The prestige of a double size radiator, the noise of a jet engine
Cooler Master is determined to get its name to the top of the liquid-chilling lists, and has released a slew of new kits in recent months. The first of these were the fairly impressive Seidon range, and now we have the upgradeable Eisberg Prestige lineup too.
Although the Prestige setups are sold as factory filled closed loop systems, they can be modified if necessary. The cooling pipes have removable compression fittings, and the pump can be topped up or refilled. That means you can add secondary cooling blocks for your GPU, and extra radiators to boost overall cooling performance.
All Prestige coolers have the same water pump, and you can buy it on its own if you're planning to start from scratch or upgrade your existing loop. Manufactured by the less than well known company Eheim, it runs up to 3,600rpm and shifts 400 litres of water an hour.
The Eisberg Prestige 240L uses a 280mm copper radiator, which connects to the pump via two protected pipes. This radiator is cooled by a pair of 120mm fans, with good quality rubber surrounds to reduce vibration. Mind you, that’s the least of your worries when the fans in question are non PWM. That means they spin at a constant l,600rpm (like those of the Prestige 120L). whether the system is in use or idle. The only way to quieten things down is to bin them for some other PWM fans or stick in a third party fan controller.
Noise complaints
The instruction leaflet is a little light on the information, and attaching the water block/pump to the CPU can be a pain in the posterior. On an LGA 2011 setup it simply screws into the socket itself. For anything else though you'll be messing around with pliers and the fear of buggering up the mobo power components as you fit the tight mounting rods.
It's not the quietest cooling system, especially when the unit is running at 100 per cent. You'd hope for a nice quiet system at stock speeds, but the combination of pump noise and fans running at a constant 1,600rpm makes it a noisy beast, even before you start waving the overclockingstick.
There are two options for the pump: running from the 12V mobo connector or a 5V cable. Running the pump from the 5V connector does quieten it down, but at the expense of cooling performance, and when the fans are always spun up, having the pump running a little quieter doesn't really do a lot for the whole experience.
The Prestige 240L outshines its smaller sibling thanks to that larger radiator, and does a good job keeping the CPU cool at standard and overclocked speeds, but it's not as good as some of the air coolers around, or indeed some other water cooling kits we've tested.
Sadly, the combination of comparatively weak cooling performance and noisy operation makes it tough to recommend.
This is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Accordingly, it is difficult to figure out when to end it. But then, this is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Period.
Conversion Conversion Emoticon Emoticon