I have a Fractal Define XL R2 with opaque sides and a front door I almost always leave closed. The only light that leaks out of my case is from my 1080 with white LEDs and it works as a nice little nightlight. (I can't even remember if I left the RGB pattern on my mainboard on, I can't see it.) It's very nice that it just stays out of the way.
My Silverstone AIO cooler purchased a few years ago had Asetek hose clamps, so my guess is the entire thing was sourced from Asetek. It'd be a safe guess that this is still the case today, but who knows as this 280 model is a very proprietary-sized cooler and they could have done it in-house.
I remember a detailed fan testing article from here (a number of years back) that made it very clear that case (airflow) fans are optimal only for very low restriction scenarios and static-oriented designs should be used for restriction, such as radiators. I would like to see a chart that changes the perspective to ‘restrictive scenarios like radiators are fine for case fans if the fins are a certain minimum width’.
Sometimes, I think your testing is too theoretical and not practical enough. I just happen to be looking for a new cooler for my Threadripper CPU and have been looking at reviews. When your article mentioned Threadripper, I though I might see some good analysis on how the size of the cooling block affects cooling performance. Yet, you failed to mentioned this anywhere except for a small blurb in the introduction. Does this mean the size of the contact area does not affect the cooling performance?
I find this hard to believe cause I have seen other reviews where the coolers made for Threadripper do hold some advantage over coolers that are smaller. I am looking to get good cooling performance at a low noise level. I am trying to figure out if it is worth it to go for the few coolers that are made for Threadripper or to just get one of the top performing AIO coolers. This article however failed to address that.
With Threadripper you should be using a full contact cooling block. While AM4-sized blocks may work, it is inadvisable. Theadripper places dies all over the place, and you do not want to risk those dies not making good contact with the cooler.
The size of the CPU does affect these cooler in a big way. On the smallest sized consumer CPUs such as Intel's LGA1200 / 115X, the performance between Permafrost series and IceGem series of equivalent size will be similar. On bigger CPUs such as on Ryzen, the IceGem will consistently perform better. On Ryzen Threadripper, the performance advantage of IceGem will widen if the Permafrost was made capable of mounting on the same CPU.
3960X here with Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 with the base as large as the CPU lid. I use my computer for work, not for games. I don't care if my computer look like a dancing club with RGB all over the place. I don't care about the beige/brown. I only care about the cooling and the silence. Normal usage (e.g. development): 45C in winter, 50C in summer. Running a lot of things (e.g. VMs, databases, simulation scripts): 65C-75C in summer, less in winter. Running heavy Phoronix benchmarks: 75C-80C. No need for water cooling. Using Linux. Large PC TT View 71 Snow edition case with 6 x 140mm intake fans = Plenty of CFM to feed the air cooler. For the case, I only care about minimalist white color and a glass so it goes with the rest of the furniture and does not disfigure the room.
It's a matter of one's taste and also a generational difference, I'd say. Many, like myself, grew up in a time when computers looked simpler. So to be bombarded with so many lights and colours today is a bit much.
Didn't mean it in a bad way. I just prefer a plainer computer. A bit of light isn't bad but not too much. I actually have two fans that give off a faint bluish light. Came with the case.
As for the motherboard, there's no way to turn off the RGB strip in the BIOS, so Mystic Light is running in the background just to do that. It's a B450 Tomahawk.
I'm happy with my hardware. No complaints with the Tomahawk except for that point. And strangely, I like the soft light of the fans. I suppose my original comment sounded arrogant. I really didn't mean it that way, and apologise.
As in all fields of life, different people like different things. Some might prefer a brighter style. Some, a more subdued one. Also, RGB is being plastered all over hardware nowadays, so some will recoil from that. In most fields, taste changes from decade to decade. So we might see a plainer style replacing today's one. Then, when folk grow tired of that, they'll start becoming ornate again. By definition almost, fashion is temporary. Excellence is achieved when one hits on something that is unchanging.
I think the larger point is that there isn't always an available choice. Sometimes the part we want is RGB or nothing. Not to mention the price could be larger for the RGB part.
The issue is that there *is* no style or fashion with RGB. It's simply bad taste. No girl is going to walk into a room with an RGB setup and drop her panties because the fans light up and the keyboard is cycling through the rainbow. RGB is in the exact same vein as a racecar bed or Batman pajamas. If you're beyond the age of 10 and your taste hasn't matured into something with just a *little* more sophistication, it's a sign that something went wrong with your development.
I've never done a liquid cooled system. Could someone explain why the radiator on these coolers is designed to be mounted inside the case? Wouldn't it be drastically more effective if case makers designed for an external mount? Or am I just misunderstanding how you attach these to the case?
