The Alphacool NexXxoS Cool Answer 360 DDC/XT Liquid Cooling Kit Review
by E. Fylladitakis on October 24, 2016 9:30 AM ESTTesting Methodology
Although the testing of a cooler appears to be a simple task, that could not be much further from the truth. Proper thermal testing cannot be performed with a cooler mounted on a single chip, for multiple reasons. Some of these reasons include the instability of the thermal load and the inability to fully control and or monitor it, as well as the inaccuracy of the chip-integrated sensors. It is also impossible to compare results taken on different chips, let alone entirely different systems, which is a great problem when testing computer coolers, as the hardware changes every several months. Finally, testing a cooler on a typical system prevents the tester from assessing the most vital characteristic of a cooler, its absolute thermal resistance.
The absolute thermal resistance defines the absolute performance of a heatsink by indicating the temperature rise per unit of power, in our case in degrees Celsius per Watt (°C/W). In layman's terms, if the thermal resistance of a heatsink is known, the user can assess the highest possible temperature rise of a chip over ambient by simply multiplying the maximum thermal design power (TDP) rating of the chip with it. Extracting the absolute thermal resistance of a cooler however is no simple task, as the load has to be perfectly even, steady and variable, as the thermal resistance also varies depending on the magnitude of the thermal load. Therefore, even if it would be possible to assess the thermal resistance of a cooler while it is mounted on a working chip, it would not suffice, as a large change of the thermal load can yield much different results.
Appropriate thermal testing requires the creation of a proper testing station and the use of laboratory-grade equipment. Therefore, we created a thermal testing platform with a fully controllable thermal energy source that may be used to test any kind of cooler, regardless of its design and or compatibility. The thermal cartridge inside the core of our testing station can have its power adjusted between 60 W and 340 W, in 2 W increments (and it never throttles). Furthermore, monitoring and logging of the testing process via software minimizes the possibility of human errors during testing. A multifunction data acquisition module (DAQ) is responsible for the automatic or the manual control of the testing equipment, the acquisition of the ambient and the in-core temperatures via PT100 sensors, the logging of the test results and the mathematical extraction of performance figures.
Finally, as noise measurements are a bit tricky, their measurement is being performed only manually. Fans can have significant variations in speed from their rated values, thus their actual speed during the thermal testing is being acquired via a laser tachometer. The fans (and pumps, when applicable) are being powered via an adjustable, fanless desktop DC power supply and noise measurements are being taken 1 meter away from the cooler, in a straight line ahead from its fan engine. At this point we should also note that the Decibel scale is logarithmic, which means that roughly every 3 dB(A) the sound pressure doubles. Therefore, the difference of sound pressure between 30 dB(A) and 60 dB(A) is not "twice as much" but nearly a thousand times greater. The table below should help you cross-reference our test results with real-life situations.
The noise floor of our recording equipment is 30.2-30.4 dB(A), which represents a medium-sized room without any active noise sources. All of our acoustic testing takes place during night hours, minimizing the possibility of external disruptions.
| <35dB(A) | Virtually inaudible |
| 35-38dB(A) | Very quiet (whisper-slight humming) |
| 38-40dB(A) | Quiet (relatively comfortable - humming) |
| 40-44dB(A) | Normal (humming noise, above comfortable for a large % of users) |
| 44-47dB(A)* | Loud* (strong aerodynamic noise) |
| 47-50dB(A) | Very loud (strong whining noise) |
| 50-54dB(A) | Extremely loud (painfully distracting for the vast majority of users) |
| >54dB(A) | Intolerable for home/office use, special applications only. |
*noise levels above this are not suggested for daily use
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JoeyJoJo123 - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
>The home user's typical workloads don't benefit from overclockingTypical home users aren't spending at least a thousand dollars on a custom built PC, and investing in the enthusiast platform (x99) as opposed to the standard desktop platform (H170).
>the increase in performance is marginal and not worth the effort.
My 6600k went from 3.5GHz to 4.6GHz after an overclock and minor overvoltage to ensure system stability. I don't think that's at all marginal. Additionally, many boards are coming with EZ Overclock modes if you invest in a K-series CPU + Z170 chipset motherboard. You go into the BIOS and select their preset. I started with Gigabyte's G5 Gaming's 6600k @ 4.4GHz preset and changed the multiplier from 44 to 46 and the core voltage up by +50mV. ASUS boards have a dynamic overclock function that goes through a series of reboots to find your processor's best overclock, which can change from chip to chip. It's nowhere near as hard as you make it out to be and a 31% increase in peak performance for the same money spent isn't as inconsequential as you make it out to be.
>Sure there's showboating to friends and emotional self-gratification, but those aren't tangible rewards.
