Thermaltake’s Water 2.0 series has already come and gone. We were lucky enough to be able to take a look at the Water 2.0 Extreme which we felt was a great cooler in terms of performance but was let down slightly by its very high price tag relative to the competition. Now Thermaltake have progressed to the Water 3.0 series and with have with us today the Water 3.0 Pro. The Water 3.0 Pro is a dual 120mm fan Asetek based AIO cooler that features a 49mm thick, aka double thickness, 120mm aluminium radiator. You can see the full specifications of the product below:

While we aren’t expecting the performance of this unit to be revolutionary, as it is simply an Asetek rebrand with some Thermaltake fans on it, we are still expecting some competitive performance numbers as there have been some changes to the Water 3.0 series versus the Water 2.0 series which according to Thermaltake are:

• A new coldplate design
• A new and more efficient pump design (Quieter and better flow path)
• A new Fan design for better performance at less noise

The post Thermaltake Water 3.0 Pro CPU Cooler Review appeared first on eTeknix.

SilverStone make some of the best air CPU coolers in the industry at both the high performance premium end of the market and cost-effective budget end of the market. Today we have with us an offering from SilverStone that is very much a budget offering. The SilverStone AR01 is part of SilverStone’s Argon series of CPU coolers and this particular unit will be one of three, the AR01, AR02 and AR03. The AR02 will be a shrunken version of the AR01 and the AR03 will be a higher performance version using six heat pipes designed for bigger CPUs like LGA 2011 and LGA 1366.

Below you can see the product specifications of the SilverStone AR01 which we are taking a look at today and the key things to note are a single PWM 120mm fan and three 8mm heat pipes.

From the packaging and product photograph we can see baby-blue and white is the colour scheme SilverStone have chosen. Quite a bold one and there are not many other products, if any at all, on the market that use this kind of colour scheme.

The post SilverStone Argon Series AR01 CPU Cooler Review appeared first on eTeknix.

Noctua released a couple of new additions to their NH-U series this year, that included the NH-U12S and NH-U14S. If you haven’t had a chance to read our Noctua NH-U12S review then be sure to read that here because it was a really awesome product. Now we have the second new addition in for review, the NH-U14S.

The Noctua NH-U14S is similar to the NH-U12S, except everything has been cranked up a notch. The NH-U14S doesn’t offer 100% RAM compatibility with all sockets but as far as we can see you’ll get it on most LGA 1155 motherboards and all LGA 2011 motherboards which are the main ones so the product ticks some boxes there. It is also a little bit taller than the NH-U12S coming in at 165mm meaning it may be slightly too tall for a lot of mid towers but most enthusiasts interested in this product will probably be sporting a full or super tower case.

The fan used with the Noctua NH-U14S is Noctua’s premium NF-A15 PWM fan, which we reviewed here, and consequently I have high hopes for its performance because I know just how much performance that fan can offer with relatively low noise levels for a 140mm fan. And if that’s not exciting enough for you then we’ve also got an extra NF-A15 PWM fan laying around to do some push-pull testing and see what extra performance we can squeeze out of the Noctua NH-U14S.

We won’t delve into any more specifications too much, because you can see them all below. One thing worth taking note of as we progress through this review though is that this CPU cooler will cost €69.90/$74.90/£61.99.

As we’ve come to expect from Noctua the box is very well presented and features a concise list of all the important product features.

The post Noctua NH-U14S CPU Cooler Review appeared first on eTeknix.

Alpenfohn are a quite reputable German brand known for their high quality enthusiast cooling products and their range of fans is certainly no exception. Alpenfohn boast about the “German Engineering” that goes into their fans and we wonder whether those Germans have what it takes to match up to that Austrian Engineering that Noctua seem to have dominated the enthusiast fan market with.

The Alpenfohn Fohn 120 and 140 Wing Boost Fans are high quality pieces of engineering and differ significantly in design from most of the fans you are probably used to seeing. The models we have for review today are the:

Alpenfohn Fohn 120 WingBoost Red Clover Plus

Alpenfohn Fohn 140 WingBoost Royal Blue Plus

Now that we have the basics covered let’s move on to take a look at the fans in more detail, their performance and then whether they are a good buy for you the consumer.

