GIGABYTE Introduces the World’s Most Powerful VGA Cooling Systems during COMPUTEX 2014

A new realm gaming experience with WINDFORCE & WATERFORCE

Taipei, Taiwan, 30th May 2014 – GIGABYTE, the leading manufacturer of graphics cards unveils the industry-leading graphics card cooling system during the COMPUTEX 2014. Whatever the preference of air-cooling or liquid-cooling, gamers can find the most outstanding VGA cooling system designs this year! Continuation of the stunning performance of WINDFORCE 450W cooling system, GIGABYTE once again self-breaks and launches the WINDFORCE Air Cooling System 600 Watt Edition. It is not only equipped with the patented “Triangle Cooling” technology, GIGABYTE also re-designs the fans and the fins of the cooling system and using the high-performance composite cooper heat pipes for new WINDFORCE. The heat dissipation performance is enhanced up to 33% than the reference card. GIGABYTE can proudly announce that WINDFORCE 600 Watt is the best air cooling system for graphics card in the world! Even more, GIGABYTE introduces WATERFORCE All-in-one External Liquid Cooling System with 3 GeForce GTX 780 Ti, specially designed for the gamers who dream about a silent and super gaming PC. With intuitive control panel, WATERFORCE allows gamers to separately control the GPU temperature, fans speed and pumps speed. No more noise nightmare or harass of uneven temperatures while using multi graphics cards. With the world’s first 3 way SLI water cooling solution, WATERFORCE, gamers can easily enjoy every moment and victory during the games. 

The best air-cooling system ever – WINDFORCE 600W

GIGABYTE understands that a fan is crucial to the graphics card, so only the fan with the most efficiency is selected for WINDFORCE. Therefore, GIGABYTE constantly evolving the WINDFORCE to provide the latest and the best cooling solution to gamers. The latest WINDFORCE 600W with excusive cooling technology can signifcantly disspate up to 600W heat. 

Patented “Triangle Cool” technology enhances 35% cooling performance

Features with the patented “Triangle Cool” technology, WINDFORCE 600W can bring away the heat easily from GPU. The cooling performance is 35% better than the regular fin designs. 

Unique fan design increases 23% CFM 

The whole new fan design with special 3D stripe curve can split the air flow, reduce the calm zone and increase the cooling performance. The air flow is amazingly increased up to 23%! 

Special fin architecture augments 45% heat dissipation area

GIGABYTE also designs WINDFORCE 600W with a special fin architecture. The height differentiation design increases more than 45% heat dissipation area for better cooling capacity and significantly reduce the air resistance. 

Composite heat-pipes increases 29% cooling capacity

The cooling system is supplemented by the composite heat-pipes, a heat-transfer device combines both thermal conductivity and phase transition for efficiently managing the transfer of heat between two solid interfaces which increases 29% of cooling capacity. 

With only 2-slot height heat sink, the compact WINDFORCE 600W increases more than 33% thermal performance. It is not only the most powerful air-cooling system, but the best choice for a ultimate gaming experience.

All-in-one external liquid cooling system – WATERFORCE

WATERFORCE is specially designed for the gamers who dream about a silent and powerful super PC. With the exclusive 3-way SLI closed loop liquid cooling system, it can dissipate the heat of GPU, memory and MOSFET. The WATERFORCE intuitive control panel can let gamers to check the performance of the 3 graphics cards from the panel and separately adjust the temperature, fan speed and pump speed for uniform temperature of the cards. 

42.9% lower temperature and 13.1dB lower noise than reference cooler

Comparing with 3-way SLI reference cooler, the cooling solution by WATERFORCE presents 42.9% lower temperature and 13.1 dB lower noises! 

No more noise nightmare or harass of uneven temperatures while using multi graphics cards. No more try & error liquid cooling system DIY. With the world’s 1st 3 way SLI water cooling solution, WATERFORCE, gamers can easily install and enjoy the battles!

For more information, please visit GIGABYTE official website: http://www.gigabyte.com

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About GIGABYTE

GIGABYTE, headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, is known as a global leading brand in the IT industry, with employees and business channels in almost every country. Founded in 1986, GIGABYTE started as a research and development team and has since taken the lead in the world's motherboard and graphics card markets. On top of Motherboards and Graphics cards, GIGABYTE further expanded its product portfolio to include PC Components, PC Peripherals, Laptops, Desktop PCs, Network Communications, Servers and Mobile Phones to serve each facet of the digital life in the home and office. Everyday GIGABYTE aims to “Upgrade Your Life” with innovative technology, exceptional quality, and unmatched customer service. Visit www.gigabyte.com for more information. 

Cooler Master Nepton 140XL Reviewed

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.

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:

We will be doing a small comparison in performance with the Corsair H100 and the Cooler Master Nepton 140XL. The test is conducted in a room with ambient temperature of 28ºC, active air intake for the system is through a pair of 120mm fans in the front of the chassis and the exhaust consists only fans mounted on the radiator of each cooler. Our stress test on the CPU is done using Prime95 with maximum heat stress 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:

- 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.