Rewards such as going from 90 FPS min, and 130 FPS average in a game on a 144hz Freesync monitor to a 110 FPS min and 155 FPS average is an actual tangible benefit to me. In fact, that's indicative of the extra performance I got, without having to lower a single graphical setting to achieve.
>in my opinion, it's wasteful, childish, and silly.
In my opinion, it's wasteful, childish, and silly to try to force your opinion that overclocking is against your religion on an internet site full of enthusiast PC users. You're not an enthusiast PC user that likes to overclock? Fine by me. I don't go around saying that people should always buy overclockable K-series CPUs rather than settling on a basic i5 or i3, as everyone has different use-cases. But I certainly don't really care to hear from morons who say my real world gains from overclocking a $200 processor are wasteful, childish, or silly.
Just FYI, that's the pay I get from a half-day of work. Why the hell do you care if I overclock some sand made into circuits? Why do you think you have any say in how other people spend their money?
BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
<...aren't spending at least a thousand dollars...>Typical home users really do drop over 1K on their computers. It's a lot more common than you might think. I'm surprised you'd open this post with a claim about costs and then make a counter-point using a diametrically opposed perspective at the end of it.
<...went from 3.5GHz to 4.6GHz...>
The numeric value of the overclock isn't the focal point of that argument. There are a lot of other factors that contribute to a computer's capabilities. Your word processor and e-mail fetching won't dramatically change due to your efforts. Games, though entertainment and not particularly important, won't see benefits either even with very high end graphics cards as AT's recent benchmarks analyzing CPU performance have previously proven. So yes, I still feel it's not consequential and certainly not worth the effort.
<...going from 90 FPS min, and 130 FPS...>
I highly doubt there's a situation in which a framerate increase of the numbers you're expressing reasonably results solely from overclocking a CPU in the scenario you're describing.
<...don't really care to hear from morons who say...>
I'm not forcing my opinion on anyone. No one is being chained to their chair and made to read, think about, or respond to my comments. If my comments encourage the occasional person to think about computing and put it into a different perspective, then I'm happy to have done so. If that requires they go through a little discomfort during that self-analysis wherein they redirect their anguish at me in the form of name-calling, then so be it. However, that portion of your post does support my comment about how childish these sorts of things become and the sorts of people attracted to such ideas. I imagine you weren't setting out to support that portion of my argument, but I'd be remiss were I not to point it out.
<...the pay I get from a half-day of work...>
Cleverly using a response to hint at your personal wealth. Hmm...interesting.
kn00tcn - Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - link
you highly doubt there's an fps situation!? what's your problem, crysis1 for example is known to top out around 80fps on all modern gfx cards due to cpu limits that only a cpu overclock can increaseall game benchmarks that have an amd cpu against an intel cpu clearly show a drop in fps (if not average then it's the minimum) on the same gfx card
all the people talking of 60hz or 'a 1070 is overkill for 1080p' completely ignore 120+
all the singlethreaded software alone is being gimped on the more expensive platforms since those cpus are lower blocked than the regular consumer ones, so overclocking is the only way to have more cores AND stay at 4ghz
fanofanand - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
Other than the minor insults and bragging about your income, this was an excellent rebuttal. I would like to see more of this type of debate/discussion. :)kn00tcn - Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - link
winningalso one key thing about E series, they are usually clocked much lower, meaning single thread performance drops, affecting tons of use cases
Death666Angel - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
"but in my opinion, it's wasteful, childish, and silly."And there you lost all credibility in this discussion.
BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
<And there you lost all credibility in this discussion.>Why would anyone worry about establishing credibility in a comments section under an article about a computer water cooling system? Of all the things in life there are to worry about, that seems pretty insignificant. It's a bit like worrying about what your friends think of the color of crayon you used on the birthday card you made for your parent in elementary school art class. :)
Andrew LB - Wednesday, February 8, 2017 - link
I have a roughly 30% overclock on my graphics card that is water cooled and it results in an FPS gain from 35-40 to a nice solid 60fps locked. Interesting how the moment someone makes a point which refutes your claims, out comes the condescending attitude and insults. The sign of someone who lost the argument.Samus - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
Using a dielectric liquid helps mitigate risk of a leak, as does occasional maintenance. Just like a car, and speaking from experience, a liquid cooler leak is generally slow and can be caught before damage is done. The only time I've had a leak was after getting back from a LAN party where my case was being transported and the next morning I noticed my carpet was wet (the system had been on all night)One of the fittings was just a little lose and needed to be tightened. I lost about 60ml of coolant and it trickled over my videocard and motherboard to the bottom of my case. Since I use an inert coolant and wetter water as a deox no damage was done.
Achaios - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
Ι agree with BrokenCrayons. Not to mention that squeezing more performance out of CPU's above a certain point easily achievable by Air Coolers is meaningless after 2011 and the introduction of the i5-2500k.Only component worth of liquid cooling is the GPU IMO.