity with above-ambient cooling. That usually means choosing 1.38 V for additional safety factor, though voltage fluctuations on some lower-range boards have occasionally still blown processors up over time. Even more of that built-in “safety factor” was subsequently added to our motherboard round-ups, taking that test voltage down to 1.35 V.

Our most recent System Builder Marathon revealed that an award-winning motherboard simply wasn’t able to cope with the increase from 1.35 V to 1.38 V, and that kind of mistake wouldn’t be tolerated for this build. Asus’ Maximus IV Gene-Z comes with a larger voltage regulator.

Assuming the same amount of current per PWM phase, the Maximus IV Gene-Z’s twelve-phase regulator would surely outpace that of the seven-phase product we had problems with in the SBM. As an advanced overclocking model, we’re actually counting on the Maximus IV Gene to have better-quality parts on each of its twelve phases.

Oh, and of course the board had to support SLI, which it does without breaking the Z68’s support for Lucidlogix's Virtu software and the Intel Quick Sync video enabled by it (even with our display natively attached to the discrete graphics cards).

Most enthusiasts think of microATX as a big, fat compromise. And yet, experienced overclockers are familiar with Asus’ smaller Gene line of “Republic of Gamers” motherboards, which incorporate the same design DNA as the company's full-sized ATX boards. Asus certainly doesn’t think of its product as lacking seriousness, providing a special USB cable that allows the system to be overclocked remotely, on the fly, by another machine system.

It’s also nice to see six SATA cables included with a motherboard that supports six internal drives.

Lightening The Load With Crucial And Seagate

When it comes to running real-world benchmarks, SSDs don't make a big impact, which is why they're  generally given a lower priority in our System Builder Marathon series. But we know they have a much bigger experiential impact than the numbers give them credit for. So, with no budget cap on this PC, we decided to go with the parts list that'd yield top-end usability, and that includes an SSD.

Storage guru Andrew Ku’s tests have shown that we can’t go wrong with Crucial’s 256 GB m4.

Of course we couldn’t get by with just 256 GB, as this machine was made for more than just games. Video and large image files would require at least one conventional hard drive.

A pair of Momentus 750 GB drives give us the option of super-fast 1.5 TB RAID 0 or redundant 750 GB RAID 1 arrays. This 2.5” drives would increase airflow and reduce weight compared to their 3.5” siblings, and we still have a BD-R upon which to dump any accumulation of old files.

We were extremely pleased with the performance of LG’s external drive, but disappointed by its selection of interfaces. The interface problem goes away when you install a drive internally, so we were even more pleased to find the internal version for $80. BD-R performance isn’t among today’s benchmarks however, so we substituted the new drive for a used part we had laying around.

Busting The Remaining Barriers

What do you call half of the legendary DDR3-2200 quad-channel 16 GB kit that G.Skill sent for our motherboard testing? G.Skill calls it F3-17600CL9D-8GBXLD, with two 4 GB modules making up our desired 8 GB configuration.

We chose these modules specifically to overcome any and all overclocking limitations, even though we know that performance gains over low-cost DDR3-1600 are minimal.

At $110, there’s absolutely no doubt that Seasonic’s SS-85HT is a value-oriented or even a low-cost part. And yet, it’s still capable of cranking out 80 A across two 12 V rails. We saw the feedback on $2000 System Builder Marathon configuration, where some folks suggested that this unit might have been the cause of its poor overclocking, and one of the reasons we kept it here was to put those rumors to rest. The only two things that cheapen this part are its lack of removable cables and its unpainted steel shell (though we could have spent nearly twice as much to get a full-featured part with the added benefit of 3% greater efficiency).

One such full-featured part would have been Seasonic’s own X850. We didn’t have one, but we did have our trusty X760 handy, and decided to use it for further evaluation.

Hardware Installation

The Asetek-supplied installation kit included with PNY’s XLR8 VCGGTX580XPB-LC-CPU graphics card sandwiches the motherboard between a base plate and top plate. The base plate is drilled for LGA 775 in addition to 1155/1156 and 1366, but the top plate is only compatible with the later standards.

Four threaded inserts fit marked holes on the base plate, while the top plate uses snap-in plastic spacers to align mounting screws.