The post Alpenfohn Fohn 120 and 140 WingBoost Fan Reviews appeared first on eTeknix.

When it comes to the world of All In One (AIO) liquid CPU cooling systems you’ll be hard pressed to find something that isn’t made by either Asetek or CoolIT and rebranded under various company’s product lines, the Antec Kuhler and Corsair Hydro series to name a couple of examples. Very few companies have the know-how and expertise to devise their own custom built AIO systems from all their own parts. However, Swiftech stand out clearly from the crowd with their latest innovation, the Swiftech H220.

The Swiftech H220 is particularly unique for a few reasons. First is that it features a powerful pump, the integrated pump is partially derived from the custom loop Apogee Drive II pump and packs way more power than you’ll find with any other pump on the AIO market. The second is that the Swiftech H220 is fully-expandable unlike all other solutions on the market which cannot be expanded. Finally, as mentioned previously, it is a totally custom design not mad by Asetek or CoolIT and it is the closest thing you can get to a custom water cooling system without building one yourself. This custom design packs copper fins on the radiator compared to aluminium on the Asetek and CoolIT units.

Below you can see the packaging. This points out the 3 year warranty which is an impressive warranty duration for Swiftech to be offering.

The back features technical details and a labelled diagram for those who are interested.

The post Swiftech H220 Liquid CPU Cooler Review appeared first on eTeknix.

Getting a CPU cooler that is; 100% RAM compatible, small enough in height to fit into most midtower cases and quiet enough for everyday usage is a tough ask. Then if you want that same CPU cooler to also have high performance cooling, you really are entering a niche market that very few companies serve. Thankfully, the product we have here today – Noctua’s NH-U12S – promises to fulfill all those criteria whilst still maintaining a reasonably competitive RRP of $64.90/€59.90.

Sitting at 158mm high the NH-U12S boasts compatibility with the vast majority of computer cases on the market, while the 45mm width of the heatsink and the 25mm width of the fan combined give a total width of just 71mm which gives 100% RAM compatibility. Noctua have also equipped the NH-U12S with their legendary NF-F12 fan, which we reviewed here, and you get all the usual Noctua goodies which we will detail as we progress more through this review. For your reference the specifications of the Noctua NH-U12S can be seen below:

For that ever shrinking minority that is interested in the packaging, here below you can see the box the NH-U12S came in. It features a quick run down of some of the key features, the 6 year warranty jumps right out at me along with the included NT-H1 thermal compound.

The post Noctua NH-U12S CPU Cooler Review appeared first on eTeknix.

Today we have with us a new fan from SilverStone, the AP123. These fans fall into the AirPenetrator series of products and are designed specifically to be used as case fans. They feature a unique design with three different fan blades inside the same fan which optimises their noise output when placed up against grilles.

You can see the full specifications below, and without any further babbling from myself lets move straight into the product.

As we can see from the packaging the air channeling technology from multiple fan blade designs is the key feature.

The post SilverStone AP123 120mm Case Fan Review appeared first on eTeknix.

Antec sit alongside Corsair as one of the big-boys in the All-In-One liquid CPU cooling market. They have been around for a long time and were one of the first to mainstream the trend of AIO CPU coolers. Their Kuhler series is renowed for its reliability, simplicity and good bang-for-buck. Today we have with us the latest exciting addition to the Kuhler H20 series, the Kuhler H20 1220. Why is this exciting you may be wondering? Well this is the first review in the world of the Antec Kuhler H20 1220 and to us a world exclusive is pretty exciting.

