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.
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