Antec Kuhler H2O 1220 Liquid CPU Cooler Review

Running our Intel i5 3570K Ivy Bridge CPU at stock frequencies we can see that the Antec Kuhler H20 1220 is  competitive with three other 240mm radiator units and offers good performance, but is still some way off the Corsair H100i suggesting to us that CoolIT has the advantage over Asetek when it comes to 240mm AIO units and that the Corsair H100i equips better fans.

With those stock frequencies we found the acoustic performance to be good on the Antec Kuhler H20 1220, barely breaking into a sweat on the default PWM controls.

When we introduced overclocking we found the results weren’t that impressive. We have temperatures that are just about competitive with the Seidon 240M and ELC 240 – so that’s good – but it was still a degree behind. Ramping fans up to 100% allowed us to gain a lot of ground on other CPU coolers such as the thicker Water 2.0 Extreme but this was with a staggering amount of noise. The Antec Kuhler 1220 is clearly limited by the thickness of its radiator and the quality of its fans which dictates that the performance will never be able to go over a certain threshold. The Antec Kuhler 1220 is definitely equally as good as the Cooler Master Seidon 240M and Enermax ELC 240 but it falls some way behind the Corsair H100i and Swiftech H220 at equivalent noise levels.

That said, the performance is still around the ballpark region that we’d expect given that the Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme is the same unit except with a 1.5 thickness rad compared to the 1 thickness rad we have on this unit.

That dip in performance compared to the ELC 240 and Seidon 240M at default PWM profiles is probably a result of the better acoustics. Were you to boost the fans to the same noise levels as the competition you’d easily gain that performance back, so we are quite confident in saying the Antec Kuhler 1220 matches the Seidon 240M and ELC 240.