In terms of the design of this product, the innovation is probably not as exciting as you’d hope. The Antec Kuhler H20 1220 is essentially a 240mm Asetek AIO unit featuring a 27mm wide radiator, a standard Asetek pump unit and the flexible rubber tubing we see on the latest Asetek OEM designs. All Antec have done is branded the product with its Kuhler series branding, added a pair of their fans and offered up some basic fan control software. However, the fact this product carries the Antec branding and is part of the Kuhler series means you can expect quality, reliability and good performance.

The Kuhler H20 1220 comes in a very simply designed box and we can’t really see anything out of the ordinary – the key feature is the inclusion of the 240mm radiator.

The post Antec Kuhler H2O 1220 Liquid CPU Cooler Review appeared first on eTeknix.

For most people choosing a fan is often a very hit-and-miss decision. However, there is so much to consider when choosing a fan that people miss out on: price, performance, noise, looks and features. So today we are hoping to give you a detailed run down of all these criteria as we do a review of this Shark 120mm Evil Black Edition fan from Aerocool.

You can see the specifications below of this fan. As with most fans, we recommend you take the noise ratings with a pinch of salt!

From the front of the box we can see the really unique design this fan offers. It is also clear that Aerocool are going all-out using the Shark as the marketing figure for this product. This must be a theme with Asian companies because Evercool also do a very similar thing with some of their products.

Accessories included with this fan are four fan screws, anti-vibration fan mounts, a low noise adapter and a molex adapter to power the fan via the power supply.

I personally really like the design of the Aerocool fan, it is bold and aggressive – perfect for any gamer chassis.

From the side we can see the LED implementation and standard 25mm thickness.

There is quite a bit of exposed wiring which isn’t that great to see and the cabling is not all one colour which is also a bit annoying, although the LEDs will draw attention away from that.

Test System

• ASUS P8Z77-V
• Intel Core i5 3570K  at 4.5GHz (1.3v) with Gelid GC Extreme Thermal Paste (the best thermal paste we have ever tested)
• 16GB Kingston HyperX 1866MHz DDR3
• AMD Radeon HD 5870
• 128GB Kingston SSDnow V100 (Boot Drive) and Samsung F3 1TB (storage)
• Antec High Current Gamer 620W
• Cooler Master Test Bench v1.0

Testing Methodology

• All 120 and 140mm fans were individually tested on the Cooler Master TPC 800 CPU cooler heatsink or Thermalright Macho Rev.A (BW) heatsink, respectively, to determine cooling performance. We understand using a CPU heatsink performance can only ever be a proxy for performance/airflow, and that the performance figures will vary between different types of heatsinks, BUT this is the best method we are able to conduct.
• Temperatures were taken at a consistent room temperature of 20 degrees
• Delta temperatures have been used to account for small fluctuations in room temperature
• Prime 95 was run for 15 minutes and the average maximum CPU temperature was recorded as noted by CPUID HW Monitor
• The acoustic measurements were taken 2 inches/ 5cm away from the tested fans with the power supply fan and GPU fan isolated/turned off
• The ambient noise level as recorded by our sound meter was 37 dBA and delta noise levels have been used in our graphs
• There is approximately a 1 degree celsius margin of error in our temperature recording software
• There is approximately a 1dBA margin of error with our decibel meter

Software Used

• CPUID HWMonitor
• Prime 95

Performance was on the whole a bit average. The lower speed performance was generally a bit weak but the Aerocool fan made up for this at the 1500RPM speed.

The Aerocool fan was perhaps a bit lacking on the acoustic performance too. The 1500RPM speed was quite loud although the 1000RPM speed was very quiet, however as we saw above the performance wasn’t anything mind blowing. So on the whole the combination of acoustic and cooling performance is what I’d call average.

Aerocool’s Shark 120mm Evil Black Edition Orange LED Fan costs £8 in the UK. Although if you hunt around some other shops you can probably find it for a tad cheaper depending on what kind of website delivery and loyalty schemes you get involved in. Either way the Aerocool fan is well priced at about £7-8.

