Closing the Loop II: New Liquid Coolers from Corsair and Swiftech
by Dustin Sklavos on February 1, 2013 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Corsair
- radiator
- Swiftech
Conclusions, Part 2
The Swiftech H220
Because so many closed loop cooler vendors have been basing their designs off the same basic products from Asetek and CoolIT (and inheriting the quality control problems from CoolIT in some cases), they've been forced to differentiate through features and fans. Corsair's "i" series coolers get to enjoy the Corsair Link ecosystem with sophisticated fan controls, while NZXT's Krakens have decent software-based fan controls of their own.
Swiftech changes things. Since they're already established in the liquid cooling market, the H220 is positioned less as a closed loop cooler to just be marketed to the public and more as an entry into the world of liquid cooling. Swiftech wanted to make the H220 as easy as humanly possible to install while offering enough of a performance reserve that if someone wanted to open the loop and start tinkering, they could. At CES, the H220's pump was demonstrated keeping a pair of GTX 680s and an i7 cool.
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Meanwhile, the radiator itself has a larger reservoir than the competition, is user accessible and serviceable, and is produced from higher quality materials. Instead of just using aluminum, the H220 has copper fins and brass tubing, which theoretically will allow it to both dissipate heat more effectively and last longer. That also means it's much heavier in the hand; when you hold the radiator you can feel the difference in a big way.
Additionally, Swiftech includes a breakout PWM block specifically for controlling up to seven fans via a single PWM channel, addressing a problem that Corsair failed to with the H110. This is a polished product capable of delivering competitive performance and easily superior to the other 240mm coolers I've tested, but it does come at a cost: $139 is the same MSRP as better-performing (but also larger) NZXT's Kraken X60, and much more expensive than the other 240s.
There's also the fact that the H220's pump produces a bit more noise than the others do. That's to be expected: it's a much more powerful pump (that amusingly can be regulated via PWM, unlike the others). In a quiet case it's easy to muffle, and my review unit may simply be noisier than the production models (review will be updated when I have a production model in hand.) It's still worth mentioning, though.
Despite that, and despite the cost, the Swiftech H220 is basically the cooler to get if you're in the market for a 240mm closed loop cooler. It fulfills the promise the H100i inexplicably doesn't, and is basically as good as it's going to get before you get into either 280mm radiators or entirely custom cooling loops.
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chaos215bar2 - Monday, February 4, 2013 - link
I'm not sure why you got the impression that the H220 couldn't compete. Overall, I got the impression that the H220 was one of the best coolers reviewed. It just sacrificed a little performance for a significant reduction in noise.ypsylon - Friday, February 1, 2013 - link
I would jump into H220 immediately. Drooling on it since first news appeared. Unfortunately there is small issue - nobody selling this thing in Europe. I inquired in few places across EU and so far nobody is eager to jump on it. Importing it from US is out of the question as I could build full custom loop for money spend on H220+S&H+VAT+2.5% duty fee. Still I have ~40 days ahead before planned WS switchover. If I can get H220 in that time I would, otherwise going with H100i + 4 AeroCool BlackSharks. Not interested in AIO 140/280.Nickel020 - Monday, February 11, 2013 - link
Actually, highflow.nl already has it on pre-order and usually offers quite reasonable shipping rates across Europe:http://highflow.nl/watercooling-sets/cpu-sets/swif...
More shops should be listing it once it actually becomes available.
BrightCandle - Friday, February 1, 2013 - link
Its not uncommon for a custom loop to get down to +25C at load, so these bigger radiator designs are starting to get really close to the performance of going fully custom at a lot less cost and hassle.ShieTar - Friday, February 1, 2013 - link
Sure. Now if those would just be provided for the 225W GPU instead of the 77W CPU, they might get actually relevant for a gaming computer.pcfxer - Friday, February 1, 2013 - link
BINGO!This man ^^^^^ has got it. Why the hell aren't they hooking these up to GPUs? Does a closed loop kit for GPUs even exists? I've had one video card die from a heavy HSF combo and I still hate seeing that much flex in card.
A closed loop setup is literally perfect for this. Any pump noise and fan noise from that would be worth it (if still reasonable, I normally hunt for options on SPCR).
Death666Angel - Friday, February 1, 2013 - link
There is the "Arctic Cooling Accelero Hybrid" and you can buy mounting kits for these CLCs to install on your GPU of choice. No full body CLCs I am aware of other than that. And since there are so many different layouts and removing the heatsink of most graphics cards voids the warranty, the market seems very small compared to these CPU CLCs.Runamok81 - Sunday, February 3, 2013 - link
With the help of custom brackets from triptcc.com modders have been installing closed loop GPU coolers for years.Jeaux Bleaux - Saturday, February 2, 2013 - link
From the article you didn't read; "At CES, the H220's pump was demonstrated keeping a pair of GTX 680s and an i7 cool."MadAd - Friday, February 1, 2013 - link
1- Corsair dropped the ball with me with my H60 recently. The pump was shrieking until i installed a fanmate to limit it to about 2k rpm (my friends coolit works at about 4k normally). The through board fittings were so sloppy I had to find 4 small washers to brace the board against the clamp or suffer less pressure on the cpu mount and to cap it all the fan they supplied committed both sins of a bad silent fan, high turbine noise AND a ticky motor noise. Probably one of the worst fans ive ever owned (and ive spend hundreds on specialist panaflos, scythes etc through the years).2- I would like to see reviews of these done in a fully loaded system too. That puny board with no GPU does not represent a normal PC at all. Yes punypc is good for isolating just the cooling hardware, so why should this matter? Theres a part of these ongoing reviews that seems to have been overlooked, someone using consumer friendly closed loops are likely using this for case cooling in some way too, thus a fully loaded system running a gaming bench say, would add heat to the system and show thes coolers in a different light, eg where they start to break down.
Thats the enthusiast end, on the other end with the growth of ITX and shelf size PCs my mind is not whether I can cool something in isolation, its whether I can use a single 120mm closed loop to do the whole system. 1 fan for the whole box, and that cant really be replicated in that test pc there either.
Just a few thoughts, no complaints, im more than happy with the reviews here. Thanks again for all the hard work.