NZXT Kraken X41 & X61 Liquid Coolers
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,309 words · ~6 min read
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is there any room left to innovate on these pre-filled all-in-one liquid
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coolers that have taken the market by storm since the release of the acch lclc
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almost 7 years ago NZXT hopes so and
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here are their latest entrance into this crowded category the Krakens x41 and
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x61 with its Factory tuning and data center DNA an Intel 730 series SSD is an
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amazing choice for gamers and performance enthusiasts so let's start
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with a quick overview of the similarities between these two they both
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feature copper blocks with high quality thermal compound pre-applied sleeved
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power in and pwm compatible power passrs
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for enough fans to handle Push Pull configurations on either of the units
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they also both feature an integrated variable speed pump a key Improvement in
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build quality that will help reduce the noise of the unit compared to other
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Solutions and they both feature Quin Flex ible nonporous tubing to keep them
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running smoothly throughout their 6-year warranty period I guess finally they
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both come with NC's tragically not fully square but
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otherwise pretty darn good FX series 140 mm cooling fans on to the part where
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they differ the radiator the x61 doesn't
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change much compared to the x60 and still has a slim style dual 140 mm Rad
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but the x41 got a very significant upgrade to its thickness that should
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make it perform pretty similarly to a dual 120 mm slim red but with great
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compatibility since it'll fit in pretty much any case that has a rear 140 mm
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cooling fan spot really interested to see how that one turns out other than
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that in the Box we've got the usual acitech mounting hardware the Intel
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flavor of which is pre-applied with AMD stuff included in the box but that's
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about it for the physicality of these coolers so let's move on to software
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nxt's cam software was a bit of a mixed bag for me when I first installed the
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beta and it remains a bit of a mixed bag for me now that I'm using a non beta
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it's all right I guess if you're looking for rudimentary system information but
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it doesn't really do anything that something else doesn't already do better
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there are two main tabs right now basic and manage with NZXT intending to add
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more functionality in the future basic is available on any system and gives you
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some rudimentary information about your system some of it is useful like RAM
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usage or temperature tracking over various periods of time and notific if
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any of those monitored parameters exceed a predefined limit but it just still
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feels like it needs some work the feature that should show me the biggest
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RAM hogs on my system for example didn't really align with task manager uh CPU
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frequency detection seems to be a little bit off compared to CPU Z the advanced
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views charts don't work that well on my hardware and the way it expands and
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contracts just feels a little bit clunky but the manage view only available with
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supported Hardware like the new Krakens and grid Plus is where things start to
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get interesting I will leave that to Luke though once you actually hook up
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your Kraken you'll be able to enable it under the manage button in the bottom
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right hand corner and that's when I actually get into things in this
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software that I do really like you can monitor your pump speed you monitor the
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temperatures of both your CPU and your GPU and you can monitor the fan speeds
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of your entire computer which is pretty fantastic although in our kind of setup
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not everything works 100% the main thing is that the LED control doesn't really
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work very well at all although that's probably to do with the fact that these
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are pre-production units and I have talked to NZXT and they've told me that
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these should work by the time you guys get them and if they don't their support
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will be there ready to help you right away you can also do stuff like set different fan profiles which is pretty
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bog standard and you can see the liquid temperature of your unit which is pretty
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cool and this is actually what pump speed is based on this isn't a custom
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controled pump speed you can't set it but it will change depending on how hot
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the liquid is so if your computer is running very slowly you're not doing a
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ton of different things and the liquid temperature isn't very high the pump
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speed will be low and the second you start doing something very intensive the
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pump speed will go up next up we have the graphs which I actually found to
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have no problems with even with our very pre-production setup and the graphs are
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pretty cool and it's nice to have all this information logged although having
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all the settings all the way up to a year is great but I not a huge fan of
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the fact that they don't have anything under an hour I like just seeing like a 5minute graph and maybe a half an hour
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graph cuz sometimes I'm just working on things for a very short period of time so hope they Implement that in the
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future but it's not a huge deal on the notification side of things which is
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kind of the last thing in this side of the software it shows you a ton of
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details a little bit too much for myself I don't necessarily need a log of every
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single time I've plugged in and unplugged a USB device but it's highly
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customizable and you can set it to exactly what you want so if this was my unit I would just turn those
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notifications off and keep other notifications on like when it warned me
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that Prime 95 was running because it was using way too much my CPU that's kind of
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nice to know if there's something in the background that's fing a whole bunch of my system resources and it's going to
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tell me about that that's kind of cool the x61 did quite well beating out the
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nhd15 in our testing and the x41 did
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well beating out the h100i this is not
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super surprising as these are both 140 mm coolers and the x41 particularly got
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a thickness boost in this iteration of its product it's pretty impressive in a
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lot of cases these days are coming with 140 mm so millim fan slot so I'm not
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super surprised that this is starting to happen but it is quite interesting to
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see the software definitely still needs some work but having RGB control on your
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cooler is pretty cool that's a major selling point for me we see a lot of
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color themed builds now you want your build to look good and this can
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potentially make it look good by having a color themed block are you guys
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interested in this tell me in the comments below comment on the Forum as well like dislike the video subscribe to
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this Channel and every other channel we have like Techquickie and channel super
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fun uh comment on the Forum if I already said that subscribe on the Forum because
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you can get rid of all the advertisements and buy a shirt don't
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think this one's for sale yet or will be but yeah buy a shirt thanks for watching
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I'll see you guys next time