NZXT Kraken X60 CPU Water Cooler Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,019 words · ~10 min read
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welcome to my unboxing and first look now we've already looked at the Kraken
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x40 this is the Kraken x60 from ncxt
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this is an all-in-one liquid cooler that uses
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dual 140 that's 140 mm fans in order to
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achieve massive surface area now I've
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said this time and time again people always ask me lonus you know which one's
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going to perform better this water cooler or some other water cooler or
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this air cooler or you know what guys it's really simple with cooling it
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always comes down pretty much to surface
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area that's that's all it is cooling is not sort of it's It's Newtonian physics
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it's not complicated stuff the more surface area you have the more heat
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you're going to be able to dissipate the more quickly you're going to be able to
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do it and you can see that NZXT has
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unabashedly compared their Kraken x62 a
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standard 240 mm liquid cooler so that would be a dual 120 saying it has 36%
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more surface area now not only that but that's also going to give you more than
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36% more usable surface area because
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remember both that 120 mil version and the 140 mil version lose the same amount
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of area in Dead Space under the fan hubs for example or in any any other kind of
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of wasted space so you're getting that that with that scalability comes even
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more usable area now the drawback being that most 140 mm fans are not actually
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very well optimized for static pressure now we do have fans that are the
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exception to this rule such as the naua a series ones that we're going to be
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using to test the Kraken x40 or rather x60 but it's something to be aware of in
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General so here let's cover whatever else NZXT has to say for themselves
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really quickly here so high performance pump and copper block with interactive digital fan control so it does come with
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a software element that allows you to sort of take advantage of that large
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Tower support with extended 16inch tubing ah yes so case support is going
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to be a bit of a challenge here because there's only so much you can do to uh to
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optimize for compatibility with various cases when you have two 140 MIM fans
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that have to be at a particular spacing and are going to need a particular
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amount of room between themselves and any other components in order to be
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compatible so you can see NZXT includes a couple of their black and white fans I
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don't know that this is a you know particularly High Press design here's
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the Kracken controller version 1.1 software you can download the latest off
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the NZXT website but you can like I said
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replace them with NOC toas and then you'll know for sure that you have a
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pressure optimized design mounting hardware there is very much included in
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indeed so we have everything you'll need for Intel and AMD for the last few
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generations of sockets everything from 775 1155 1156 1366 2011 am2 am2 plus am3
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plus am4 plus I don't know fm2 plus everything that you could pretty much
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want you've also got instruction guide that pretty much tells you what to do if
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you go on NZXT site they're actually maintaining sort of a Wiki style um
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article where you can find out which cases are compatible so there aren't
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many right now but we're planning to jam
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this thing into a Vengeance C70 with a little bit of modifications so that
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should be uh that should be a bit of a treat there you guys now opening up the
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cracking itself you can see that it is significantly larger than the types of
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Radiators we've seen before in fact let me grab one so that I can do a direct
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comparison here and I found one so
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holding it up next to sort of my old beat up you know this is actually the
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first water cooling radiator I ever bought this is a GT stealth 240 um so
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holding it up against that it's all fine and good to show you guys this in terms
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of Graphics but when you actually hold them up next to each other you can see
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that the sheer scale of the Dual 140 mm
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radiator dwarfs the scale of a dual 120
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mm RoR not rad radiator not only in
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terms of length but also in terms of width and just sort of in every possible
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Dimension now the one area where the crack x60 is not sort of bigger than
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normal is in terms of the thickness so this is a normal slim radiator which
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means it's going to be competitive with something like an h100i surface area for surface area kind
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of pound forp pound it is not a thicker style radiator like we've seen with
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things like the H now another thing to note here is when we get really close
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and have a look at it I want you guys to check out the fin density this isn't a
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hyper dense sort of radiator but it's also not very loose I'd say it's more
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like a medium fin density that means that while it is again always important
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on a radiator to have a high pressure optimized fan it's not going to be the
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end of the world if you don't have the highest pressure fan in the world on
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this particular rad there we go giving you guys a good look at that can kind of
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see through it see look there's my hand on the other side ah you can't see it I
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have to hold the angle just right okay let's see if we've missed anything that