Now that I’ve covered the price I would like to cover the remaining criteria: performance, noise, features and looks. Performance as we saw was on the whole very good and even though it was quite weak at the lower speed because it was only spinning at 800-850RPM not 1000RPM due to us not being able to find an adapter that allowed the fan to spin at 1000RPM. Noise was a bit on the weak side but nothing unforgiving and if you had a fan controller these fans would be excellent for switching between low and high speeds to get maximum performance and maximum silence. Even if you don’t have a fan controller the provided adapters do give you that option anyway, although something between 800 and 1500RPM, or PWM, would of been nice and having to switch around adapters is a lot of hassle.

That point leads us nicely onto features where I think this fan is doing good in the sense it has an adapter, anti-vibration mounts, screws and has nice looking bright orange LEDs. Although, at the same time it could and should have had PWM support. Finally, onto looks, and this is where I think these fans stand out. If you consider all the other criteria then these fans are classifiable as above average in terms of how they stand against the rest of the competition. However, if the looks are to your taste then it makes the purchase infinitely more worthwhile. Personally, I really like the look of these fans and I think they are worthy of our Bang for Buck Award. Obviously, if you didn’t like the looks then you might be inclined to disagree with my decision and I totally respect that.

We would like to thank AONE for providing us with these review samples.

The post Aerocool Shark 120mm Evil Black Edition Orange LED Fan Review appeared first on eTeknix.

Cooler Master’s Seidon 120M impressed us a while back with its solid price to performance ratio, offering similar performance to the competition at a price that was quite a bit lower. The Seidon 240M promises to do a similar thing, although this is very much a “budget” attempt at a premium product – so while the Enermax ELC 240, Corsair H100i and Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme all cost £88, £92 and £105 respectively, the Cooler Master Seidon 240M promises to come to market at around £80 which is about 10-20% cheaper than the competition.

Like most 240mm All-In-One products in the market the design is relatively standardised – A pair of standard thickness 120mm PWM fans, a 27mm thick 240mm aluminium radiator, a standard looking pump that is similar to the Asetek core design (as signalled by the fact Asetek are taking Cooler Master to court over it) and some standard length tubing. Cooler Master aren’t bringing anything ground-breaking to market here but what they are looking to do is offer the best value for money 240mm AIO unit on the market.

The packaging to Cooler Master’s Seidon 240M uses Cooler Master’s traditional plum and black colour scheme and points out all the key features – none of which are surprising for the type of unit this is.

The post Cooler Master Seidon 240M Liquid CPU Cooler Review appeared first on eTeknix.

While our CPU cooler reviews of late have mainly be concerned with high performance heatsinks, it is still important for us to remember that it is the budget offerings which sell the most and get used the most. That said, today we have a $30 heatsink courtesy of Evercool and it is their brand new Venti (HPQ 12025) CPU cooler. We already brought you the news of this product back in December last year, and promised we would have a review for you. Today, we duly deliver on that promise.

On the face of things a $30 heatsink may not be particularly exciting but I think seeing how much performance you can get for such a low cost heatsink is actually pretty exciting – especially when you have cheaper heatsinks punching amongst much more expensive heavy-weights. Let’s hope that Evercool’s Venti can do exactly that today as we put it through the heat eTeknix heat treatment.

For those of you who are interested the outline of the specifications can be found in the below table. If you’re looking for extra information then read the above product page or news article, both have a lot of extra information you may find enriching to know before seeing the performance figures.

The Evercool Venti comes attractively packaged in a cardboard box pointing out all the key features and with a large product image. Inside we find the product is packed very well with hard plastic.

The post Evercool Venti (HPQ 12025) CPU Cooler Review appeared first on eTeknix.

Noctua’s premium range of fans is vast and we have looked at many of their fans, you can see our reviews below. They produce fans that cater for cases, heatsinks and radiators in a variety of sizes and speeds to suit almost every need. Most importantly though is that they all live up to the same high quality standards, feature silent operation, an extensive bundle and long warranties with excellent customer service.

