(Linus screaming)
- Oh my God!
If you want to tame the hottest gaming CPUs.
The marketing says that you want water cooling.
But I'm gonna let you in on a little secret.
That's not actually true.
This is a Thermosiphon,
and it is not your grandma's air cooler.
Unless your grandma's a physicist,
and rides a badass motorcycle.
And reads you awesome bedtime stories
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- The problem is that Intel's top of the line gaming CPU.
The core I9 12900K runs so hot,
that even the legendary NH-D15,
The king of air coolers,
can't keep up with it.
I mean, you could turn off performance mode
or multi core enhancement.
But at that point,
why did you pay $600 USD for a processor
only to leave performance on the table?
Oh, and did I mention,
you'll still be maxing out at 95 degrees
on an open air test bench.
That means you're probably thermal throttling
the second you close your side panel.
Water cooling has advanced
to help us tackle these ever hotter CPUs
in a number of ways.
Stronger pumps, more efficient cold plate designs,
larger radiators.
And by mounting them to the intake of a case,
we get to use the coolest air available
to tackle the hottest parts of our machines.
But compared to traditional heat sinks,
even all in one water coolers like this one,
are more challenging to install, expensive,
and they have more points of failure.
Outright leaks are rare these days.
But a failed pump could easily
put you out of commission for a while.
The good news is that while water cooling
has been stealing all the headlines.
Air cooling has been quietly improving
in the background.
IceGiant's first product,
The ProSiphon Elite blew us away.
By outperforming both this guy
and 240 millimeter AIO liquid coolers.
It works by using heat from the CPU
to boil fluid inside the evaporator here.
That vapor makes its way to the condenser,
this large fin heat sink array up here.
Where it cools, liquefies,
and then falls back down to the evaporator
creating a cooling loop
with no moving parts.
The principle is actually similar to a heat pipe.
But almost simpler in a way.
Because the liquid is moved back
to the heat source by gravity
rather than by capillary action.
Thermosiphons must be mounted
in the correct orientation.
But the upside is that they are not nearly
as easily overwhelmed
by a strong heat source.
Enough about the old though.
Where'd it go?
Oh, here it is.
Let's talk about what's new.
IceGiant just sent over a prototype ThermoSyphon Elite
with some really exciting upgrades.
The most obvious one is right here.
Goodbye, aluminum.
Hello, copper.
That was a good idea.
Did someone suggest that to them?
Could be.
Anyway, this was done to improve heat conduction
from the CPU into the thermosiphon.
But even more important
are the boiling enhancements
that they've made to the evaporator.
They've completely changed the layout of the fins
inside here to create more surface area.
And they've added tiny pieces
of centered copper there as well.
Not only do these also create more surface area
for new creation sites.
But these particles act as a wick
to help distribute condensed liquid
on the return trip.
Sounds pretty cool.
But I wouldn't recommend buying one.
And certainly wouldn't recommend
investing in IceGiant.
Apparently is undergoing a funding round right now.
Until I have validated it for myself.
So we grabbed this.
A high end test bench.
Our frame from Thermal Grizzly.
More on that later.
And we slapped on all of our coolers,
testing them at around the same noise levels
of a maxed out,
though still very quiet, NH-D15.
That's roughly 47 decibels.
Our OG aluminum ProSiphon Elite
was unfortunately the only cooler
to thermal throttle
in our 2000 sample classroom blender test.
Disqualifying it outright.
But as you can see here,
our copper unit comes out on top
beating Noctua's best by a whopping five degrees.
It was also the only cooler in our test
that brought our 12900K
below 90 degrees under load.
Admittedly, this is on an open test bench
where it doesn't have to contend with heat
from other components swirling around it.
But it's still impressive.
However, cranking things up a notch
by enabling performance mode on our motherboard
caused our CPU to draw another 20 to 30 watts.
Resulting in a fail result
for all three of our coolers.
To be fair,
250 watts is a lot of power.
And if you want that kind of performance,
it's fair to say that you might
have to make some sacrifices.
Namely noise.
In an attempt to tame the beast.
We unlocked our EK AIO and our copper prototype,
allowing their fans to ramp up to around 2100 RPM.
And then we reran our tests
in both default and performance mode.
It cost us about 10 decibels in both cases.
But at Intel's stock power limit,
the copper prototype thermosiphon
pulled ahead even further.
With a maximum package temperature
of just 85 degrees Celsius.
That's downright reasonable.
Unfortunately it still thermal throttled
in performance mode.
But, as our friend Splave pointed out to us.
Performance mode is a pretty hamfisted way
of optimizing your CPU.