Yes, the best results can be had when you mount the radiator outside the case. But the results aren't drastically better when compared to mounting the radiator to the case's air intake.
Case makers tend to dislike external mounting of radiators, because buyers tend to want everything to be enclosed and look pretty. You would not only have the radiator dangling outside of the case, but you would also have the fan wires dangling out there too. It'll look like a cheap hack job.
swiftech and koolance used to make an external mount bracket for radiators, but now that most modern cases, especially the really large ones, are designed to accept 2 or more internally mounted radiators, why would AIO CLC makers bother to make an external one?
koolance still makes external radiators, but the cost on them is very high when compared to these internal AIO CLCs.
I see, thanks. I would think the dangling issues would be solved by having power delivered to the external radiator sleeved with one of the coolant tubes. Then you'd just have the pair of tubes into the case, and presumably the radiator top-mounted. Sounds like the cooling advantage isn't sufficient to drive adoption/standardization.
This cooler is a weird size at 280mm, so it's likely only going to fit certain cases that use 140mm fans.
Silverstone has moved to 140mm fans after trying 180mm fans as far back as the FT-01 Fortress. The 180mm fans were garbage and seemingly an exclusive Silverstone thing. I've had multiple fail over the years where the bearing shaft detaches. Other failures people have noted on the interwebs have shown the entire fan shroud detaches from the motor or the motor support beams on the back of the fan housing crack at the motor mount, both causing the fan to 'knock' as it spins off-center and makes contact with the case, filter, etc. Very unfortunate.
Anyway, basically the radiator attaches to the fan mounts of a case, with the fans mounted to the rear of the radiator. Some people do it the other way around, attaching the radiator to the fans. It depends what you desire for your cooling design (pusher fan vs puller fan) and some people do BOTH one in front and behind the radiator. The type of fan is an important consideration as well as most fans don't have high "static" pressure even if they are high RPM and rated at a high CFM. Static pressure traditionally isn't important unless you are trying to blow air through dense radiator fins, so sometimes the fan is more important than anything else, otherwise you won't remove much heat.
We haven't moved away from 180mm fans, in fact, we are still developing new models now. Engineering a fan with much heavier fan blade than typical 120mm x 25mm sizes was quite difficult as the rotational forces are exponentially higher. So material and bearing both have to be much stronger than typical 120mm/140mm fans. However, any external forces (such as debris or touching fan blade by accident) or slight tilt/angle enacted on our spinning 180mm also had significantly high risk of damage, so yeah, much less forgiving than smaller fans and that's why they may seem to be more fragile when in fact they are built better. With that said, we have been improving these 180mm fans over the years so the newer models and production batches should stand up better than their predecessors.
The AP-181 I have still works just fine, and I've had this for about 7~8 years. It had an obnoxiously loud click since day 1, but I see no signs of it failing any time soon.
Almost all AiO coolers are limited on the water to air part. Yes you can get a bit more cooling by more airflow/more fins but in the end for the same size cooler they all perform about the same. Except for the ones that actually care about performance, and used brass or copper fins. That means the BOM goes up, but a tiny bit. So no big player (asetek/Cooler master) dares to start to go that direction. And they made sure no small player (swiftech) could start that game. It's a shame really.
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YB1064 - Wednesday, July 21, 2021 - link
RGB lights to make your eyes bleed. Who is the OEM? Do Silverstone make their own AIO?Scott_T - Wednesday, July 21, 2021 - link
my next purchase will be a completely light proof case painted internally with ultra black to suck up all the rgb crap I didnt ask for.evilspoons - Wednesday, July 21, 2021 - link
I have a Fractal Define XL R2 with opaque sides and a front door I almost always leave closed. The only light that leaks out of my case is from my 1080 with white LEDs and it works as a nice little nightlight. (I can't even remember if I left the RGB pattern on my mainboard on, I can't see it.) It's very nice that it just stays out of the way.Samus - Thursday, July 22, 2021 - link
My Silverstone AIO cooler purchased a few years ago had Asetek hose clamps, so my guess is the entire thing was sourced from Asetek. It'd be a safe guess that this is still the case today, but who knows as this 280 model is a very proprietary-sized cooler and they could have done it in-house.Threska - Wednesday, July 21, 2021 - link
Well one thing that comes to eye is the ease of installation.Oxford Guy - Wednesday, July 21, 2021 - link
Which of the models tested have proper static pressure design fans instead of case fans?meacupla - Wednesday, July 21, 2021 - link
In the article, just above the picture of the fan, it says they all use air blazer fans, which are high flow, low pressure.Considering the thickness and fin density of the radiators, I doubt using static pressure fans would make any difference.