Four fine-thread screws hold the base plate to the top plate. The CPU water block twists into place (so leave these screws loose until the water block is positioned correctly). A thermal interface material is factory-applied to the water block, negating the need for thermal paste.

Fractal Design’s six drive trays support both 2.5” and 3.5” form factors, though smaller drives mount without noise-dampening grommets. We used three of these trays for our build and removed the center drive cage entirely for increased airflow.

Another option to increase airflow would have been to mount the center drive cage parallel to the motherboard, but doing so would have forced us to remove its trays for added graphics card clearance. The idea of mounting a cage without its trays seemed pointless to us.

PNY’s XLR8 VCGGTX580XPB-LC-CPU cooling system uses a matched pair of fans in a push-pull configuration. We removed the unmatched Fractal Design rear fan before installing PNY’s dual fans and radiator in its place.

The thinner XLR8 VCGGTX580XPB-LC radiator was then installed in the front half of the dual-120 mm radiator top mount. Had the thicker radiator been mounted on top, it would have blocked access to DIMM slots.

We may have removed the case's original rear fan, but we were still able to put it to good use. A gentle pull on the front panel snapped it away for easy access to its empty bottom fan mount, and the left-over rear fan just as easily snapped into that mount.

Removed from the top panel during XLR8 VCGGTX580XPB-LC installation, the Arc Mini’s 140 mm top fan also fits the empty vent on its side panel. Putting it there prevents the side panel from closing, however, since the rear-mounted VCGGTX580XPB-LC-CPU cooling system overlaps its mounting space.

Asus provided two USB 2.0-based Wireless N adapters to complete our build. We chose the model USB-N10 for its lower profile, even though network performance is not among today’s benchmark set.

Overclocking

The Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z defaults our CPU to approximately 3813 MHz, regardless of the number of active cores. But it then idles down to 1606 MHz. Enabling XMP Profile 1 prevents Intel's SpeedStep technology from spinning the processor down when it's idle. That's good news for performance fanatics, and bad news for anyone who cares about their power bill.

A core voltage of only 1.38 V provides the extra stability needed to push the CPU multiplier to 47x and the CPU base clock to 101.1 MHz.

The motherboard’s 1.375 V setting pushes our CPU to 1.38 V with ± 4 mV of fluctuation.

As with most Asus motherboards, “Load-Line Calibration” reduces voltage “droop” under full load. The Maximus IV Gene-Z takes this feature a little further by adding several steps, with its “75%” setting appropriate for our CPU voltage and clock frequency.

A stable 4.75 GHz frequency is the result.

The Maximus IV Gene-Z responds to the altered base clock by changing from 9-11-9-28 to 10-10-10-30 timings. G.Skills DDR3-2200 remains stable, even though 10 is less than 11.

Liquid cooling allows our GeForce GTX 580s to reach an incredible 950 MHz frequency, even under “combined load” testing with the CPU and one of the two graphics cards on the same radiator.

Test Settings

We compared today’s microATX build to our previous ATX build to see how much more performance its higher clock speeds would provide.

Benchmark Results: 3DMark And PCMark

Factory-overclocked graphics cards give the microATX system a huge performance advantage in 3DMark, which gives us the illusion that it's 3.8 GHz stock processor (running that fast because Asus' UEFI settings sneakily make it so) thrashes the full-sized SBM build’s 4.5 GHz overclock.

We noted that the full-sized system’s cards could not be overclocked by a noticeable amount beyond their stock 772 MHz setting. But the liquid-cooled cards shoot all the way up to 950 MHz with complete stability. A huge 4.75 GHz CPU frequency pushes the microATX machine’s performance even further, making it absolutely unapproachable in 3DMark by the ATX machine.

A small bump in SSD performance gives the microATX build a similarly small bump in its overall PCMark score. A better overclock is worth around three times as much performance leadership.

Overclocking doesn’t help these single-SSD machines, though older System Builder Marathon systems have realized better storage scores from improved (software-based) RAID performance.

Benchmark Results: SiSoftware Sandra

Standard and microATX machines show similar performance in non-overclocked trim, suggesting that both machines push the same Intel Turbo Boost ratios when memory is set to “XMP” mode. XMP mode is an overclock-oriented setting, so this type of CPU optimization is par for the course.