By tuning the 12900K's operating voltage,
load line calibration and turbo ratios.
He managed to use the extra thermal headroom
of the copper prototype,
to squeeze out even better performance
than performance mode.
And without any thermal throttling.
Now full disclosure,
Splave is invested as a partner with IceGiant,
but that also kind of speaks volumes.
Doesn't it?
If it's good enough for him,
it's probably good enough for me.
And so is our new ShortCircuit hoodie.
Check it out at lttstore.com.
Side conversation here though.
Copper thermosiphon,
very legal and very cool.
Hopefully it makes it to market
without costing too much more
than the old aluminum one.
But I feel like there's an elephant in the room.
What is going on with computer chips right now?
AMD is jacking up their power targets for AM5.
NVIDIA is rumored to be hitting 600 to 800 watts
on their upcoming 4,000 series.
And Intel is already shipping consumer products
that are basically uncoolable,
unless you resort to this.
"But you just cooled it Linus with that."
You might say.
Well, yeah, but I used a prototype cooler
on an open test bench.
And I did a bunch of other stuff
that's not reasonable
for the average consumer.
Okay, first up I'm using top of the line,
Thermal Grizzly thermal paste.
And second, I have likely voided the warranty
on both my motherboard and my CPU.
By installing Thermal Grizzly's CPU contact frame.
That thing I alluded to before.
In a nutshell, it's a modification
to the LGA 1700 socket
that ensures even retention pressure on the CPU
for better thermal contact.
We'd like to do a dedicated video on it at some point.
But the short version is that without it,
we'd likely be running five or so degrees hotter
during all of our tests.
That means thermal throttling on the 12900K
right out of the box.
"But hold on Linus."
You might say.
"There are better water coolers out there
that surely would handle the 12900K,
without any of this nonsense.
Everyone knows that 240 millimeter rads
like this one,
are weak sauce now."
Well, to that, I would respond,
A, no one says weak sauce anymore, come on.
And B, we actually pulled out
an EK AIO Elite 360
for our comparison as well.
ad found that it performed no better
than our thermosiphon."
A little worse, actually.
I've never seen that before.
I tried to pull it off the thing.
But instead of unplugging,
it ripped right out of the fan.
Do you need to run any more tests with this?
- [Plouffe] I don't think so.
But...
Yeah, we can fix it.
I know we can fix it.
It's just....
God.
- Now all of this modification nonsense
might be a price that you're willing to pay.
But frankly, I'm getting kind of sick
of hardware manufacturers
redlining their gear out of the box.
To the point where we're forced
to buy and install exotic modifications
just to get the performance
that we saw in a review.
I mean, Intel can hide behind
their default turbo behavior,
which does consume a lot less power.
But the truth is that all performance mode is doing,
is allowing these unlocked 12 series chips
to turbo at around 240 watts forever.
Which is a behavior that Intel enables.
One behavior I'm okay with, by the way,
is signing up at floatplane.com
for exclusive videos and behind the scenes.
Like the extended cut of our Kallmekris collab.
Back to Intel 12th gen though,
you shouldn't have to spend
an extra several hundred dollars
just to keep your $600 CPU
at a reasonable temperature under load.
But since you do,
it's still too early to say
how much the copper thermosiphon will cost.
But the original was around 170.
So expecting a small increase from there.
It's actually looking like
a pretty darn good solution.
But it's not perfect.
RAM clearance is pretty good.
But it's gonna cover up
any RGB modules you might have.
And you can forget about installing this
over top of Corsair Dominator style DIMS.
We've also complained to their team
about their smooth standoffs.
And they're considering
adding some knurling or striping
to help install or remove stuck bits.
Now that motherboards are getting so crowded
around the CPU socket area.
Another annoyance,
we really had to screw this thing down tight
to ensure good contact.
That's even with the updated bracket
and with the frame.
Though it's a pretty easy to use
mounting solution otherwise.
And finally, we're hoping that the team
at IceGiant can sneak-
I don't know what to call it.
But a bit more tolerance
for user error into the design
before it starts shipping worldwide.
It can be a little bit finicky
to get a perfect mount.
On that subject.
I would strongly recommend
against shipping your system
with one of these already installed in it.
That is a key benefit of AIO liquid coolers
that can't be ignored.
Not nearly as much weight on the socket.
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- If you guys enjoyed this video.
Make sure to check out the 6.9 GHz CPU video
that Splave helped us out with.
That was a lot of fun.
Hopefully it makes it to market
without costing too much more than the old aluminum.
- [Plouffe] I'm gonna just snap one day.