Back when Swiftech was selling the H220 liquid cooler in the US, it almost faced litigation. In order to avoid that, the company simply took the cooler off the US market and came up with something else – the H220-X.
The H220-X featured such a radically different design that it couldn't possibly attract any legal attention (Swiftech may have been trying to make a point there), but it only came in a 240 mm variant. Now, the company is introducing its H240-X, which follows the same design but is a little bigger, featuring the popular 280 mm size.
The radiator on the unit has a rather odd configuration, as it also houses the pump and reservoir. The water block is Swiftech's new Apogee XL block, which has built-in LEDs and comes with four interchangeable color plates. The reservoir is also LED lit. Air is pushed through the unit by two 140 mm Helix 140 fans which spin at up to 1800 RPM, are PWM controlled, push up to 90 CFM and make up to 28.8 dBA of noise while maintaining a static pressure of 2.29 mm.
The MCP30 pump is also PWM controlled, nominally draws about 6 W and can spin at speeds between 300 and 1200 RPM. Both the pump and the fans are rated at an MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) of 60,000 hours.
All things considered, aside from some compatibility issues in certain cases, this may be the best all-in-one water cooler that money can buy. It will certainly outperform most other closed-loop liquid coolers, and once you've reached a point where you want to expand your loop, you can.
Swiftech claims that the unit is maintenance-free for a three-year period, but you can always open up the loop to add more radiators and one or more water blocks for graphics cards. Included with the unit is an 8-way PWM splitter, which can take a single PWM signal from your motherboard and send it to eight PWM compatible fans.
The Swiftech H240-X is available immediately for $149.99 and comes with a three year warranty.
Follow Niels Broekhuijsen @NBroekhuijsen. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.