Overclocking is a far different story, as our full-sized motherboard had great difficulty supplying the increased voltage we needed to reach a high CPU frequency. A microATX win doesn’t surprise us, since the board had a larger voltage regulator.

Though several of our memory articles have shown little performance advantage for data rates exceeding DDR3-1600, Sandra Memory Bandwidth always shows the performance improvements that we might not otherwise be able to realize in real-world apps.

Benchmark Results: Crysis And F1 2010

Crysis has a history of benefiting from nearly any improved component, from drives (faster progress saves) to CPUs and memory upgrades. This is especially true at medium settings (High Quality), where the graphics cards are not taxed enough to reach their limits.

The order of performance persists at Very High quality, though we actually expected the smaller machine’s higher-frequency graphics cards to prove more advantageous.

F1 2010 shows the results we were hoping to see in Crysis: at the game’s higher test settings, the microATX machine’s higher GPU clock allows it to lead over the overclocked SBM PC’s faster CPU. Overclocking the microATX build makes it a true performance monster.

Benchmark Results: Just Cause 2 And Metro 2033

Just Cause 2 appears CPU-bottlenecked, with the baseline microATX system’s faster graphics outpacing the overclocked SBM machine’s higher-frequency CPU only when screen resolution is pushed to 2560x1600. This observation applies even at our highest test settings.

Conversely, Metro 2033 appears to be GPU-bottlenecked even at our lower test settings, with the baseline microATX machine's faster GPUs leading the overclocked SBM machine’s faster CPU from 1680x1050 upward. Higher details further aggravate that bottleneck as the microATX machine always leads.

Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding

The same CPU in both machines demonstrates the same iTunes and Lame MP3 encoding times when set to the same standard frequency. The microATX machine’s superior overclock leads from there.

A slight lead among standard-frequency machines in MainConcept appears nothing more than a hiccup favoring the microATX build, whereas differences in overclocking capability are what really separate the (little) men from the (big) boys.

Benchmark Results: Productivity

While 3ds Max shows a slight preference for the microATX build overall, Adobe Photoshop simply reflects the differences in CPU frequency.

What we said about 3ds Max also applies to WinRAR and WinZip. We were surprised to see the lack of performance differentiation between overclocked configurations in ABBY FineReader, however.

Power, Heat, And Efficiency

Power consumption is where the microATX build literally sucks, as in the amount of extra current it draws from the wall. Though factory-overclocked graphics cards take part of the blame, the Maximus IV Gene-Z’s habit of disabling low idle power states when XMP memory mode is enabled also hurts the smaller machine’s overall efficiency.

While the microATX machine’s liquid-cooled graphics cards reduce GPU temperature, CPU temperatures are relatively well-matched between both configurations. We should also point out that both cases have similar airflow, in spite of the smaller machine’s radiators.

Higher graphics card frequency and better overclocking capability put the microATX system in the driver’s seat in front of the full-sized SBM build.

The reference-speed SBM machine sets the baseline in our efficiency charts, so that the chart reflects only how much better or worse other configurations are in comparison. This is done by starting off with the reference machine at 100% then subtracting 100% from the results.

Power consumption favors the bigger machine by such a large amount that it completely diminishes the microATX machine’s performance lead in our efficiency comparison.

Getting More Performance From A Smaller PC

Our experiment in microATX performance illustrates a few concepts that seam to have escaped many enthusiasts in recent years. The first of these is that you don’t really need a big case to achieve stellar performance.

Of course, we didn’t stop there. Every time our System Builder Marathon’s $2000 build sheet crosses its budget limit, I drop down to Antec’s Three Hundred Illusion case to save money. The rationale for that decision is that the case is sturdy enough, and ventilated  better than many competing products priced the same or even more.

The idea is to achieve high-end performance without the accompanying high-end price, and the most technically-charged argument against those builds has always been that bigger cases allow higher CPU overclocks. And yet, today we achieved a higher overclock using similar ventilation in an even smaller case.

Now, you could argue that the CPU in the smaller machine received an unfair benefit in this comparison from its liquid cooler, but we’ve already proven that liquid coolers this small have no benefit over big air coolers (on several occasions). The processor in this liquid-cooled machine is further forced to share its cooling with a graphics card, and the real cooling benefits were reserved for that high-end GPU.

