Cooler Master Seidon 240M & 120 XL Liquid Coolers Unboxing & Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
2,042 words · ~10 min read
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for a limited time only buy an Intel Core I5 or core i7 CPU and get a free
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3-month subscription to iracing.com available from participating retailers
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click the link in the video description for more details welcome to a long
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overdue unboxing of Cooler Master siden 120 XL and siden
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240m liquid coolers now the first thing I noticed about these is check this out
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Cooler Master has gone ahead and put compatibility for LGA 1150 right on the
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box now it should be noted that LGA 1150
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which is for Haswell or Intel Core i7 i5
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and I3 fourth generation processors is
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not really going to be any different from 1155 or 1156 in terms of heat SN
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compatibility but I mean it's just one of those things where it's always it
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always amuses me when there are coolers being announced and being shipped that
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have compatibility for an upcoming socket when you actually can't buy said
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socket yet so the main difference
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between these two coolers is going to be in terms of the size which is a little
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bit funny to me because the 120 is the
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XL and the 240 is the m which in terms of North American sizing usually
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indicates extra large and medium whereas the 240 mm one is definitely extra
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larger than the mediumsized 120 mm one
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so let's go ahead and check out what cooler Master's done in terms of
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packaging here so these are liquid Co these are pre-done liquid coolers so
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actually okay fine we'll start with the outside so they are maintenance free
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they're designed for overclocking they use an ultra fine microchannel design
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for the CPU block itself now what you're going to see right here guys is that
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this is not an acch and it is not a
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kolet design so Cooler Master has wanted to differentiate themselves from what
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the other guys in the market are doing and they have done that by well not
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doing what everyone else in the market is doing which is sort of one way to
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differentiate yourself from what everyone else is doing on the back you
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find I'll to find my mic channel so pretty much the same a hot durable and
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Powerful water pump dissipates heat effectively and maintains temperatures
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throughout the stable water circulation all that kind of good stuff okay so
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let's go ahead and start with the 120 in terms of what's inside we've got some
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foam on the top we've got mounting hardware which we will be unfamiliar
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with because it is not the standard acch or kolet mounting hardware so let's go
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ahead and see what we got here oh I love this nice solid pieces of everything see
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see solid steel mounting plate so there's your AMD mounting hardware at
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any rate all right there is your Intel mounting hardware so you can see that
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screw is able to adjust in position see
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moves over clicks into place just like that you've got a back plate for Intel
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so this pops into uh different positions as well so it has full compatibility for
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775 1155 1156 1150 2,1 1366 all the
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sockets you could possibly want an AMD because they haven't changed their
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mounting hardware in like a bajil Generations is pretty much the same as
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before same thing here nice solid mounting screws these ones look like
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they're for LGA oh oh they could be for
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a number of different things but okay there you go again more solid pieces
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here so it looks like the way it mounts is the back plate comes through the
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board goes into one of these guys and then the cooler itself mounts to that
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piece from the other side from the top I like this system there's a number of
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different coolers that have used it in the past and I find it very solid very
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sturdy and works very very well they've also included a splitter for the two
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fans so there's a pwm splitter which is awesome because it means that you can
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provide pwm control for both of the fans without actually or yeah without
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actually um having to run one of them off of DC and I mean honestly a lot of
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motherboards might have all the pwm fan connectors in the world on them but it
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doesn't always work correctly uh so
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there there you go it's nice to be able to split the CPU on a lot of the time
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they aren't uh controllable to with the same degree of
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finitude as the one for the CPU connector is so this is a nice touch
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Cooler Master includes a couple of 120 mm fans and they also include a couple
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of nice rubber isolating mounts for them
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so you don't have to worry about any vibrations being transferred to your
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case and causing your computer to be louder than necessary all right these
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are intended to be installed in a push pull configuration cuz if you set them
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both to push or both to pull you're going to have yourself one heck of a
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problem this radiator is optimized for
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um sort of I guess I'd go sort of mid-range in terms of do you have to
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have high RPM do you have to can you get away with low RPM because the fin
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spacing isn't particularly dense which is great for low RPM quiet operation but
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it is a thicker radiator than you find on most 120 mm coolers meaning you'll
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get a little bit more performance out of it but you also have to have a little
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bit more static pressure to the fans in order to draw the air that you need
