Zalman LQ315 Pre-Filled Liquid Cooler Unboxing & Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,034 words · ~5 min read
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This video is brought to you by CM Storm, preferred choice of mice,
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headsets, and mechanical keyboards of Curse Gaming. Visit
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www.coolermaster-usea.com/team_curse for more details. Welcome to my unboxing and
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first look at the LQ315 from Zulman.
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This is an all-in-one liquid cooler with a built-in pump with a slim water block,
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a copper base, and micro fins to maximize cooling performance. And I'm
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going to turn it into like a like a song.
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Welcome to an unboxing where we do lots of cool things like opening things with
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knives and we Okay, that was about as far as I got with that. So, let's just
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go ahead and open this bad boy up. So, this is a single 120 mm radiator liquid
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cooler. It's based on an asetch design, which means that there shouldn't be any
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huge surprises in terms of the mounting mechanism or the overall build quality.
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I think these LCLC sort of generation 1,
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two, three, what are we up to like four generations now? designs have been out
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there in the wild enough that if there were any kinds of mass failures, we'd
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know about them already. Uses durable and long-asting tubes. An additional 120
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mm fan can be installed and uses an environmentally friendly anti-corrosion
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coolant. Oh, that's kind of good to know. There's also a blue LED included
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in the water block itself, which is not true of the 310, which is the lower-end
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version of this particular cooler. And the other thing that's not true of the
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310 is the fact that the 315 uses a
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thicker style radiator. So, one of the things that Zulman's done to set their
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cooler apart from the other sort of asetch based designs out there is
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they've added like a faux aluminum finish to the side here. That's kind of
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that brushed plastic finish that I always talk about because I think it's
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freaking awesome because it doesn't attract fingerprints and stains the way
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that aluminum does, but it actually looks kind of like aluminum and it has
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sort of a premium look to it that you don't get with other more different um
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with other more different radiators. They've also changed the way the
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threading is done on the shroud itself. So, if you look at that, they've
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actually got brass inlaid threads rather than using just a simple
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um tapped thread through a metal piece
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here. So, this is partly because this is a plastic shroud. So, you wouldn't want
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to thread plastic in order to mount a a fan to something, but I think this
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should actually be more durable overall anyway, and it'll be less of a problem
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if you accidentally screw something up and strip it. So, that's uh that's a
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nice little touch to see as well. The pre-attached tubes are one quarter inch
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and they run to again a very sharp looking. So, it's a better looking
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pre-lquid uh pre-done liquid cooler than what we've seen in the past. So, it's a
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better looking CPU block unit there with a nice shiny Z on top and there is a
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blue LED inside there that illuminates. The block pump unit is powered by a
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three pin uh by a three pin fan connector that uses black wires so it's
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not going to look out of place in your well done little build. And last but not
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least, well second last, also not least, we have the mounting hardware. So this
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is the standard fair that you see for these asetch units. It's got the updated
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one that allows you to use one piece as a hold down, another piece to hold the
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hold down hold held in place, and then you actually use little plastic clips,
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stick them through here, stick the screws through there, and you can mount it to pretty much any socket you want,
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including LGA 2011. Now, another thing that they've changed that they've
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included is almond fans. Belman fans have been, in my experience, some of the
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better ones out there as far as the overall build quality goes. They undervolt very well. This one right here
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calls itself an ultra quiet CPU cooler. So, I'd probably believe it. This one
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has a bit of a unique design because you can see that only one side actually has
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a square fan mount on it and the other side is just rounded here. So, the only
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challenge that I would foresee with a product like this is it limits your
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options in terms of fan mounting a little bit. So, you're going to either be able to use it in push at the back of
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your case, mounting the radiator directly to the back of the case, or if
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you don't have clearance at the back of the case because of the tank, you're going to have to mount it in push, which
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is the other option you have. So, there's push from one direction or push from the other direction. And no, wait,
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no, you won't be able to do that. Oh, yeah. That won't work at all because
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you'll have to use a Oh, no. They do have they do have what
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you'd need, but it'd be a bit of a weird orientation because um like you'd have
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this against the case, then you'd have to go through the case, through here
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into the radiator in order to get it mounted. So, I would have preferred if
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they'd included a fan that does have both sides, but it's probably not the
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end of the world. And usually I replace the fans on these things anyway with
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something like a uh with something like a Noctua fan, for example. Don't forget
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to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos. And I sure hope you enjoyed this
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one.