In our recent System Builder Marathon, we concluded that the $2000 machine's overclocking issues were most likely caused by an improperly cooled and/or undersized CPU voltage regulator. Today, we showed that a similarly-priced microATX motherboard is capable of both hosting a larger voltage regulator and using it effectively. We also showed that any GPU overclocking deficiencies we ran into in the System Builder Marathon were a result of the lower-binned cards we chose. Picking more overclocking-friendly cards for today’s test opened up quite a bit of headroom.

We also heard some negative feedback about our previous-build’s SSD. But today’s test showed a top competing model providing only 2% better performance. While we love the upgraded SSD's increased capacity and performance, we wouldn’t sacrifice other parts of the machine to keep it within a reasonable budget. Like the DDR3-2200 memory we used in our microATX machine, a large, high-end SSD should be reserved for builders without budgetary restrictions.

Finally, several readers voiced concerns about the 850 W power supply we chose, which we readily admit isn’t the most efficient part in the world. It’s hard to argue against its 80 PLUS Silver rating for a mere $110, but we did experiment with an 80 PLUS Gold unit as well.

This is the same Seasonic X760 used in many of our reference builds, and we expected it to run at approximately 100% load in this follow-up piece. The 80 PLUS organization says that it pulls 863.6 W at full load and 88% efficiency. Our full-load test showed 875 W wall load with both GPUs and the CPU overclocked and maxed-out, so we’re pushing roughly 10 W beyond its rating.

The X760 saved 19 W at full load compared to the less efficient, lower-cost 850 W part. While that is enough power to light a small room in fluorescent glory, it’s not much by performance PC standards. We’d pick a more efficient model only if we had the money to burn. Though 850 W is our minimum recommendation for similar builds, this microATX configuration is already pushing the case’s maximum capacity with the parts we used. Anyone making room for big upgrades should upsize both their case and power supply accordingly.

All of these careful tests and considerations lead us to two conclusions. First, we were spot-on by stating that the only deficiency in the SBM $2000 PC was the motherboard’s voltage regulator, which only limited its overclocking capability. Second, it’s now obvious that most power uses can get even more performance in an even smaller size through careful parts selection.

We’d like to thank Asus, Crucial, Fractal Design, PNY, and Seagate for supplying the extra parts needed to test all of the concepts proven today. While we’re at it, we’d also like to know which of today’s parts you’d like to see in future builds.

Liquid Cooling For The Mainstream

Liquid Cooling: Pros And Cons

Anyone familiar with the subject of liquid cooling knows that it can be quite a challenging topic with which to deal. What components do you need to buy? Should you buy individual parts or go for a pre-assembled system? Which manufacturer can you trust as you contemplate adding water inside your PC? 

These are probably the most frequently asked questions when an enthusiast first contemplates entering the world of liquid cooling. However, things have changed in recent years. Last year, we looked at one of the first self-contained liquid cooling solutions, Corsair's H50, and found it to be comparable to some of the air coolers out there. That's not particularly ideal when you're trying to preach the benefits of liquid cooling. However, the device did successfully fit in environments where larger air coolers simply couldn't. 

We now have the company's follow-on to the H50, called the H70, which again demonstrates that liquid cooling doesn't have to involve a complex setup procedure. But does it improve on the H50's performance?

H70: Prefab Liquid Cooling From Corsair

This is where the Corsair H70 liquid cooling system comes into play. It is designed to achieve high cooling performance, low noise levels, and simplify installation by as much as possible. Just like the previous model, the Corsair H50, the Corsair H70 is a complete closed loop cooling system consisting of a radiator, hoses, CPU water block, fan, and coolant, fully assembled from the factory. In addition to making the installation easier, this also saves you the trouble of gathering the necessary components yourself.

The Corsair H50 cooling system was the first result of cooperation between Corsair and the manufacturer Asetek, the company behind the CPU freezer Vapochill that let you operate your CPU at -20°C back in 2003. The challenge, here, of course, is trying to exceed the capabilities of today's greatest air coolers from a liquid-cooled circuit. This isn't something the H50 was really able to do, but our expectations of the improved H70 are naturally much higher.