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through it you can see how Cooler Master fills their water cooler so there's a
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little warranty void if removed plug right there that shouldn't get in the
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way of anything because once you go ahead and install a fan on it it's not
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really any higher profile than a fan would be and they're using a/4 in
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corrugated plastic tubing approach that has been in use for well years now on
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these pre-filled liquid coolers and there haven't really been any notable
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problems with them there's also a rotating uh fitting right here so you're
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going to have the flexibility to mount it either sort of this way facing down
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or if you rotate those like
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that this way facing up just like that
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it uses aluminum fins for the radiator itself but there are copper tubes as
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well as copper tanks and a copper bottom for the block itself you can see they're
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using a security bit here I actually have one of these so I could take it apart if I felt like it but they're
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using a security bit to prevent users from taking apart the unit which is not
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what it is intended for it is meant to be maintenance free and not opened up or
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anything sort of bad like that all right so let's have a look at the 240 mm
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version we've got two of the same fans uh it looks like the noise isolating
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rubber mounts are not included at least on the fans themselves uh yes here they
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are so those are included instead in a
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very heavy I love heavy mounting hardware it makes me just feel that much
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more reassured about it so there are a couple of them in with the rest of the
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mounting hardware where there's thermal compound just like the 120 mm version a
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fan splitter just like the 120 mm version and then just more of the same
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mounting hardware so this is for um
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instead of having it in two separate bags it looks like they've done just one
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bag for the 240 mil version the radiator itself is a thinner
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style radiator so you're going to see this one is I'd say mid thickness for
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the 120 mil and then this is more like standard thickness and then there are
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some that are actually larger and thicker than this one but those are
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those are much more rare than these ones and that's for compatibility reasons not
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all cases are compatible with the thicker style radiators this one in
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order to make sure that it gets the performance it needs uses a much more
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dense fin Arrangement right here so you can see that it's all about surface area
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guys so if you have a thicker radiator
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and you use a less dense fin Arrangement versus versus if you have a thinner
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radiator and you use a more dense thin Arrangement what you've done is you've
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actually in both cases increased the resistance to air passing through but
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also increased your surface area and improved performance so generally
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speaking the less dense the more optimized it is for low RPM fans and the
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thinner it is the more optimized it is for low RPM fans whereas if you were to
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put even double the density in here and put like you know jet turbine fans on it
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you could squeeze more performance out of this form factor because surface area
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is King and that's why the 120 dual 120
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mm version will perform better than the single 120 mm version so you've got that
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same fill Point here at the top that says do not tamper with or remove please
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don't do that same corrugated plastic quarter inch fittings or hoses as well
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as the same rotating fittings down here at the bottom attached to the same block
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and pump combo this is why I did these unboxings together we've got a copper
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plate at the bottom that looks looks flat anyway it's hard to oh no it's
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bowed there you go I wonder if the other one is as well you can tell if you look
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at them in the light just right yep they're both bowed so what that does is it increases contact pressure and
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reduces temperatures uh as long as you design a mounting mechanism that's
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correctly sort of optimized for it so if you have a CPU here and then you have a
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bow so this is flat and this is Bowe and you have a bow surface and then you
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clamp it down what can happen is you can end up with two flat mating surfaces
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whereas if you take two flat mating surfaces and you clamp this down a lot at the edges you can end up with a C it
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in the middle we discovered this or must have been back in around 2008 2009 dtec
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figured it out with their Bode block that they were putting O-rings in in
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order to to bow out the base of it and get a tighter mounting point so there's
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a little water cooling history lesson for you Cooler Master is using a very
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high quality sleeving on the connector so the pump is powered by a three pin
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that you really can't see any of the color of the wires inside I like this it's a nice touch makes your build look
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nice and they include of course detailed
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instructions cooler Master's been doing liquid coolers for and just coolers in
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general for a long time so I wouldn't expect anything
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except nice detailed multilingual
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instructions for every possible socket and everything labeled and all those
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sort of good things done it looks like the same instructions for the 120 or the
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240 mm don't forget to subscribe to lus Tech tips for more unboxings reviews and
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other computer videos and thank you for checking out my video on the seiden 120m
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and the or see I did it there the siden 12 XL and theid in 240 m