Lastly I’m going to test the EK-KIT X240 against the Thermaltake Pacific RL240 vs XSPC Raystorm DDC Photon RX240 V3. Again EK have been a long term water cooling manufacturer & their popularity in the market place is very strong. Personally I’ve always found their products to be of high quality & the technical understanding of thermal properties being very good indeed. This offering from EK comes in at £277.15 including VAT which is pretty expensive, so I hope it lives up to the high price tag? The kit includes, Universal CPU water block: EK-Supremacy EVO Clean CSQ (incl. LED diode, mounting- & thermal material) • Radiator: EK-CoolStream RAD XTX 240 (Double) • Radiator fan: EK-FAN Silent 120-1600 RPM (2pcs) • Water pump: EK-DDC 3.2 PWM Elite Edition (incl. pump holders) • Reservoir: EK-RES X3 150 • Tubing: PrimoChill PrimoFlex™ Advanced LRT™ 13/10mm (2 meters) • Compression fittings: EK-CSQ Fitting 13/10mm - G1/4 Nickel (8 pcs) • Coolant concentrate: EK-Ekoolant EVO Clear (100mL; for 1L of coolant) • Y-cable splitter: EK-Cable Y-Splitter 2-Fan PWM (10cm) • ATX bridging plug ] I’m taking a brief look at each of the EK Water cooling kit components, before assembly into the test rig chassis. CPU Water block – The EK-Supremacy EVO is well constructed using a copper base & well CNC’d fin arrangement, the clear Acetal top is nicely finished & the block comes with all the necessary fitting brackets to cover all known sockets. Images 1-8 Pump & reservoir - The EK Kit uses a DDC pump & separate reservoir, it’s nice to see a DDC pump used + it also has a pump cooler fitted to the underside which is a nice little touch & with the anti-vibration mounting which will certainly reduce any unwanted pump noise. The only thing I wish EK would have done is braided the wiring from the pump, a shame for the sake of minimal cost involved. The little EK150 reservoir is well made covering all the options you would expect to see, horizontal as well as vertical mounting ports. My only reservation would be using the so called “Anti-Vortex” foam, I’ve had this foam break down into pieces before in many an EK cooling system & that using their own fluid or personally I’d steer clear of using it. Apart from that the EK150 reservoir is faultless in its construction & quality of material used in the manufacturer. Radiator – Another “fat” or wide 240mm radiator from EK. It looks fairly good in appearance & much the same construction as most other radiators on the market. I’m not really interested in the manufacturing process to be honest, only really how it will compare to the Thermaltake & the XSPC radiator’s previously tested. Cooling Fans – The two supplied EK Vardar 120mm fans are set to run at a maximum speed of 1850 R.P.M. Unfortunately from a personal opinion these look absolutely awful in appearance. How they perform in the test firstly from an exhausting point of view via the radiator & then secondly from a noise aspect may change my personal view, but the look of these for an expensive kit, Black bodied & Grey bladed fan looks cheap!
Fittings & Hose – The fittings are reasonable in quality, but I have reservations regarding the thin walled hose supplied with the kit. Unlike the Thermaltake RL240 kit which uses ½” - ¾” hose & the XSPC kit that uses 3/8” – 5/8”. The hose supplied with the EK looks somewhat inferior to the other two kits tested. Coolant - EK had at least supplied a concentrate cooling fluid, this was mixed with distilled water as per the instructions, but again in my opinion like the XSPC, both manufactures make premixed water cooling fluid & for the price of their respective kits I feel that they should have supplied the premixed cooling fluid as did Thermaltake with the RL240 kit. Once the pump reservoir combo is fitted in position in the Thermaltake chassis, I’ve opted to fit the radiator again in the same layout as the previously tested Thermaltake kit & XSPC kits. This is so I can make a comparative test for each kit or at least as close as possible. The EK KIT X240 water block fitted well onto the test motherboard & with the White LED lighting supplied it does look quite nice on the CPU water block, however no white 5mm LED’s were supplied for the DDC pump top, kind of strange? Although I did fit 1x 5mm white LED into the pump top for matching affect. Testing the thermal properties - The important part of the review! Using exactly the same hardware as per the Thermaltake Pacific RL240 & XSPC kits tested previously carried out & the ambient temperature at almost the same, I set prime95 running & periodically took screen shots of the test rig temperatures below. One point to note is that the supplied Vardar 120mm fans were noisy compared to Thermaltake’s & XSPC’s supplied fans! The CPU temperatures were also an eye opener , I tested the EK KIT-X240 several times, even reseating the CPU block & cleaning both the CPU & water block surfaces to be sure that my results were not in any way misleading. The EK kit did not hold the same CPU temperatures as the Thermaltake & XSPC offerings. Even after increasing the Vardar 120mm fans to maximum the EK KIT-X240 could not compete with the other two kits tested!!!!..... Idle Temp:- 27c-30c Full Load Temp:- 51c – 53c