Corsair H70: Design And Technical Data

Delivery

The Corsair H70 prefab liquid cooling system comes in a sturdy cardboard box. In addition to the already-filled, closed loop cooling system consisting of radiator, hoses, and water block with built-in pump, we find detailed installation instructions and mounting hardware for different computer platforms in the package. The Corsair H70 supports Intel's LGA 775, 1366, 1156 interfaces, along with AMD's AM2 and AM3 sockets.

Additionally, the Corsair H70 cooling system includes two fans that operate at 2000 RPM. The included adapter cables with embedded resistors (~30 ohms) can be used to bring the fans down to 1600 RPM for quieter operation. There is no thermal compound included, which most coolers usually do bundle.

Compact Water Block

Instead, Corsair opts to cover the CPU water block base with a layer of thermal compound straight from the factory. This thermal compound is protected by a solid and easily removable plastic cap that is attached to the underside of the water block, protecting it from damage during transport.

Hardcore cooling enthusiasts would likely remove the compound and replace it with a thin layer of something more expensive, but obviously this is not mandatory.

With a height of just two inches, the water block is very compact. The low profile is even more notable when you consider that the pump is integrated with the water block, driving the coolant through the closed loop system. A cable connects the pump and the motherboard, supplying the pump with 12 V power. The pump is extremely quiet; only in a completely silent environment were we able to hear a faint hum.

Rigid Tubing

The coolant travels through the cooling system via two small and relatively rigid tubes. They have an outer diameter of about 8 mm and a length of about 24 cm. The tubes are attached to the pipes in such a secure way that they can only be replaced with great effort. Except for the water block, the loop also includes the radiator. Due to the short length of the cables, you might not be able to install the radiator exactly wherever you want to if you are using a large computer case.

Mounting The Radiator And Fan

Compact Radiator With Lots of Fine Fins

At a height of about 15 cm and a width of about 12 cm, you can easily install the radiator inside large-enough cases by attaching it to a 120 mm fan ventilation hole. The depth of the radiator is 5 cm--twice as thick as on the Corsair H50 model. If you use both of the included fans by sandwiching the radiator in a push/pull configuration, you get a total thickness of 10 cm, which could become a problem in more compact cases.

The radiator's fins are quite dense, spaced just 1 mm apart. On the one hand, this provides for a high number of fins, creating a large surface area for heat transfer. On the other hand, this also restricts air flow, so you should definitely use both fans in order for the radiator to work at maximum effectiveness.

As mentioned before, these fans rotate at 2000 RPM, but can be slowed down to 1600 RPM with the included resistor cables. This is necessary if you are aiming for a relatively low-noise kind of setup. The fans have rather short cables, at just 21 cm each. Depending on where in your computer case you install the radiator and where on your motherboard the fan connectors are placed, this might pose a problem.

Installation

Installing this liquid cooling system is fairly easy, although you might need to think things through when fastening the water block to the motherboard. You need to use the appropriate mounting hardware that fits your motherboard. Installation instructions are included to help you choose the right one. For our LGA 775 system, we first had to attach four risers on the water block back plate that goes on the rear side of the motherboard, which the screws are fit into later.

You also need to fasten a plastic mounting bracket on the front of the motherboard, and you should take a close look at the instructions so you do not choose the wrong one, as the included mounting bracket fastening parts are confusingly similar.

When the preparations are complete, everything goes quickly. Attach the back plate to the motherboard, then the mounting bracket, and finally put the water block on top of the CPU. With a twist to the right, the water block is securely fastened to the mounting bracket. The final step is to tighten the screws, preferably in a diagonal order so that you do not put too much stress on just one side of the CPU and socket.

Fan Configuration

The radiator can be installed pretty much wherever you want it--within the boundaries set by the length of the tubes, of course. A good choice seems to be in the back of the computer case.

The two fans included provide for a couple of different configuration options. Corsair recommends attaching them both to the radiator in order to achieve maximum cooling performance, but you also have to decide whether you want to have them suck in cool air from outside the case through the radiator, or blow out hot air from inside the case through the radiator. Here you have to take into account maximum CPU cooling versus the risk of heat accumulating inside the case and making the rest of your components warmer. You probably need to play around a bit with this to see what fits your case and fan setup the best.

Also, remember to balance the number of fans sucking air in and fans blowing air out, as axial fans of the kind used in computer cases are less effective when working against large differences in air pressure.

