Watercooling Enermax NEOChanger 200mL Reservoir and Pump kit

Hi to everyone. This will be my first review, hopefully among many, and hope I prove to be alright for you guys and gals to get some clear and good evaluation for this cool product. Now read on.

Doing a custom water cooling loop can be demanding and if you are new to it, then you would definitely need to read some information on how to do things properly so that that water flow is going through your loop correctly. But that is another subject for another article. Even though you might think why did I started the article like this. Well, Enermax did something that will make the beginners life easier and enthusiast life more interesting. Here we have the all new Enermax NEOChanger which comes in three sizes, 200, 300 and 400mL.



Packaging
The package is nicely designed with a very subtle line giving the idea of RGB LED installed inside of it. Of course, there are two nice photos of the NEOChanger giving you ideas already on the box on how to place your pump and reservoir kit. Here you can see we are going to talk about 200mL capacity one which is the smallest one out of the three available.



On the back side of the package there are detailed information and specifications of the NEOChanger. The front side has a photo and a nice example on how the kit can be placed.

As for the inside of the package, there is enough cardboard to protect your pump and reservoir kit for shipping and to prevent against any breaking. Even on top of the package when you open the box you will have a small sort of styrofoam to protect the reservoir from breaking.



As for the package and what it actually contains, we have the pump and reservoir kit, the NEOChanger, mount for different way of mounting in your computer, cable extender to control the LED, remote control for the pump RPMs and the adjust the lighting.



The remote control for everything...
Now this is the first time I have personally seen pump and reservoir combo to have a remote control. But why is it so great to have one? You don't need any application to control the speed of the pump, which you can do with some presets on the remote control or manually manage the speed as you wish. Also, changing colors to what you wish is also easy with loads of presets already managed on the remote control. This gives you way more accessibility to the functions of the combo kit.

From the pictures you can see how everything is nicely arranged on the remote control. The top part of the remote is arranged for the color scheme of the NEOChanger and the bottom part for the RPMs for the pump of the NEOChanger. Now I think that Enermax gave a lot of thought to make this remote as user friendly as it can. As mention in the first chapter of this article, this is why this combo kit NEOChanger is very friendly for a new user that is just beginning with custom water cooling loop or to an enthusiast who will like to test different speeds on the pump without restarting his computer to access UEFI BIOS. Another cool feature of the remote control that needs to be mention is that it has a magnetic holder so you can just place it on your case (if it is made out of metal) so you, for instance, don't loose it somewhere.

Fittings and connectors
NEOChanger has three ports for attaching fittings. Even though many of the reservoirs have up to five or six of them and some combos have two on top and two with the pump combined, this is quite enough to manage your water cooling loop and to make it loop nice.



The bottom one is, as it should be, the outtake of the pump and on top of the reservoir you have two more. The top two can be combined nicely, and that is the only way, with one for continues loop and the second one as fill port. All three ports are G1/4" so you can easily manage any of the fittings that are on the market. For example, on the left picture you can see a fitting from EK Water Blocks.

Talking about connection the NEOChanger, you have two cable that you need to connect. One is SATA power that gives the power for the pump and the second one is 4-pin to connect the RGB lights. The cable you get in the package is actually the extender for the RGB connector which is around 20/30cm long to even do a nice cable management. The 4-pin RGB header is compatible with ASUS AURA Sync, ASRock RGB LED, MSI Mystic Light Sync and Gigabyte RGB Fusion. It is great that their RGB lights are compatible with all the huge manufacturers because with that they cover a huge amount of motherboard and their compatibility giving the end user easy way to choose only the size of the kit.

Detailed specifications
Enermax NEOChanger is definitely one of a kind pump and reservoir kit combo.

Here are the specifications which some of the can be found on the box NEOChanger is packed in:

Model Number: ELC-NC100RGB
Dimensions: 93.2 x 94x 193.3 mm
Capacity: 200mL
Material: PPS, Aluminum, PMMA
Maximum Head delivery: 5.2m
Maximum Flow Rate: 900 L/h
Input Voltage: 12V
Connector: SATA
Pump Speeds: 1500/2000/2500/3000/3500/4000 (+/-15%) RPM; +/-150 (+/-15%) RPM
Screw Thread: G1/4"
RGB synchronization: ASUS AURA Sync, ASRock RGB LED, MSI Mystic Light Sync and Gigabyte RGB Fusion
Box includes:

• 1x RGB pump-combo kit NEOChanger with digital pump meter
• 1x Mounting bracket set for vertical installation (pre-installed)
• 1x Mounting bracket set for horizontal installation
• 1x Remote control incl. magnetic holder
• 4x Case screws incl. screw nuts
• 1x Clip screw incl. screw nut
• 1x Wrench
• 1x 24-pin power adapter
• 1x Installation guide/manual

The looks, design and material
Right out of the box you can feel that the pump/reservoir kit has some weight to it. The feel of the anodized black aluminum cap, the polymer case and the transparent acrylic glass of the reservoir give immediately the feel of quality material.



