It wasn't really a surprise to us when Cooler Master announced their involvement in the self-contained liquid cooler in the early November 2012 with their very own design of self-contained liquid cooler - the Seidon Series, as almost every manufacturer in the PC cooling industry is keeping up with the trend.
Cooler Master had the Seidon Series liquid cooler designed in-house and this helps to reduce the cost of production. Therefore, the Seidon Series is among the best closed-loop liquid cooler money can buy, the Seidon series offers users with a fairly decent performance at the sweet spot price ranging from their top of the line 240mm radiator Seidon 240M is available at 349 Malaysian Ringgit to the entry 120mm Seidon 120V at a very affordable price of 189 Malaysian Ringgit.
Cooler Master had the Seidon Series liquid cooler designed in-house and this helps to reduce the cost of production. Therefore, the Seidon Series is among the best closed-loop liquid cooler money can buy, the Seidon series offers users with a fairly decent performance at the sweet spot price ranging from their top of the line 240mm radiator Seidon 240M is available at 349 Malaysian Ringgit to the entry 120mm Seidon 120V at a very affordable price of 189 Malaysian Ringgit.
Our review for this time is something rather new - yet to be announced to the Malaysian local market, the Cooler Master Nepton 140XL. Soon to be available on the shelf at the price of 349 Malaysian Ringgit, what does the Nepton 140XL offers compared to other coolers which is in the same league? We'll find out soon enough after this review.
Features
| Warranty | 2 Years from Cooler Master |
| CPU Socket Support | Intel LGA 2011 / 1366 / 1150 /1155 / 1156 / 775 AMD Socket FM2 / FM1 / AM3+ / AM3 / AM2 |
| Dimension | 75mm x 69.8mm x 49.1mm |
| Radiator Dimension | 171mm x 139mm x 38mm |
| Fan Dimension | 140mm x 140mm x 25mm * 2 pieces of JetFlo 140 incl * optional: 120mm fans can be mounted as well |
| Fan Speed | 800~2000 RPM (PWM) ± 10% |
| Fan Airflow | 0.7~3.5 mm H2O ± 10% |
| Fan Bearing Type | Rifle Bearing |
| Radiator Material | Aluminum |
| Water Pump Life Expectancy | 70,000 hours |
| Fan Life Expectancy | 40,000 hours |
| Rated Voltage | Pump: 12 VDC Fan: 12 VDC |
Unboxing
Before starting with the review, we would like to thank Cooler Master for giving us to opportunity to review their new Neptop 140XL which will soon be launched to our local Malaysian market.
On first glance, the packaging of the Nepton 140XL seems to emphasize their improvement from the previous generation of Cooler Master's self-contained liquid cooler with details printed in front, e.g: Extreme Cooling Performance, Extra Large 140mm Radiator, Durable FEP Tubing, Ultrafine Micro Channel that doubles the surface area. This is Cooler Master's first and ever self-contained liquid cooler with 140mm thick radiator.
What's inside the box is the Nepton 140XL, a pair of Cooler Master's latest JetFlo 140mm fan, accessories which includes the retention bracket, screws etc, user's manual and warranty guide.
As you can see from the included accessories, consisting the screws for mounting both JetFlo 140mm on the radiator, retention bracket for Intel and AMD, fan splitter, thermal paste, plastic clips, etc.
Up next is the warranty guide and the user's manual for Nepton 140XL - a very important and helpful guide especially for first timer!
Nepton 140XL comes with a pair of JetFlo 140mm PWM fans, allowing you to configure for a push pull setup right out of the box. By analyzing through the details of the included JetFlo 140mm fans, we came to notice that the included JetFlo 140mm uses rifle bearing instead of POM bearing used on the retail JetFlo 120mm.
*About Rifle Bearing*
Rifle bearing fans are similar to sleeve bearing, but are quieter and have almost as much lifespan as ball bearings. The bearing has a spiral groove in it that pumps fluid from a reservoir. This allows them to be safely mounted horizontally (unlike sleeve bearings), since the fluid being pumped lubricates the top of the shaft. The pumping also ensures sufficient lubricant on the shaft, reducing noise, and increasing lifespan.
From the details above, JetFlo 120 is boasted with life expectancy of 160,000 hours while the JetFlo 140 has a life expectancy of 40,000 hours which is 4 times lower than the retail JetFlo 120.
The fans included is sleeved ready out of the box. These sleeves helps to protect the fan cables from accidental damage, while giving the fan itself a premium look compared to those non-sleeved fans.
The rubber pads on each side of the JetFlo 140, it helps to absorbs vibration on contact point produced by moving parts that may causes the production of noise. Cooler Master has done a fine job improving their fan design, much better than their previous generation of fans.
This unique designed fan blade is said to be able to produce high airflow and giving out low noise at high rotation speed. This will be confirmed after the review.
And here's the main body of the Nepton 140XL. The pump looks much larger and thicker compared to the pump of the Seidon series self-contained liquid cooler. The FEP tubing and the radiator seems to be thicker as well.
Below the pump is the copper plate to transfer heat from your CPU to the liquid that passes through the micro channel on the copper plate. Unlike the previous generation, the Nepton 140XL copper plate is secured with an uncommon looking screws which can only be seen from a professional screw drivers kit.