Test Configuration And Cooling Performance

Test System

To ensure test score compatibility with the air cooling products already tested, we reviewed the Corsair H70 liquid cooling system using the same old, proven test system. At its heart, we find an Intel Pentium D840 Extreme Edition CPU with a Smithfield core, manufactured using 90 nm technology and employing a factory clock speed 3.2 GHz. The TDP (Thermal Design Power) is 130 W (the same as an Intel Core i7 CPU based on the Bloomfield core).

The Intel Pentium D840 Extreme Edition CPU is far more inefficient than the current Intel Core i7, of course. But then again, we are measuring temperatures here, not performance. To quite literally turn the heat up some more the CPU is overclocked to 3.6 GHz. Also, we use the thermal compound applied to the water block at the factory.

The ambient temperature was 21° C. Further test system details can be found in the table below.

Fan Configuration and Speed Control

As mentioned, the Corsair H70 comes with two fans. For our tests, we fit the radiator with only one, and then both fans. The fans only have 3-pin connectors, and therefore cannot be controlled via the pulse width modulation (PWM) features offered by many newer motherboards. However, the motherboard we used for the test had a BIOS setting for automatically controlling the voltage supplied to the fans. We used this setting both with one and two fans, and in the graphs on the following pages this is referred to as “Auto”.

The BIOS did not have a way of manually setting the fans to high or low, however, so we turned off the feature for those tests. Instead we used the included resistor cables to operate the fans at Low speed. For the High speed tests we simply ran the fans with neither resistor cables nor BIOS settings--au naturelle.

Temperature, Noise Levels, And Fan Speed

The idle temperatures were measured about 30 minutes after booting up Windows Vista. In these 30 minutes the CPU was just idling, and all services that might put a load on the CPU were turned off. The load tests were conducted using Prime95, measuring the maximum temperature after that time frame.

Temperatures

Fan Speeds

Noise Levels

Not surprisingly, the temperature using two fans without any speed limits was the lowest one. The temperature reported was 21° C, the same as the room temperature. The drawback, of course, is that the fans spin at just under 2000 RPM, resulting in a loud background noise measured at 57.3 dB(A). The fan speeds and noise level are the same under full load as well, keeping the CPU at a relatively low 38° C.

The weakest cooling performance is realized (not surprisingly) when using only one fan with the help of the motherboard BIOS fan controller. Here a temperature of 25° C is reached in idle mode, which increased to 47° C under full load. The noise levels in this configuration are 41.2 dB(A) in idle mode and an audible 47.9 dB(A) under full load.

The most balanced mix between cooling performance and noise levels is achieved when using two fans that are regulated by the automatic fan controller on the motherboard. This results in a very low 22° C temperature in idle mode with a moderate noise level of 37.9 dB(A). We also find the temperature of 41° C at full load acceptable, as is the noise level of 45.6 dB(A).

Comparison Table: Temperatures

Note: Heat sinks that ship without any included fans were equipped with a standard fan from the 3RSystem Iceage Prima Boss. It has performs similar to a NoiseBlocker Multiframe M12PS.

The Corsair H70 liquid cooling system scores a low 38° C with the fans set to high, about the same temperature as the air CPU coolers Prolimatech Megahalems (Rev. B), or the Zalman CNPS 10X Extreme, and is thus placed pretty high up on the chart.

In our preferred configuration with two fans and automatic motherboard fan control, the Corsair H70 is at about the same level as a Noctua NH-D14--at least in terms of cooling performance. In this chart, the all-in-one liquid cooling system is definitely up there at the top. However, looking at the noise level chart at the next page, things get a bit complicated.

Comparison Table: Noise Levels

Even in idle mode, the Corsair H70 liquid cooling system is not among the quietest CPU coolers. The most acceptable values are reached with two fans and automatic fan control, and the other configurations show that using this system will not exactly make your computer system a very quiet one.

Under full load the picture changes a little, but even here Corsair H70 is nowhere near the top of the chart.

Conclusion

With the H70, Corsair brings a liquid cooling system to market that strives to address the challenges of liquid cooling while still exemplifying its benefits.

It relieves the user of the hassle of having to assemble individual components, which should appeal to those without much experience in liquid cooling. With a street price of around $110, it is reasonably priced compared to other liquid cooling systems. By pre-filling the closed loop system at the factory, it is ready for use immediately after unpacking, and does not have to be much more complicated to install than some air CPU coolers.