Functionality, display and RGB colors
Basically, all you need to do for the pump and RGB lights to work is to connect the SATA connect to the power supply and connect the 4-pin cable which has an extenders in the box with accessories. As any other pump, never leave it without water while filling or draining it.

Let's start with functionality. On the lowest settings and that means around 1400RPM, the pump isn't heard at all. Pumping up the speed to 2500RPM, you can slightly hear the pump working but nothing that might bother you while the pump is in the case with all the fans. Still great sound/speed ratio without noise. Now I don't have a dB measurement tool, so I can't give you the exact number of dB on the 4000RPM, but saying it in an ordinary way, you can hear the pump in the open space, but in the case it still won't overpower the sound of the fans in the case. If you have me guessing the dB level of the pump on 4000RPM, I would say without a doubt that it is between 20-25dB. Satisfying noise level for a higher speed of the pump.

Now how the display works? Kind of a strange question, because it only shows the numbers, but frankly there is always something to tell about everything. The display shows immediate change in the RPMs when I press the remote control for the pump speed up or down. No delay, no problem with the display showing the numbers or anything similar. Quite a great feature to have when you want to test the temperatures on your components or when you aren't doing anything on your computer to lower the speed, save the live span of the pump and etc.

Finally, RGB. I know some of you might be mostly interested in that. How to pimp up your computer? We have RGB everything now and Enermax made this pump and reservoir combo that can fit perfectly in your computer if you already have everything in RGB. So you can choose between brightness, modes, colors, which can give you loads of diversity to set up your computers look at the maximum as you wish.



The colors are really vibrant and look awesome in person. The same as you change the pump speeds, you can change the colors, modes and brightness. Easy as it looks and sounds. Remote control really gives you comparability at any level.

Conclusion
All in all, we here have one outstanding pump and reservoir combo that isn't just that. The Enermax NEOChanger gives you so much diversity with the speed adjustment that suits you in every moment of usage, the RGB lights that can be personalized as you wish. On top all of that, you have so much way of placing it in your case with two different mounting that you could manage them anywhere if your new graphic cards give you some extra space. The design is impeccable and the way you connect it... I will just say, MOLEX connector is finally out of the game which should be done a long time ago, but at least Enermax didn't take it into a consideration. Overall, great job to Enermax for doing such a lovely work with the combo.

To check Enermax out, go to their webpage on: www.enermax.co.uk or www.enermax.de

 

Some constructive advice?

Two words... Lian Li.

No it's not there are plenty of other similar products out there from pretty much every watercooling manufacturer / supplier admittedly many of them don't include a rgb led setup from the get-go, but they invariably have ways to easily add ones chosen lighting method. You used an EK barb, so maybe it would have been worthwhile to make some comment regarding it's similarities and differences to EK's tube reservoirs at this point.

Is like saying Seville apple, or granny-smith plumb in a technical review it's important to get technical terms correct. Acrylic is a type of plastic, glass is a type of silica. Jumping back to EK as the obvious and easy compassion, they offer tube reservoirs in either acrylic tubing, or glass tubing.

Lazy, not even trying... Got a phone? Got an (admittedly slightly crude) acoustic measurement tool, there are apps for android, ios and windows phone that will give you a rough guide to this. Though the numbers won't be necessarily incredibly accurate, the relationship between them should be more so and give anyone an indicative guide on the loudness of the pump. Any attempt (particularly one with the caveat that you're not well equipped but you're trying) would have been better than this!

Did you make any attempt to validate the quoted specifications on the box? Flow rate takes a couple of purchases - unlike a free acoustic measuring app - but to confirm or disprove the head pressure all you need is a length of tubing.

I had to read your review twice to discover that you change the pump speed using the remote - this is very cool, why doesn't it get more import. Is it the only way to change the pump speed, that would be very uncool particularly if the remote got lost. Can you buy new remotes separately, are the remotes on separate channels so that you can use multiple pumps in a single room? Many unanswered questions here. Including what pump is it - is it a well known and trusted brand such as Laing? Or is it a crude knock-off of a D5, or something else entirely?

Overall I give your review 4/10 could try harder.

 

Wow... what a savage! That wasn't as much of a constructive critism as much as a full out bashing. Give the guy a break, man!

Now, for my two cents:

It's a good start, fella. Writing reviews definitely takes some practice and as you do it more, you'll notice little things such as the attention to detail on the finer bits that set you apart from others.

My first review that I ever wrote was honestly an atrocious attempt, but you progress. It's like anything else in life, you learn and improve.

 

No that wasn't savage, that was (hopefully) helpful and honest. I can do savage. I have very much given the benefit of the doubt, for example I didn't pick up on -

Assuming that English isn't Dario's first language I presumed that he meant that this was his first review on bit-tech, I didn't point out that he's been doing reviews on youtube for about eighteen months with 135 videos, not all are reviews but, a number which are titled as un-boxings are mini-reviews in their own right.

It's on this that I scored 4/10, not it being his first review ever. Perhaps I should have pointed that out, but it felt like being unnecessarily mean. Not yet savage.