Corsair H70 Core Unboxing

All-In-One liquid cooling solution ( also known as closed loop water cooling, self-contained liquid cooling ) is not something new but it has been in the market for years. Many well known brands we know, well to name a few : Asetek, CoolIT, Corsair, Silverstone, Zalman, Antec, NZXT, Cooler Master, Enermax, Thermaltake, etc has such variety of products available to the consumers.

Unlike the traditional liquid cooling setup with separated components - water blocks, pumps, reservoir, tubings, fittings, radiators, etc, the closed loop liquid cooling has each of every components combined into one simple, easy to install, maintenance free, All-In-One liquid cooler. Almost each and every closed loop coolers you could ever find on the market are made this way: an integrated water pump on top of a copper cold plate, connected to a 120mm/140mm/240mm/280mm radiator with a pair of tubes with both end sealed on the pump and radiator to prevent possible leakage. 

Enough with the long talk which will take probably ages to finish without any pics to support my explanation and let us move directly to the main actor of this unboxing session: the Corsair H70 Core.

For your information, this is a 6 month old used H70 Core which I have bought from a garage sales after scrutinized thoroughly to ensure everything is good , no break, no leakage. 

 Basically everything that comes with the cooler initially stays intact, except for the pre-applied thermal paste on the copper base of the cold plate of the cooler. There's the accessories, mounting brackets for Intel CPU ( bottom left and top right ), mounting brackets for AMD CPU ( top left and bottom right ), screws for mounting two 120mm fans on the radiator AND NO FANS WERE INCLUDED. Not what I was expected from Corsair, they could have included at least a fan. Additional detail: the mounting bracket resembles the Asetek mounting bracket.

Let us take a quick glance on the Corsair H70, a 38mm thick radiator (resembles the radiator on the Corsair H80/H80i) connect to the pump (resembles the pump on the Asetek 545LC) with a pair of tubing which resembles those used on most of CoolIT closed loop liquid cooler. The tubing is somewhat a bit stiff / non-flexible, it'll be slightly tricky for first time user, especially to those who never installed a cooler with retention bracket.

A quick view at the copper base of the coldplate, minor wear and tear which is much expected from a used item but still looks good. All you need is some cleaning and optional polishing to make it look new again, but I'll leave all the hard work aside for now. Originally comes with a thick layer of pre-applied thermal compound which I personally recommend to remove and replace with a thin layer of the thermal compound of your choice for better temps during operation. 

At each end of the tubing, is factory sealed to ensure there's no leakage during operation so you can just leave all your worries behind ( although I'll advise you to test the pump with a 4 pin molex to 3 pin or 4 pin fan connector to observe for leakage before installing as a safety measure, just in case of course ). Here's a brief and simple explanation to those who weren't able to get the idea of how things works in a liquid cooling system: 

- The heat from the CPU is transferred to the coldplate where the coolant will then absorbs the heat as it flows through the coldplate.

- The coolant is then circulated to the radiator, thanks to the mighty pump. 

- Heat is transferred to the aluminum fins of the radiator as the coolant runs through the radiator. 

- The heat will be dissipated with the help of  one or more 120mm fans installed on the radiator.

There's two cables which runs out from the pump:

- 3 pin fan connector (12v) to power up the pump.

- Another cable with a pair of 4 pin PWM fan connector for the fans which will be installed to the radiator.

The bottom retention bracket for Intel shows the supported type of socket: 

- 775 socket : Core 2 Duo, Core 2 quad, Core 2 Extreme 

- 1156 ( compatible with 1155, 1150):   First gen core i series cpu, sandy bridge, sandy bridge and haswell

- 1366 ( compatible with 2011): high end i7 processors like the i7 3970x

 As for the AMD retention bracket, I can't find any relevant information of which type of socket is supported, but the details given on the box stated that it is compatible with AM2, AM3 and FM1 socket.

The two pieces of snap on like plastic pieces above is the stabilizer/ screw holder for the retention bracket.

The screw which will be installed later on, held by the two plastic snap on pieces in the pic earlier.

So this is how you actually install it, it took me a while to realize i have installed it wrongly. The plastic pieces claw like part should be installed facing the center of the bracket. 

Just snap it on and insert the screw in the previous pic and you're done.

With the current details I have collected, here's my opinion on the cooler after this unboxing:

Pros - ready to use out of the box, maintenance free because it's a closed loop liquid cooler, thick radiator which provides great cooling performance, small compact design which save s lot of space compared to traditional water cooling setup

Cons - short tubing and non-flexible tubing makes installation tricky to newbies, no fans included which I think is quite a letdown, the retention bracket is tricky to install if you do not have any experience in installing CPU coolers with retention bracket provided

Performance review will be conducted in a different session, which is after my test rig is ready as i am still waiting for my ATX case to return from RMA due to factory defect. Stay tuned and see you next time for more unboxing and reviews.

Unboxed by: lucidlts