NZXT Kraken X40 140mm CPU Liquid Cooler Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,446 words · ~7 min read
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welcome to Linus Tech tips today's unboxing is going to be extremely
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Hightech yes we have two cameras and one of them isn't on a tripod see slick give
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it a little do it a little dance yeah thanks okay that's enough uh so slick is
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going to be on the One camera with diesel on the other camera and we are going to be unboxing the Kraken x40 from
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NZXT this is the world's first all-in-one 100 140 mm liquid cooler and
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that gives it a huge surface area advantage over its competition which is
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generally using 120 mm or some derivative thereof such as dual 120 mm
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now there's an x60 as well but this version right here is the one that's
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going to fit in the widest variety of cases because let me tell you guys a
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dual 140 mm radiator is not going to fit
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in too many cases however when it does once again due to the huge surface area
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advant AG it has over a dual 120 we are
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going to see some serious performance improvements now I've been saying for a
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long time basically since they showed up that these all-in-one liquid coolers are
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limited not by the pump not by the water block design but by the surface area of
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the radiator so something like a Corsair h100 addressed that in a big way
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compared to its predecessors but this should be the next evolutionary step
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forward so in terms of packaging we've got an environmentally friendly
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cardboard package here we have a simple instruction manual with a disc that you
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may actually want to install I don't know version 1.1 see if there's a newer
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one on nxt's website here I mean if you haven't installed an acitech Allin one
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before then this will be new to you if you have then you've been doing this for
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years because the OEM for this particular unit is acitech NZXT includes
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their fan design so you can see here it's a nine blade fan design that looks
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fairly well optimized for static pressure but it's hard to say without
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proper testing equipment there you go it has black sleeving on it which of course
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diesel will have super in Focus so it looks super awesome high quality
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sleeving on this guy look at that that's outstanding and black wires inside with
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nice tight sheat shrink so that's going to look just just stunning
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actually Hardware wise we've got all the
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mounting kit that you could possibly need for everything from 775 to AMD am3
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fm1 fm2 1156 13 66 and finally 2011 so
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you can mount this bad boy on pretty much anything that you could possibly
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want to now on the box itself you can see they've just got a simple picture
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they've got their 2-year warranty called out so uh it's not the longest warranty
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ever but honestly guys AC's been making these all-in-one liquid coolers for a
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long time so they pretty much know what's up at this point they're saying
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36% more surface area now that should
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equate this isn't probably not even quite right guys cuz remember the Hub of
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a fan is actually the same size whether you're looking at a 140 mm or 120 mm fan
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so we're getting more actual blade airflow going through the thing area
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than just the actual 36% Improvement so
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larger surface area blah blah blah something something here's some noise in
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decb compared to whatever else they're comparing to there's some general specs
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so the motor speed runs at 2900 RPM voltage is 12vt okay okay material
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rubber blah blah blah blah blah completely sealed ah yes people still
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ask me this they're completely sealed they're maintenance-free these all-in-one liquid coolers so it's all
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good let's go ahead and have a close look at the radiator itself so here we
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are taking out of the box wow look at this this comes with a really long uh
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tubing on it all right oh look at these
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look at the sleeving on this that's outstanding this is what I love ncxt
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does a really good job actually of all the stuff that they use their own
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sleeving procedures on so so uh there's a couple things there's their extension
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cables there's their fans and now there's they're all in one liquid cooler
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units look at that all black wires all beautifully sleeved cables so what do we
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have coming out of here number one is USB so you can use this to control the
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software so the Kraken series does come with Control software it's not 100%
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mature yet but in time that should improve got a nice long USB cable here
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so what I would expect to do with this is I would be mounting it in my case
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like this then I would go up around the back of the motherboard tray looks like
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you got enough length to come right under the bottom of the motherboard or
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you could even go off to the right see
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with the NZXT logo being on the right there go behind the motherboard there
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and then come up the bottom so that's what I do in terms of cable routing here
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we've got RPM monitoring actually no that might that's uh that's power so
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power is going to go to your CPU fan header right here you're going to want to leave your CPU fan header on Full
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Speed guys and then you're going to plug in
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your What in theck heck is this one
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moment please oh yeah that won't work because
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we're doing live to tape okay I figured it out anyway so you can do push pull
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natively off of the cooler itself but one of them is missing the RPM
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monitoring lead so that that makes sense but yeah that that was awkward okay so
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let's have a close look at the unit itself just going to go ahead and switch
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to Diesel's camera the bottom has a highquality thermal compound on the
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copper base and then the same ACAC uh mounting mechanism that we've
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seen before the logo here does illuminate so that should look really
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good in your case and the tubing as I said is quite long now this is still 1/4
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inch tubing however I'm not convinced that with these all in ones it's going
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to make that much of a difference in terms of performance and when I compare
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this to what I've seen from the h80i and the h100i the tubing is much more
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flexible when you have a nice thick wall and you keep a 1/4 in tubing versus a 38
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inch tubing like I said before I don't think we're block or pump or flow
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limited I think we're surface area limited with these things it's not like
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an H AI performs better than an h100 eye because of the fact that it just has
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thicker tubing it doesn't work that way more surface area equals more better so
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speaking of surface area the radiator itself uses quite a dense fin array so
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you can actually get right in close there presumably since Diesel's taken
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care of all that and you can see that the more pressure you use on the fan for
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this guy this will really benefit from a push pull setup and it'll also benefit
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from pressure optimized fans such as nocta NF a14s those would be a really
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good choice for this rad I think that pretty much takes care of it other than
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that we've just got the uh slightly rotatable uh fittings here so you're
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going to have a lot of flexibility in terms of mounting and also the fact that
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because it can be sort of positioned at the back of your case here and then you
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can maneuver this almost anywhere without kinking it you have a lot of
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flexibility in terms of your installation so thank you for checking out my unboxing and First Look in our
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new style of the Kraken x40 don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech tips for more
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