A Closer Look
When it comes to AIO coolers, I think if you’ve seen one, you’ve just about seen them all, as they’re all built around the same concept of a pump, some tubing, and a radiator with some fans on it. That being said, NZXT has done a great job here, and the build quality and design looks and feels fantastic.
This isn’t a wholly new cooler, as it’s built upon the foundations of their popular Kraken Elite series, with their new and improved pump technology, ensuring it can keep up with the bigger liquid flow required to handle such a large radiator.
It comes with their circular LCD on the pump too, yet despite the new pump and the built-in display, the actual CPU block is pretty compact. Some of the early LCD pump designs were pretty bulky, but that’s really not the case here. It’s more aesthetically pleasing, and should make for a much easier install as you can easily access the mounting screws for the CPU socket.
The cooler features a good-sized contact plate, ensuring perfect coverage of the larger CPU models. Of course, when you’re cooling a high-powered CPU with such a massive radiator, this is easily the most vital point.
The tubing is braided and durable, but has plenty of flex, which is going to further ease the installation process. Plus the RGB and fan control hub is built into the end of the radiator, with a single breakout cable offering all your connections in one; no cables to the pump!
The radiator is exactly what you would expect, with room for 3 x 140mm fans on either side.
Of course, this one comes with the single block 420mm fan mount, so while it has three fans on it, it’s actually just one big long piece, which again eases the installation process, cable routing, and RGB, as it’s all just one cable for all the fans.
If you’ve used an NZXT cooler in recent years, you’ll recognise most of this cooler, it still deploys the same mounting kits for AMD/Intel, it’s an LCD that’s been on other coolers, and the fans are basically just the old ones but bigger. Of course, that’s no bad thing, as the previous models were pretty great, so a higher TDP model with bigger, quieter, lower RPM fans? Sounds perfect to me!