In addition, Corsair offers a two-year warranty, and the producer Asetek indicates that the average lifespan of the liquid cooling system is about 50 000 hours. Installing the liquid cooling system is easy, and the detailed installation instructions for the different supported processor interfaces should simplify the process for less experienced users.

There are a few weak points, however. We would have liked the tubing between the water block and the radiator to be a bit longer than 24 cm. The same goes for the fan cables, which are a bit short at just 21 cm. The fans included created mixed impressions. On the one hand, the radiator with its very dense fin structure requires a certain air throughput--something the fans handle just fine. But on the other hand, these fans are not exactly the most acoustically-friendly. Quieter fans with variable speeds would be something to hope for here. You could look around for alternatives, but then you'd only be adding to the cost of this unit, which already exceeds the upper range of the highest-end air coolers.

However, if you can live with the slightly elevated background noise level that comes with the Corsair H70 liquid cooling system, you get cooling performance in the good to very good range in the upper segment of CPU coolers.

In the light of air cooling alternatives like Zalman’s CNPS 10X Extreme, which costs roughly $69, Corsair’s new H70 remains a premium-priced product. It's perhaps best suited to environments where space around the processor is tight, and you don't have room for a cheaper, comparable-performing high-end air cooler.

Apple hasn't taken very kindly to those making Hackintosh computers and then selling them. While Psystar was successfully taken down by Apple, Quo Computer is pressing on ahead with a new, high-end Mac Pro clone.

Announced today is a new maxQ2 system that is liquid cooled by Asetek. The system itself is billed as able to run Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows 7, but there's always that extra wink accompanied with the Apple OS capability.

"QUO specializes in computers aimed at those who want the fastest, most overclockable systems without the time required to custom configure one themselves," said QUO founder Rashantha De Silva. "We selected Asetek Liquid Coolers to deliver quiet operation plus the thermal headroom for overclocking the maxQ2 because they feature a sealed liquid loop that is reliable and eliminates customer maintenance. This is the type of elegance Apple enthusiasts treasure."

The maxQ2 is powered by an Intel Core i7 6 Core 3.6Ghz CPU, 12GB of RAM, a 240GB SSD, a 1TB HD, and an NVIDIA 285 GTX configured to take advantage of the Adobe Mercury Playback Engine. The maintenance-free Asetek 550LC features an integrated pump and copper cold plate connected to a 120mm heat exchanger.

"Asetek recently demonstrated how liquid cooling can both quiet and increase the performance of an Apple Mac Pro," said Steve Branton, Director of Marketing at Asetek. "QUO's liquid cooled maxQ2 computers enable Mac OS X enthusiasts to get the benefits of liquid cooling in an extremely powerful computer, without the effort of retrofitting liquid cooling into an existing Mac Pro."

The maxQ2 will be available with Asetek liquid cooling for $3,765 on September 15, 2010.

Now here's an interesting idea: a liquid-cooled all-in-one PC.

Created by Asetek, a provider of self-contained liquid cooling systems for OEMs, this prototype addresses possible AIO heating issues provoked by obvious space limitations--AIOs certainly can't circulate hot air like desktop PCs. But if the prototype actually catches on in the industry, it could possibly change the way manufacturers design AIOs in the future, perhaps allowing for beefier hardware.

As seen in the video below, the Asetek prototype measured an iMac-like 58-mm in thickness, and used an Intel Core i7 920 processor and a Nvidia GeForce GTX 280M GPU--these two alone consume over 200-watts combined.

According to the Asetek engineer, the AIOs' heat was handled by a high-performance, optimized radiator design coupled with low-noise, axial fans. Asetek inserted its proprietary, low-profile pump just below the radiator, all of which Asetek mounted within the AIO's vertical stand. The pump/radiator setup was attached to a high-performance, low-profile cold plate mounted on the right within the AIO enclosure, pulling heat off the 130-watt Intel processor. On the left, the pump/radiator was connected to a low-profile cold plate and heat spreader covering the Nvidia GPU.

To see this prototype in action, check out the video below. What do you think? Will liquid cooling make a difference and allow manufacturers to provide high-end AIO PCs? Or could this just be a new gimmick to pull consumers away from laptops and netbooks?