Noctua NF-F12 Review

Noctua NF-A14 ULN Review

Noctua NF-A14 FLX Review

Noctua NF-A15 PWM Review

Today we have with us a set of three different fan types from Noctua’s case fan series, the NF-S12A fans. They come in three different variants, the ULN, FLX and PWM. We have all three to test and without any further ado let us get straight into having a look at the products.

Specifications can be seen here:

Noctua NF-S12A ULN

Noctua NF-S12A FLX

Noctua NF-S12A PWM

Below you can see the packaging of all three Noctua NF-S12A fans. The packaging points out the key features of each fan and you can compare these to see what makes them different from each other.

The post Noctua NF-S12A FLX, ULN and PWM Case Fan Reviews appeared first on eTeknix.

Xigmatek aren’t a brand known that well for their fans but they do actually delve quite a lot into the cooling market making a wide variety of CPU coolers and fans. Xigmatek are more well known for their cases of which we have tested many including recently the Asgard 381, Midgard II and Elysium.

Cases aside though, today we have a fan with us from Xigmatek’s XAF series – The F1255. You can get all the specifications, images and other information from that link, but in case you are too lazy to go and investigate we have included the specifications below:

The Xigmatek XAF F1255 comes packaged in some tight fitting plastic which gives you a good look at the product.

The back contains some detailed specifications and information. Apologies for making you turn your head!

The post Xigmatek XAF Series F1255 120mm Fan Review appeared first on eTeknix.

When it comes to 120mm fans, we’ve all become used to the norm – which is that fans compete on noise level, cooling performance and aesthetics. However, today we have something quite innovative from Gelid. We have the Slim 12 UV Blue and Slim 12 PL Blue fans. Both are reduced width fans measuring in at 15.8mm instead of 25mm allowing for greater compatibility. The big question that most of you will want to know is does a thinner fan mean less performance? This is something will will now go on and answer for you in this review.

You can find the full specifications and details of each fan using the below links and images:

• Gelid Slim 12 UV Blue

• Gelid Slim 12 PL Blue

Gelid’s Slim 12 UV Blue and Slim 12 PL Blue fans both come identically packaged except with different names and details on the boxes as well as different specifications on the back, of which you can see the Gelid Slim 12 UV Blue packaging below.

The post Gelid Slim 12 UV and PL Blue 120mm Fan Review appeared first on eTeknix.

Enermax’s entrance in to the all in one water cooling market is one that interests many. This is primarily because unlike most other competitors, they have not opted for the traditional Asetek or CoolIT route. Instead they have opted to go with Asia Vital Components (as far as I know anyway). Even if AVC are not their chosen partners, it is still clear they are not working with Asetek or CoolIT. What this means is that performance will probably differ a lot to Asetek and CoolIT units, potentially for the better or for the worse – only testing will reveal this. Today we have with us the Enermax ELC 240 and as the name would suggest this product uses a 240mm radiator along with a pair of Enermax 120mm fans. With the ELC 240 Enermax are bundling two T.B. Silence 120mm cooling fans. Unlike the Enermax ELC 120 which comes with a choice of T.B or T.A fans, the ELC 240 is only available with T.B fans meaning you cannot have an LED option. Other than that key bit of information, the rest of the main specifications can be seen below.

Enermax’s ELC 120 and 240 CPU coolers were released well back in mid-late 2012, nearly 4-5 months ago now. In that time the core design of the ELC series has remained the same, the only difference is that Enermax have resolved some key issues with the pump that they had on the first batch of engineering samples. However, my concern is that in those 6 months we have seen new generations of AIO liquid coolers from Asetek and CoolIT. This would suggest that, unless Enermax have produced something really excellent, we could easily see this product fall behind the newly updated competition which these Enermax coolers weren’t designed to compete with six months ago. The Enermax ELC 240 was probably designed to compete with the last generation of AIO coolers, namely Corsair’s H100. However, in that time period we have seen the H100 upgraded to the H100i and with that upgrade came a significant improvement in performance at the same price point. Here’s to hoping that Enermax’s ELC 240 is still able to compete with the latest generation of Asetek and CoolIT AIO liquid coolers.

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