Phobya Balancer 150 Gold Plated Water Cooling Reservoir Unboxing Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,220 words · ~6 min read
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welcome to my unboxing and first look at the phobia balancer 150 goldplated
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Edition it comes with a three-year warranty which unlike most cooling
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products where I don't kind of go oh okay it has a three-year warranty it's a
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heat sink what could possibly go wrong um water cooling components I do
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appreciate seeing a bit of a longer warranty on because they can leak over
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time and they can have problems so having the manufacturer stand behind it
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holy crap this thing is heavy I already love it um is a good thing
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so okay see what else is in here we got some mounting hardware we got some sort
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of some uh G14 inch threaded plugs did I
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say G14 inch I think it's just G14 I can't remember anymore do you want
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quarter inch yeah look at that I'm not that out of the game mounting threads
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four time M4 2 * M6 usable for installation pressure tested to two bar
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and made of goldplated brass and Plexi yes that is what I excited about about
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the 150 this is a fairly small radiator
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radiator Reservoir but check this out it actually has goldplated
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brass there you go on the bottom and the
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top of the tube so 150 refers to the
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actual length of the reservoir so it's available in a variety of configurations
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you can get I believe it's a 250 or even a 400 mm so in inches that'd be
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approximately 6 12 and like 20 in or
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something 18 in or something along those lines um included accessories so here
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you go you've got plugs because there are a variety of different options in
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terms of the uh fill Port as well as the
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inlet and Outlet so you're going to plug the top no matter what so you'll open
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that up just to fill it and then on the bottom you can either go in and out here
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and then you can plug these two on the bottom or you can go in and out on the
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bottom and you can plug the two on the top so you're going to have to provide your own FS for the rest of the holes
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which is just two additional ones and I would definitely recommend getting some
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goldplated fittings to go with this thing because that would be pretty
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awesome now inside you can see that
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there's actually a baffle included it's a thick piece of plexia it's nice it's
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actually quite clear hopefully you can see that um so there's a baffle included
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so as the water comes in one side uh you
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can get air bubbles that'll just get sucked right into like so it'll come in
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here and there will be air bubbles and then it'll get sucked right back out the other side so the air never settles in
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the reservoir putting in a baffle like this prevents that from happening
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because it means that the water has to go up and around giving the bubbles time
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to escape and go up to the top of the res uh rather than just being like like
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this also having it extend up like this with these holes prevents the tornado
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effect which can cause air to be sucked in as well so that was a problem with
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older reses particularly coming in from the bottom here as opposed to the bottom
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here where would cause a Vortex inside to make an air pocket that would travel
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down to the bottom and get sucked up so that is all taken care of and the
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threads on here are pretty heavy duty as well actually here you can see the Rubber seal
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here and basically why would you want a product like this well if you have a
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custom water cooling Loop sorry I'm just going to tighten this up if you have a
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custom water cooling Loop then you're going to need a reservoir of some sort
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anyway and personally I'm not a huge fan of bay reservoirs they have a lot of
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points of failure that's what I don't like about them they have a lot of different places where the acrylic or
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Plexi is typically glued which makes me kind of uncomfortable because over time
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Plexi cracks especially if you use UV lighting especially if it's subject to
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heat especially if this and that and that and that and all these things so
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those glue joints can crack there's only a couple reservoirs that really have a
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good reputation for reliability that are made of glued Plexi things like the MC
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res micro from swifttech whereas most of the bay reses out there have huge
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problems with breakages over time so I like a solid piece of acrylic with
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rubber seals at either end so I like cylinder reses and that's where was I
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going with this right you'll need a reservoir anyway so you might as well if
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you can't use a bay you might as well use something that you can show off and
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you can have people look at so one of the other ones I like is the t- virus
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and uh if I wasn't going to do that if I was say for example doing a gold themed
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build then something like this might be a pretty good option don't forget to
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subscribe to lineus Tech tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer
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videos and I mistakenly
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ordered an additional hold down bracket for this thinking that it didn't come
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with a high quality one but it does so right oh yeah I should probably mention
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that it comes with an extremely robust mounting bracket check that out so
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there's foam inside to prevent it from being scratched and uh here let's just
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put it on or well no okay I'll show the foam first so foam inside to prevent it
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from being scratched or anything bad from happening to it very solid
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construction here so you can screw it in with either three or two mounting spots
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here I would probably use these two because it these two don't look that
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useful there's probably instructions actually there
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aren't really oh okay well you'll figure it out here's the mounting
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screws um I'd probably go with these two on the uh on the ends here if I was
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going to do anything so you just kind of oh you're going to have to stretch it
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this was what bugs me about uh cylinder reservoirs you have to just kind of go
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like this with them and clip them in and I always worry about scratching the uh I
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worry about scratching the tube but I guess I could just kind of man up you
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know what I'm not going to do it I'll do it when I have all the tools that I can
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do it without scratching it okay don't forget to subscribe to Li Tech tips from
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