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NZXT has to say for themselves on the box before we move ahead I will be
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testing this on our new liquid cooling and just general Cooling and general
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sort of uh test platform large Tower
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support yeah because that's the only thing it supports with 16 in of tubing
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SATA power connector for easy installation completely sealed system backed by a 2-year warranty and all that
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is pretty much stuff that we've covered before they also have a little graph on
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here that shows you how they figure the performance Stacks up against its 120 mm
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competitor so we will definitely be having a closer look at this on our own
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test bench because as interesting as it is for the manufact facturers to say
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this is how our product Compares against the other things you know they're all
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using different fans they're all using different test platforms they're all
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potentially using different CPUs so it's hard to get the numbers validated so
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we're going to check with our 3930k overclocked with knock to a fans
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in a C70 and we're probably going to have to drill some holes in the case to
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get this to fit which is sort of you guys better get used to that idea because dual 140 mm red plus 140 mm fans
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it's a lot of stuff so the ual CPU block itself has uh swivel fittings on it
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which I'm really glad has become a bit of a standard thing and what's great
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about that is just the fact that it makes installation easier so no matter
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what angle your CPU Cooler is installed at you're going to be able to rotate the
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fittings to get to where you need to go it's got pre-applied thermal compound
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this is a highquality thermal compound that acitech uses that's right acch if
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you guys have seen this ring retention design before or you think you've seen
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it for then you'll know why and it's because it's used by uh by acitech so
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the original lclc has come a long way in
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a lot of different ways these swivel fittings are new from the original
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design these led lit logos on the top are new from the original design the
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retention mechanism is way better than it used to be so guys instead of like
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kind of fussing around with it and trying to hold it in place you just put
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this on then you actually put this clip into place and it holds it actually hold
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on F actually I'm not sure if it works with the AMD one but at any rate it
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works with the Intel one for sure so here we go so you put this piece on
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there we go there we go put that there
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then this guy goes here or something like that you know what I'm better
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figure out how this works because I did it before now I'm confused I'll be back
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go on
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top how the hell does this work
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I used to know this is
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pathetic no I think I was doing it right
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metal grabs go yeah yeah those go in
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there and then this
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piece like Clips in or something that's too big though is it oh maybe not
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no yeah see it's
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right okay there we go
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and we're back yes I had it right before that is exactly how it works so the
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bottom piece clips into place which holds that top retention bracket into
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place so that you no longer have to fight with it while you're holding on a
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back plate and while you're trying to screw something into it so it's a lot easier to use than before also the
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tubing being used here is extremely flexible so the original designs had
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like kind of a plastic tubing that actually couldn't bend like this and
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wasn't as easy to work with it put a lot more strain on the components but this
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is nice and soft and and pliable uh last
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but not least the connectors that come off of it are now plentiful so you can
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see there's a USB connector and it is extremely beautifully sleeved so I don't
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know how well you guys are going to be able to see this in the camera here probably really well since we're using
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our awesome baller camera setup but that is actually what allows it to interface
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with the USB port on your computer which is what allows you to use the software
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control next we've got the power input
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or rather one of the power inputs so that's for the pump itself then we've
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got a SATA power connector which acts as an auxiliary power connector and that
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right there is connected to four fan
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headers so those are four four pin fan headers that you can use to plug up to
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four fans in push pull into the pump
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itself so that allows you to Monitor and control those fans the same way that you
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normally would except that they're all like if they were plugged into your
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motherboard header except that they're all controlled through the software and they're all plugged in through the
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Kraken x60 itself so I think that pretty much wraps this up follow up guys make
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sure you're subscribed so that you'll see the performance testing and don't
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forget to well subscribe to it see this is my standard outro so now that I
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already told you to subscribe I've totally ruined it but don't forget to subscribe Fest Tech tips for more
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unboxings reviews and other computer videos can you see through it can you
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see through
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it I think think we're done here