Cooler Master Seidon 240M and 12 More Coolers: The Retest and Mega-Roundup
by Dustin Sklavos on April 26, 2013 6:01 AM ESTThe Cooler Master Seidon 240M
It's easy to mistake the Cooler Master Seidon 240M as another Asetek design; apparently Asetek thought it was close enough that it was worth suing Cooler Master over. How that suit pans out remains to be seen, but the Seidon 240M definitely has enough distinctive characteristics to make it worth evaluating on its own.
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Cooler Master may not have been doing well in our recent radiator fan roundups, but the two fans they've included for the Seidon 240M's 240mm radiator appear to be the same breed as the fan they use on the widely loved (and rightfully so) Hyper 212 Evo air cooler. Unfortunately, while the waterblock is copper and of Cooler Master's own design, the radiator uses aluminum fins much like competing units from Asetek and CoolIT, and you'll see later that this does have a tangible negative impact on performance.
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Where Cooler Master beats just about everyone else, though, is in their mounting system. The mount for the waterblock is freakishly simple and secure; there are a pair of brackets that get screwed on to the waterblock (one for AMD and one for Intel), along with an adjustable backplate that comes out of the box ready for LGA 1155/1156. Four screws come up through the mounting holes in the motherboard, and then bolts attach to those. The brackets attached to the waterblock then screw into those bolts. It's actually a very simple design and nowhere near as finicky as Asetek's, CoolIT's, or even Swiftech's.
As for fan control, Cooler Master is a step ahead of Corsair's H90 and H110 coolers: the pump uses a standard 3-pin connector and can be connected to any motherboard fan header, while there's a splitter for the two PWM fans included to use the single CPU fan PWM header on the motherboard. No proprietary software, just clean use of the motherboard's integrated fan control. I honestly prefer this approach to Corsair's Corsair Link software and NZXT's Kraken Control, but your mileage may vary.
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spidey81 - Friday, April 26, 2013 - link
This article was to test the performance of the coolers at a certain clock speed. However, I think you would find that when pushing the overclock higher you would see some coolers wouldn't be able to keep the temps in check while others could. There's a difference between efficiently transferring the heat and the amount of heat capable of being transferred. That's why the D14 and TRUE are popular among overclockers who push higher than what we see in this test. To that end, the 240mm or 280mm closed loop coolers will also be able to handle higher overclocks.In this (http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cases_cooling/s... review of the H220, you can see that on the socket 2011 cpu the air coolers weren't able to maintain the extreme overclocks like the closed loop coolers could.
spidey81 - Friday, April 26, 2013 - link
sorry, link broke. http://tinyurl.com/cu24bwk That should work better :)epoon2 - Friday, April 26, 2013 - link
You meant that as the load/watt/heat produced by CPU increases, the order in this graph http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph6916/54390... changes?but in the above test, the fans are at constant, max speed already ... I know what you mean but I just can't figure out the science/reason behind why your scenario would happen.
BrightCandle - Friday, April 26, 2013 - link
Two key factors are at play:1) the amount of watts of heat the solution can dissipate at a given delta temperature to the air.
2) the thermal interface performance to the CPU itself and hence what temperature the CPU is running at.
Water is cooling the water block but then water itself is above ambient temperature. This often means the ambient temp CPU effectively sees is higher compared to what it was with air. But water warms and cools much faster than air by volume, and it can hold a lot more energy. Combining water with a substantially larger area to exchange its heat to air and you get a solution that cools better given a large number of watts of heat but does less well on low wattage where air cooling fits and is sufficient.
A 2600k pulls about 170W over clocked. A 3930k can be over 300W. 170W is about the point to consider water but you need an overspecced loop to show any advantage at all. Passed 200 watts however and water takes a clear lead and air stops being able to do the job.
epoon2 - Saturday, April 27, 2013 - link
Assuming the water pipes dissipates negligible heat, the role of the water system is equivalent to that of the thermal compounds: to transfer energy and heat to the sink and radiator.The difference in rate of heat exchange between the metal pieces and the external environment becomes the key.
In an open air test, the rankings should remain the same as amount of heat generated by the CPU increases. In the real world , the performance of air coolers depends on the effectiveness of the case's heat exchange system..
A5 - Friday, April 26, 2013 - link
For future reviews, I wouldn't mind seeing the Xigmatek SD1283 tested. A lot of people recommend it for people who want something better than the CM Evo but don't want to spend Noctua money. It typically runs ~$50 so it fits that niche price-wise as well.A5 - Friday, April 26, 2013 - link
I guess I meant the silly-named "Dark Knight 2" when I wrote this. Didn't know they had 2 different SD1283s. Guess I wouldn't mind seeing the cheaper, non-coated "Gaia" as well.Dr_b_ - Friday, April 26, 2013 - link
Does the U12 have socket 2011 mounting capability?epoon2 - Friday, April 26, 2013 - link
http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&...Dr_b_ - Friday, April 26, 2013 - link
thanks 4 link. NH-D14 is really too big, blocks a socket in my x79-UP4 gigabyte. U12 looks like it might work here.