| Antec Kühler H2O 920 Liquid Cooler |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Cooling | |
| Written by David Ramsey | |
| Tuesday, 12 April 2011 | |
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Page 4 of 8
ChillControl V SoftwareThe Antec Kühler H2O 920 is the first CPU cooler I've seen that comes with its own driver and software. Granted, the Coolit Systems Vantage A.L.C. cooler had a degree of software control built into its pump unit, but the Kühler 920 has real, Windows-installable software for controlling it. While it adds a nice degree of versatility and control, it does mean that you can't effectively use this cooler on anything except a Windows system. The software is simple and intuitive to use, for the most part, which is good since Antec includes no documentation whatsoever on it. Clicking the question mark button at the top right of the window takes you to online documentation, but at the time of this review it was "Under Construction." 
The ChillControl V software has a simple interface with four primary displays: Dashboard, Graphs, Fan Control, and Settings. The Dashboard section gives an overview of the system's status, showing liquid temperature (which is not the same as CPU temperature), fan RPM and sound level, and pump RPM. At the upper right of the ChillControl window is a three-position switch with settings for "Extreme", "Silent", and "Custom" performance modes. In "Silent" mode, the fans are run at minimal RPM and the cooler is almost silent. 
In "Extreme" mode, the fans run at full speed, all the time, even if the system is just idling. While this is the setting I used for testing the cooler, you'd never select it in real-world use, unless you were deaf. To say it's loud is an understatement. 
Fortunately, ChillControl V has a "Fan Control" section where you can define the (liquid) temperatures at which the fans begin to ramp up from idle, and at which they will run at full speed. These settings are used when the mode switch at the upper right is set to "Custom". In this section you can also configure alerts for high liquid temperature or fan failure. While the Kühler 920 doesn't have an audible alarm, it will display pop-up alerts when these parameters are exceeded. 
After experimenting with the fan control settings, I found a good compromise in setting the fans to begin to ramp up at 35 degrees Celsius and reach full speed at 40 degrees Celsius (again, these are temperatures of the coolant, not the CPU). In the image above you can see how the fan speed and coolant temperature graphs reacted to a load situation that subsequently dropped to idle. 
The last part of the ChillControl V software is the Settings section. You can select how the temperature is displayed, configure logging, and most importantly control the color of the light in the "Antec" logo on the pump unit. With fine-grained control of red, blue, and green LED elements, you can set any one of 65,536 different colors! Hopefully a future software update will allow you to configure the light to pulse, strobe, and cycle through colors. In the next section, I'll put the Kühler 920 to the test.
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Comments
A good case point is my current cooler, which is the old Cogage True Spirit 39 dollar wonder. I did put a Gentle Typhoon 1800rpm fan on it and also installed a backplate, bringing the grand total to about 65USD. I would have bought a Megalhelems probably, but back then I thought I was going to use the push pin mount system.
The thing is, with my current rig running the Gigabyte UD5 ver. 2 and my Bloomfield 920, I get a max temp running Prime 95 in heat mode of 75C at a 3.8Ghz OC. This is with a 21C ambient. And, more to the point, 75C is well within tolerance for a Bloomfield 920. You could run it 24-7 like that and never have wear from heat.
But more applicable is when I run Crysis 2 at maximum settings for two hours and never break 60C.
So the conclusion is why buy high when you can cool low for half the price? I love the V6, but just can;t justify replacing my old Cogage since it cools so well anyway.
Because of the ridiculous amounts of heat generated by modern chips, the coolers required have become seriously massive, most of them to the point they either need substantial backplates to prevent motherboards from warping, hanging over RAM slots which limits RAM use or simply just being too big to fit into a case.
Nobody ever said these all-in water units were as good as a proper custom loop, but they're not supposed to be. They're intended to compete with top-end air coolers without having the ridiculous mass to contend with, and in that regard I think they've been very successful.
I never used one on the Bloomfield builds I did because either I was pushing for some serious clocks (and therefore needed cooling performance beyond what these units can do), or was on a tight budget, so I fully appreciate the price point for these units always leaves a big "do I or not" question.
I do agree with you that the Cogage True Spirit is a little gem!
The first is that in the case like the 620 the cooling is one with one less fan, there by less noise. What I mean by this is the fan used by these types of coolers replaces the existing exhaust fan on the case. The typcial cooler system introduced another fan to the system and often two to achieve the same level of cooling, thus more noise.
The second advanatge is the reduction of overall internal PC temperature. Normal air cooling solutions take the CPU heat and then blow it back into the case. These liquid cooling solutions take the heat and move it outside the case, reducing overall internal temperature. It might only be 2c or 3 c but every little bit helps.
While there are some great standard air coolers I have been sold on the self contained liquid coolers from day one of the H50 and Coolit ECO. Sure you can cool for less money but then again you can drive a Festiva for less than any other car model.
Have you considered including the coolermaster 212 plus with your benchmarks? The 2600k has a mockery of a stock cooler so many people consider the $30 212 the minimum solution. It would be interesting to see how much more cooling you get for spending more money.
this is just my 2 (euro) cents... ;)
I have actually replaced the fans on my 920 with the same Delta fans as in this review. While the fans run the software does not display any data for them. Since it is not communicating with the fans, it can not follow the settings I have for the rpm changes. Frankly, the only way I know they are even running is if I have it on the Extreme setting and can hear the air movement. I have tried uninstalling and re-installing all software related to the 920 and it is the same. Any ideas concerning the issue? Anything would be appreciated.
Travis
Larger diameter hose will lessen the load on the pump, resulting in higher flow.
Every millimetre of hose length does impose *some* flow restriction, no matter what diameter, so increasing the diameter *will* to some degree reduce the restriction and thus increase the flow.
"Plus, you'll actually get slower movement with larger hose..."
So? The flow rate (volume/time) is what matters, not the flow speed through the hose.
On the contrary I'd argue that since larger diameter, same length, hose will hold a larger volume that factor alone is a bonus in terms of increased thermal inertia.
It's interesting, because I can't imagine replacing a (pair of) 2400rpm fan(s) with something else and expecting increased airflow while getting much less noise, and yet it seems like Antec would have had to unintentionally design their 620 better than they expected for it to perform better than the flagship with only a simple fan swap. That could be the exact situation here though, is what the testing shows.
Olin is correct: the larger diameter hose will permit more fluid flow, but that is entirely up to the pump. I guess the secrecy act needs a full frontal assault by a U.N. committee to let us know what we're dealing with here.
A little hint on mounting of the radiator. I ran a thin metal pin (a straigtened paper clip actually) through the case mounting hole, fan mounting hole and into the radiator screw hole to align, making it much easier to line up and secure a screw through the case, fan and to the radiator. Saves a lot of headaches even when almost blindly mounting anything. (There are tapered pinning tools used in construction designed specifically for this same scenario, just bigger joins.)
Determining the inner hose diameter and pump flow rate isn't hard, but it's destructive to the coolers...
1. Find out at what temperature the CPU throttles. One way is to run the cooler at ?Silent? and use a third prty program to read the CPU temperature when the CPU throttles (Tt).
2. Set the cooler to ?Extreme?, and calculate the difference in temperature between the liquid and the CPU (deltaT) when the CPU is working att full load without throttling.
3. Close the program keeping the CPU busy. Enter the cooler Settings panel. For the Full fan speed temp I chose
Tt ? deltaT- 5 degrees
to keep some margin.
For the Ramp start temp I chose 25 degrees, to keep the fan working in the lower register longer without having to actually go to full speed.