Oxford Guy - Sunday, July 25, 2021 - link
I remember a detailed fan testing article from here (a number of years back) that made it very clear that case (airflow) fans are optimal only for very low restriction scenarios and static-oriented designs should be used for restriction, such as radiators. I would like to see a chart that changes the perspective to ‘restrictive scenarios like radiators are fine for case fans if the fins are a certain minimum width’.Oxford Guy - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
The gaps between the fins, that is.citan x - Wednesday, July 21, 2021 - link
Sometimes, I think your testing is too theoretical and not practical enough. I just happen to be looking for a new cooler for my Threadripper CPU and have been looking at reviews. When your article mentioned Threadripper, I though I might see some good analysis on how the size of the cooling block affects cooling performance. Yet, you failed to mentioned this anywhere except for a small blurb in the introduction. Does this mean the size of the contact area does not affect the cooling performance?I find this hard to believe cause I have seen other reviews where the coolers made for Threadripper do hold some advantage over coolers that are smaller. I am looking to get good cooling performance at a low noise level. I am trying to figure out if it is worth it to go for the few coolers that are made for Threadripper or to just get one of the top performing AIO coolers. This article however failed to address that.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, July 22, 2021 - link
With Threadripper you should be using a full contact cooling block. While AM4-sized blocks may work, it is inadvisable. Theadripper places dies all over the place, and you do not want to risk those dies not making good contact with the cooler.tonyou - Thursday, July 22, 2021 - link
The size of the CPU does affect these cooler in a big way. On the smallest sized consumer CPUs such as Intel's LGA1200 / 115X, the performance between Permafrost series and IceGem series of equivalent size will be similar. On bigger CPUs such as on Ryzen, the IceGem will consistently perform better. On Ryzen Threadripper, the performance advantage of IceGem will widen if the Permafrost was made capable of mounting on the same CPU.E.Fyll - Friday, July 23, 2021 - link
Hello Citan. There you go:https://www.anandtech.com/show/12454/analyzing-thr...
domih - Monday, July 26, 2021 - link
3960X here with Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 with the base as large as the CPU lid. I use my computer for work, not for games. I don't care if my computer look like a dancing club with RGB all over the place. I don't care about the beige/brown. I only care about the cooling and the silence. Normal usage (e.g. development): 45C in winter, 50C in summer. Running a lot of things (e.g. VMs, databases, simulation scripts): 65C-75C in summer, less in winter. Running heavy Phoronix benchmarks: 75C-80C. No need for water cooling. Using Linux. Large PC TT View 71 Snow edition case with 6 x 140mm intake fans = Plenty of CFM to feed the air cooler. For the case, I only care about minimalist white color and a glass so it goes with the rest of the furniture and does not disfigure the room.vanish1 - Thursday, July 22, 2021 - link
I feel like the people who have some sort of weird issue with RGB are just nerds with no sense of style or fashion.You do know you can turn it off right?
GeoffreyA - Thursday, July 22, 2021 - link
It's a matter of one's taste and also a generational difference, I'd say. Many, like myself, grew up in a time when computers looked simpler. So to be bombarded with so many lights and colours today is a bit much.vanish1 - Friday, July 23, 2021 - link
Lol I'll say it again.You do know you can turn it off right?
and btw if you think adding lights and colors to something is a new 'trend' like holy crap man you have no concept of history
GeoffreyA - Friday, July 23, 2021 - link
Didn't mean it in a bad way. I just prefer a plainer computer. A bit of light isn't bad but not too much. I actually have two fans that give off a faint bluish light. Came with the case.As for the motherboard, there's no way to turn off the RGB strip in the BIOS, so Mystic Light is running in the background just to do that. It's a B450 Tomahawk.
vanish1 - Saturday, July 24, 2021 - link
Sounds like you made an uniformed purchase and are blaming the hardware for your error in preparation.GeoffreyA - Saturday, July 24, 2021 - link
I'm happy with my hardware. No complaints with the Tomahawk except for that point. And strangely, I like the soft light of the fans. I suppose my original comment sounded arrogant. I really didn't mean it that way, and apologise.As in all fields of life, different people like different things. Some might prefer a brighter style. Some, a more subdued one. Also, RGB is being plastered all over hardware nowadays, so some will recoil from that. In most fields, taste changes from decade to decade. So we might see a plainer style replacing today's one. Then, when folk grow tired of that, they'll start becoming ornate again. By definition almost, fashion is temporary. Excellence is achieved when one hits on something that is unchanging.
Threska - Saturday, July 24, 2021 - link
I think the larger point is that there isn't always an available choice. Sometimes the part we want is RGB or nothing. Not to mention the price could be larger for the RGB part.DominionSeraph - Sunday, July 25, 2021 - link
The issue is that there *is* no style or fashion with RGB. It's simply bad taste. No girl is going to walk into a room with an RGB setup and drop her panties because the fans light up and the keyboard is cycling through the rainbow. RGB is in the exact same vein as a racecar bed or Batman pajamas. If you're beyond the age of 10 and your taste hasn't matured into something with just a *little* more sophistication, it's a sign that something went wrong with your development.Oxford Guy - Sunday, July 25, 2021 - link
You’re paying for a feature you don’t want and other corners tend to be cut in terms of features you actually want.RGB stuff isn’t free.
