The EKWB EK-XLC Predator 240 Liquid Cooler Review
by E. Fylladitakis on December 15, 2015 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- AIO
- Water Cooling
- Liquid Cooling
- EKWB
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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thestryker - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link
I greatly appreciate the review on this, and it seems to match what I've seen in other places so that's always good. Going over the little pieces is what I've come to appreciate most about AT reviews. Talking about pump noise is also helpful as it seems like the asetek/coolit ones all seem to have issues here.For me at least this cooler is worth it simply to not give money to asetek. It would be nice if AnandTech could do a quick writeup or something on which AIOs are using the asetek design, and in turn giving them license money. The patent they've been allowed to use as a weapon is pretty absurd and has put us in a sad state for AIO development.
iamkyle - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link
The use of a DDC was an interesting choice...Kid98 - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link
Every 3dB's is a doubling of power....Kid
DanNeely - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link
Good catch.While we're nitpicking the dB discussion though, the human ear has a log response curve; 10 dB is only heard as roughly twice as loud so the 12.3dB spread between the best and worst coolers is only a bit more than twice as loud even though the sound is roughly 17 times as intense.
Valkyrierie - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link
The third fan header is meant to be used in EK-XLC Predator 360.EK-XLC 240 and 360 share the same power board despite 360 having an additional 120mm fan - Most likely, they stuck to one single board for both units to cut costs.
initialised - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link
No mention of the DDC pump or it's specs, power consumption, flow rate...wolfemane - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link
I don't think power is really all that important with this kit. I'm currently using a koolance 450s running at settings for 26w @ 12v roughly doing 3.2gpm with my custom build. I did before and after power draw checks with an at wall kill-o-watt (I know it's not accurate, but it gives a general feel of whT your pulling) and I only saw a power increase of about 15w. Give or take a few watts. Flow rate is a little higher in use as well but not by much. So unless your really desperate to save on power due to over taxing a low end psu, the power draw of the pump/fans is going to be minimal on an AIO kit like this.And since the pump isn't an adjustable pump why would flow matter? It's traveling over one surface with a fairly large rad, as long as the kit is designed with decent flow and the chip is cooling, why worry about this uncontrollable spec?
With these AIO kits I'd be more concerned with how its performance stands up to competition in regards to actual cooling and noise. Power, flow, pump specs just seem irrelevant. If this was a custom built system then I could see more attention needed for these areas.
I thought it was a great review, I love EKWB and have used them since early Athlon. Nice to see a semi modifiable AIO from them. I even think the price fits the possibility seeing how there is an option for customization compared to other AIOs.
DanNeely - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link
I'm surprised the pump's not adjustable. I can adjust my swiftech branded DDC pump using the mobo's fan controller software; it's a bit annoying since it's RPM curve isn't linear; but I was able to tune it to run at ~2/3rds speed (at most 1 or 2 C hotter temps but much quieter operation).londiste - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link
https://shop.ekwb.com/ek-xlc-predator-240Pump type: Laing DDC3.1 6W
that is specific enough to find the rest of the specs.
wolfemane - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link
Where can we get a set of anandtech labeled tools? Would love to add those to my tech tool box!!