Antec-H20 920 Liquid CPU Cooler Review
If you don't need extreme water cooling, these types of coolers are definitely the way to go in terms of noise and ease of installation. Now Antec has thrown their hat into the cooling world and one of their first offerings was the Kuhler H20 620. Now they have released the Kuhler H20 920. The Kuhler H2O 920 has a thicker radiator, dual fans, and is adjusted via software Antec calls Chill Control. Now if the Kuhler H20 920 looks familiar to you’re not crazy. It’s a team effort between Antec and Asetek, just like the H50/H70 was for Corsair and Asetek, but this last year Corsair moved away from Asetek to went to another company called CoolIt Systems for their Hydro series water coolers.
Today's testing will occur a little bit differently than usual. The test bed still consists of the GIGABYTE X58-Extreme motherboard, six gigabytes of Corsair DDR3 RAM and the Intel Core i7 920.
Since the introduction of the CoolIT Eco and Corsair H50, this market has seen much drama and the emergence of a wide new range of ALC units. CoolIT went back to being an OEM and Corsair began to source their new designs from their former competitor CoolIT over Asetek, another established ALC manufacturer. The void left by Corsair was quickly filled by Antec who saw this as a perfect opportunity to enter a new market and as such the KÜHLER H2O series was born. There are currently two units forming part of the KÜHLER H2O, the basic single radiator 620 with a single fan and a thicker variant with dual fans dubbed the 920 which we will be reviewing first today.
Those familiar with Corsair units may have noticed that Antec’s KÜHLER H2O series is very similar to Corsair’s Hydro Series, namely their single radiator H50 and the thicker dual fan variant, the H70. This isn’t surprising given that both series originate from Asetek. However, Antec have been quick to point out that their coolers use Asetek’s most up-to date and innovative designs whereas Corsair use previous iterations of the design. So we expect to see improved performance that will hopefully compete with our high end air coolers.
Temperatures:
Ambient temperature will be kept at 25C for the duration of the tests and measured with a MicroTemp EXP non-contact infrared thermometer and cross referenced with the Sperry Digital 4 Point thermometer. Any variance greater then 0.2C will halt the testing until temperatures return within spec for fifteen minutes.
Since we are dealing with water cooling we will allow extra time for each test to give the water in the loop enough time to reach equilibrium.
Idle:
Idle temperatures will be recorded after a twenty-five minute period of inactivity. Any fluctuation during the last sixty seconds will reset the timer for an additional five minutes.
Load:
Load temperatures will be recorded after a twenty-five minute period of 100% load. To obtain this load we will be using Prime95 v25.3 set to blend mode. In this way we can heat up the CPU as well as the memory controller which is now integrated into the die. Any fluctuation during the last sixty seconds will reset the timer for an additional five minutes.
Sound:
Sound levels will be measured with a Reliability Direct AR824 sound meter from a distance of four feet away. With everything turned off and the room completely silent the meter registered a sound level of 38dB(A). This is a very quiet room where a simple pin drop could be heard. All sound measurements are recorded in the very late evening to further reduce any ambient noise.
Today's testing will occur a little bit differently than usual. The test bed still consists of the GIGABYTE X58-Extreme motherboard, six gigabytes of Corsair DDR3 RAM and the Intel Core i7 920.
Since the introduction of the CoolIT Eco and Corsair H50, this market has seen much drama and the emergence of a wide new range of ALC units. CoolIT went back to being an OEM and Corsair began to source their new designs from their former competitor CoolIT over Asetek, another established ALC manufacturer. The void left by Corsair was quickly filled by Antec who saw this as a perfect opportunity to enter a new market and as such the KÜHLER H2O series was born. There are currently two units forming part of the KÜHLER H2O, the basic single radiator 620 with a single fan and a thicker variant with dual fans dubbed the 920 which we will be reviewing first today.
Those familiar with Corsair units may have noticed that Antec’s KÜHLER H2O series is very similar to Corsair’s Hydro Series, namely their single radiator H50 and the thicker dual fan variant, the H70. This isn’t surprising given that both series originate from Asetek. However, Antec have been quick to point out that their coolers use Asetek’s most up-to date and innovative designs whereas Corsair use previous iterations of the design. So we expect to see improved performance that will hopefully compete with our high end air coolers.
Temperatures:
Ambient temperature will be kept at 25C for the duration of the tests and measured with a MicroTemp EXP non-contact infrared thermometer and cross referenced with the Sperry Digital 4 Point thermometer. Any variance greater then 0.2C will halt the testing until temperatures return within spec for fifteen minutes.
Since we are dealing with water cooling we will allow extra time for each test to give the water in the loop enough time to reach equilibrium.
Idle:
Idle temperatures will be recorded after a twenty-five minute period of inactivity. Any fluctuation during the last sixty seconds will reset the timer for an additional five minutes.
Load:
Load temperatures will be recorded after a twenty-five minute period of 100% load. To obtain this load we will be using Prime95 v25.3 set to blend mode. In this way we can heat up the CPU as well as the memory controller which is now integrated into the die. Any fluctuation during the last sixty seconds will reset the timer for an additional five minutes.
Sound:
Sound levels will be measured with a Reliability Direct AR824 sound meter from a distance of four feet away. With everything turned off and the room completely silent the meter registered a sound level of 38dB(A). This is a very quiet room where a simple pin drop could be heard. All sound measurements are recorded in the very late evening to further reduce any ambient noise.
- Excellent Performance .
- Good Packaging .
- Intel & AMD Sockets support .
- Bundled PWM fans .
- RGB lighting .
- Compact size .
- Noisy .
- High Cost about $95 .
- High Temperatures in Idle Mode.
- Low Performance Vs Price.