DougMcC - Thursday, July 22, 2021 - link
I've never done a liquid cooled system. Could someone explain why the radiator on these coolers is designed to be mounted inside the case? Wouldn't it be drastically more effective if case makers designed for an external mount? Or am I just misunderstanding how you attach these to the case?meacupla - Thursday, July 22, 2021 - link
Yes, the best results can be had when you mount the radiator outside the case.But the results aren't drastically better when compared to mounting the radiator to the case's air intake.
Case makers tend to dislike external mounting of radiators, because buyers tend to want everything to be enclosed and look pretty. You would not only have the radiator dangling outside of the case, but you would also have the fan wires dangling out there too. It'll look like a cheap hack job.
swiftech and koolance used to make an external mount bracket for radiators, but now that most modern cases, especially the really large ones, are designed to accept 2 or more internally mounted radiators, why would AIO CLC makers bother to make an external one?
koolance still makes external radiators, but the cost on them is very high when compared to these internal AIO CLCs.
DougMcC - Thursday, July 22, 2021 - link
I see, thanks. I would think the dangling issues would be solved by having power delivered to the external radiator sleeved with one of the coolant tubes. Then you'd just have the pair of tubes into the case, and presumably the radiator top-mounted. Sounds like the cooling advantage isn't sufficient to drive adoption/standardization.Samus - Thursday, July 22, 2021 - link
This cooler is a weird size at 280mm, so it's likely only going to fit certain cases that use 140mm fans.Silverstone has moved to 140mm fans after trying 180mm fans as far back as the FT-01 Fortress. The 180mm fans were garbage and seemingly an exclusive Silverstone thing. I've had multiple fail over the years where the bearing shaft detaches. Other failures people have noted on the interwebs have shown the entire fan shroud detaches from the motor or the motor support beams on the back of the fan housing crack at the motor mount, both causing the fan to 'knock' as it spins off-center and makes contact with the case, filter, etc. Very unfortunate.
Anyway, basically the radiator attaches to the fan mounts of a case, with the fans mounted to the rear of the radiator. Some people do it the other way around, attaching the radiator to the fans. It depends what you desire for your cooling design (pusher fan vs puller fan) and some people do BOTH one in front and behind the radiator. The type of fan is an important consideration as well as most fans don't have high "static" pressure even if they are high RPM and rated at a high CFM. Static pressure traditionally isn't important unless you are trying to blow air through dense radiator fins, so sometimes the fan is more important than anything else, otherwise you won't remove much heat.
Awful - Thursday, July 22, 2021 - link
huh? 280mm using 2x140mm fans is absolutely one of the (3) standard sizes. Just about every AIO line comes in 240, 280, and 360mm...Threska - Thursday, July 22, 2021 - link
Have a Silverstone going on ten years plus. All fans top and bottom still going strong. Naturally regardless of fan one needs to keep them clean.tonyou - Thursday, July 22, 2021 - link
We haven't moved away from 180mm fans, in fact, we are still developing new models now. Engineering a fan with much heavier fan blade than typical 120mm x 25mm sizes was quite difficult as the rotational forces are exponentially higher. So material and bearing both have to be much stronger than typical 120mm/140mm fans. However, any external forces (such as debris or touching fan blade by accident) or slight tilt/angle enacted on our spinning 180mm also had significantly high risk of damage, so yeah, much less forgiving than smaller fans and that's why they may seem to be more fragile when in fact they are built better. With that said, we have been improving these 180mm fans over the years so the newer models and production batches should stand up better than their predecessors.meacupla - Saturday, July 24, 2021 - link
The AP-181 I have still works just fine, and I've had this for about 7~8 years.It had an obnoxiously loud click since day 1, but I see no signs of it failing any time soon.
Foeketijn - Thursday, July 22, 2021 - link
Almost all AiO coolers are limited on the water to air part. Yes you can get a bit more cooling by more airflow/more fins but in the end for the same size cooler they all perform about the same.Except for the ones that actually care about performance, and used brass or copper fins.
That means the BOM goes up, but a tiny bit. So no big player (asetek/Cooler master) dares to start to go that direction. And they made sure no small player (swiftech) could start that game. It's a shame really.
jtd871 - Thursday, July 22, 2021 - link
When I saw the thumbnail (top) image on the homepage for this review, my brain thought "Clippy?!" Now you can't unsee it, too.