Check out the thickness of this radiator! From our observation, it is way much thicker compared to any other radiator of self-contained liquid cooler we've encounter so far.
On the radiator itself, there's a warning message on a piece of sticker that warns user not to tamper the knob in the radiator. This is where you can change the coolant within the closed loop, but removing it will instantly void the 2 year warranty covered by Cooler Master. Better think twice before proceeding with what you plan to do with it.
The radiator is rather special - a 140mm radiator that supports both 140mm and 120mm fans. It's not a common design we've seen on most conventional radiators. Cooler Master did a good job for taking 120mm fan mounting into account, as most chassis available out there uses 120mm rear fan and this helps to give better compatibility for chassis that doesn't comes with any 140mm fan mounting.
Compared side by side with the Corsair H100, there's a very significant differences - Nepton 140XL has a much thicker radiator and thicker FEP tubing as well. To those who concerns about the stiffness of FEP tubing used, we can assure you that the FEP tubing on the Nepton 140XL is much flexible than the conventional FEP tubing from the previous generation self-contained liquid coolers that uses CoolIT FEP tubing design. Again, Cooler Master did a fine job in improving the flexibility of FEP tubing by increasing the diameter of the FEP tubing.
Installation
Moving forward to the installation, we will be using the Intel retention bracket - since we will be testing in with an Intel setup. The installation is pretty straight forward, the Intel bracket is inserted from the bottom slot available and can be secured with the screws included.
The backplate on the other hand, uses a rather unique way of securing their mounting screws.
A small piece of plastic clip is used to hold the mounting screw in place. The plastic clip will held firmly to the slot according to the type of socket: deepest inside is the 775 socket, following by the middle is 1156/1155/1150 socket and lastly located as the most outer part of it is for the 1366/2011 socket.
Here's the mounting screws which is now secured in place. The plastic clip act as an insulator as well, having a gap in between the contact point of the backplate and the motherboard.
Now mounted firmly on the CPU, the Nepton 140XL is ready to be unleashed. The picture above is one of the way you can mount the radiator, but do note that there's a motherboard compatibility too - especially for Asus motherboards that comes with the thermal armor. As for RAM clearance, there's no issue at all for the Nepton 140XL compared to some gigantic air cooler heatsink.
The Cooler Master Cosmos SE is one of the recommended chassis that supports the Nepton 140XL.
Testing Method
In this section of review, we will be using the test rig as listed as below to conduct our temperature test:
The test is done separately with the Corsair H100 and the Cooler Master Nepton 140XL and the final result is shown in the graph as below:
The result seems pretty good for the Nepton 140XL. Competing with one of the best self-contained liquid cooler on the market paired with the king of radiator fan (Scythe Gentle Typhon AP-15), the Nepton 140XL stands up pretty well although it is not able to out perform the Corsair H100. Having a slight difference in temperature and other than being much noisier, there's nothing much else we can criticize.
Our Verdict
Even though the Nepton 140XL wasn't able to overpower the Corsair H100, trailing just few temps away at the price of 349 Malaysian Ringgit compared to the winner which cost you an extra 100 Malaysian Ringgit is something worth to look up to if you're looking for a decent self-contained liquid cooler that performs great and won't cost you an arm and a leg. Do be reminded that there's motherboard can chassis compatibility, you might want to take a good look at your current chassis to see whether it will fit the Nepton 140XL - if you're using a tiny low cost chassis, you might have to consider changing your chassis first.
Pros:
Pros:
- Large and thick 140mm radiator with 120mm and 140mm fan support
- thicker FEP tubing gives much flexibility compared to the smaller ones from most CoolIT OEM
- High performance JetFlo 140 is included
- The included fans comes with rubber pads to reduce noise and sleeved fan cables
- Extremely easy to install, thanks to the plastic clip to hold the mounting screws on the backplate
- Great performance, great value
- Full RAM height compatibility, no need to worry if you own a pair of tall RAM(s).
Cons:
- User will need a decent quality chassis in order to be able to install the Nepton 140XL
- The fan is rather loud at max rotation speed on full load
- The included JetFlo 140 seems to have less life expectancy compared to the retail JetFlo 120
- The knob on the radiator might causes compatibility issue for certain chassis and motherboard
- Compatibility issue with Asus Motherboards that comes with a Thermal Armor
At the end of the review, we're awarding the Cooler Master Nepton 140XL with a silver award and a recommended award with confidence.
why not use the stock fan instead for the test? did Corsair H100 tested with Gentle Typhoon too?
ReplyDeletei think they already stated the h100 and gentle typhoon combo. was curious why uses this combo instead of h100 & its stock fan.
Deleteindeed its weird to use other type of fan instead of the stock ones as i dont think people will change to new and more expensive fans immediately...
DeleteWell, the reason behind this is because we wish to see how well will the CM Nepton 140XL compete against the H100 with Gentle Typhoon combo. And...It turned out quite well actually.
Deleteat least both cooler are using same fans guess this make the test a little more fair for performance comparison. interesting to see that corsair smaller radiator out performed that thick radiator of CM Nepton. Nice Review..
ReplyDelete