The Alphacool Eisbaer 240 CPU AIO Liquid Cooler Review
by E. Fylladitakis on August 1, 2016 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- AIO
- Water Cooling
- Cooler
- Alphacool
Testing Methodology
Although the testing of a cooler appears to be a simple task, that could not be much further from the truth. Proper thermal testing cannot be performed with a cooler mounted on a single chip, for multiple reasons. Some of these reasons include the instability of the thermal load and the inability to fully control and or monitor it, as well as the inaccuracy of the chip-integrated sensors. It is also impossible to compare results taken on different chips, let alone entirely different systems, which is a great problem when testing computer coolers, as the hardware changes every several months. Finally, testing a cooler on a typical system prevents the tester from assessing the most vital characteristic of a cooler, its absolute thermal resistance.
The absolute thermal resistance defines the absolute performance of a heatsink by indicating the temperature rise per unit of power, in our case in degrees Celsius per Watt (°C/W). In layman's terms, if the thermal resistance of a heatsink is known, the user can assess the highest possible temperature rise of a chip over ambient by simply multiplying the maximum thermal design power (TDP) rating of the chip with it. Extracting the absolute thermal resistance of a cooler however is no simple task, as the load has to be perfectly even, steady and variable, as the thermal resistance also varies depending on the magnitude of the thermal load. Therefore, even if it would be possible to assess the thermal resistance of a cooler while it is mounted on a working chip, it would not suffice, as a large change of the thermal load can yield much different results.
Appropriate thermal testing requires the creation of a proper testing station and the use of laboratory-grade equipment. Therefore, we created a thermal testing platform with a fully controllable thermal energy source that may be used to test any kind of cooler, regardless of its design and or compatibility. The thermal cartridge inside the core of our testing station can have its power adjusted between 60 W and 340 W, in 2 W increments (and it never throttles). Furthermore, monitoring and logging of the testing process via software minimizes the possibility of human errors during testing. A multifunction data acquisition module (DAQ) is responsible for the automatic or the manual control of the testing equipment, the acquisition of the ambient and the in-core temperatures via PT100 sensors, the logging of the test results and the mathematical extraction of performance figures.
Finally, as noise measurements are a bit tricky, their measurement is being performed only manually. Fans can have significant variations in speed from their rated values, thus their actual speed during the thermal testing is being acquired via a laser tachometer. The fans (and pumps, when applicable) are being powered via an adjustable, fanless desktop DC power supply and noise measurements are being taken 1 meter away from the cooler, in a straight line ahead from its fan engine. At this point we should also note that the Decibel scale is logarithmic, which means that roughly every 3 dB(A) the sound pressure doubles. Therefore, the difference of sound pressure between 30 dB(A) and 60 dB(A) is not "twice as much" but nearly a thousand times greater. The table below should help you cross-reference our test results with real-life situations.
The noise floor of our recording equipment is 30.2-30.4 dB(A), which represents a medium-sized room without any active noise sources. All of our acoustic testing takes place during night hours, minimizing the possibility of external disruptions.
| <35dB(A) | Virtually inaudible |
| 35-38dB(A) | Very quiet (whisper-slight humming) |
| 38-40dB(A) | Quiet (relatively comfortable - humming) |
| 40-44dB(A) | Normal (humming noise, above comfortable for a large % of users) |
| 44-47dB(A)* | Loud* (strong aerodynamic noise) |
| 47-50dB(A) | Very loud (strong whining noise) |
| 50-54dB(A) | Extremely loud (painfully distracting for the vast majority of users) |
| >54dB(A) | Intolerable for home/office use, special applications only. |
*noise levels above this are not suggested for daily use
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Death666Angel - Tuesday, August 2, 2016 - link
Totally. liquid cooling in the end functions the same way as air cooling, since the water has to be cooled down by air cooling. It only functions as a quick way to get rid of the heat at the source, but then you need radiators (like traditional heatsinks have directly on the CPU/GPU) to get rid of the heat from the water. But since custom liquid cooling is not restricted to the space around the CPU socket or on the graphics card, you can have much more cooling area. I myself have a 2x2x120mm radiator and another 200x200mm radiator, that is probably a bit more area than a high end air cooling CPU and GPU HSF have combined. But I also have that installed in a mATX case. People who go higher end have several 280, 360 radiators installed in their cases or they go 9x120 or 9x140 with external radiators. That is much more cooling area than traditional socket and graphics card coolers can provide.retrospooty - Tuesday, August 2, 2016 - link
You can... But you need to find a quiet water pump. It may also be quiet day one and get louder over time. The other thing is the water pump and the power control behind it introduce 2 additional potential fail points... It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense if building a new system today. Skylake CPU's are very cool and fan noise on them can be zero or near zero even if you are overlocking the crap out of it.Death666Angel - Tuesday, August 2, 2016 - link
"custom loop cool" "Skylake CPU"No one in their right mind uses a custom liquid cooling solution just for the CPU. And since modern rigs can still easily produce 400 to 500W of excess heat if overclocked to their maximum (and that is just for the entry level enthusiast gear), water cooling still makes sense in those cases.
Also, pumps have been nearly silent for years and tests have shown that high water flow isn't really necessary for good cooling temperatures. So something like a throttled Phobya DC12-220 will provide enough power to give you 80l/h at throttled speeds with a CPU+GPU+2 radiators setup and run silently if you decouple it from the case and dampen it with rubber.
How does a WC setup get louder over time and air cooling does not? Mine does get slightly worse performance after a few months of not cleaning the radiator fans. But the same is true of air cooling. That's what a vacuum and compressed air is for. If you are talking about having gunk in your coolers, that shouldn't happen if you set it up right.
I've had a custom WC setup for nearly 6 years now, I've changed the graphics cards one and the cpu/MoBo once and cleaned everything when I did that. First time I had some gunk in the coolers which reduced the flow rate (I didn't use the right ratio for the water additives). Second time I had some gunk but no reduction in flow rate. Now I've not touched it for over a year and the flow rate is steady.
retrospooty - Tuesday, August 2, 2016 - link
I would agree, but it is said in relation to the article above on the Eisbaer 240 "CPU" AIO Liquid Cooler.Death666Angel - Tuesday, August 2, 2016 - link
"Can you make a custom loop cool better AND be quieter than a high end air tower?"Just because it is posted below this review, does not mean you should ignore what he actually asked.
retrospooty - Tuesday, August 2, 2016 - link
I am not sure what you are getting at... I answered his question. He said nothing about a video card, you said that after my post.HomeworldFound - Tuesday, August 2, 2016 - link
An Aquacomputer D5 paired with an Aquaero 6 and an Aqualis reservoir is silent. On my 5930k I can turn the pump down to 25% and my fans down to 500rpm and you can't hear a thing, it's quieter than my fridge freezer near the PC which is further away. I do have 2x 480mm 60mm radiators though.HomeworldFound - Tuesday, August 2, 2016 - link
and 980 SLI. Building a new rig now.ikjadoon - Tuesday, August 2, 2016 - link
Dude, you can buy an AIO CLC that does that, LOL.http://www.hardocp.com/article/2016/02/11/arctic_c...
zodiacfml - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
I used to follow every and latest cooling tech throughout the years. For desktop cooling, it is as simple as having more surface area, radiator or heatsink. You can also effectively have a larger surface area there's a faster flow of air using faster, louder fans. For your question, having a large radiator beats a smaller air solution.These days though, it doesn't mean much anymore as Intel CPUs are focused on lower TDP's.
AIO coolers should focus their money and energy now on GPUs as it still has huge cooling requirements.