This is Jarvis 2.0 - my main gaming computer.
It was originally a CyberPowerPC rig with a model number I won’t try to remember….
But you guys know I never leave these things stock.
CyberPowerPC did a fantastic job with the rig, but I’ve since swapped storage around,
added a 10 gigabit NIC, and swapped the GPU up to the new Nvidia RTX 2080 for that hot
new Nvenc action - video soon.
Along the way I also cranked up the overclock… a lot.
This bad boy features an Intel Core i7-8700K - beast of a CPU, and I’ve pushed the OC
up to 4.77GHz on all cores.
It’s been 100% stable for gaming, I’ve never once had a crash or anything on this
machine, oddly the most stable rig I’ve had in… years?
But it does… run a little hot.
As I was benchmarking the new 2080, I was noticing that in Battlefield 4, it was running
at 90C with the included 120mm AIO liquid cooler.
That’s no good.
I’d like to keep this thing cool.
SO IT’S TIME FOR A SHOWDOWN OF 240MM AIO LIQUID COOLERS
IN ONE CORNER, WE HAVE THE GAMDIAS CHIONE M1 240R
IN THE OTHER CORNER, WE HAVE THE COOLER MASTER MASTERLIQUID ML240R RGB
TWO STUPIDLY IDENTICAL ASETEK-BASED LIQUID COOLERS WHOSE PERFORMANCE SHOULD THEORETICALLY
BE IDENTICAL, BUT THE RESULTS HERE MIGHT SHOCK YOU….
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While I love the case that this rig came in - and I actually got quite a few notable replies
about others liking it when I shared a photo on Twitter - it only supports 120mm fans - 3
in the front, 1 in the rear and… supposedly two in the top, there’s cutouts and a dust
filter for them, but….
Alright I really don't know who came up with this top dust filter frame idea... the clips
in it prevent any fans from going on top, and the positioning of the fan mounts prevent
barely even the fan itself from being able to fit above the motherboard - nevertheless
a radiator.
I don't understand how this is every supposed to work for the cooler, which is obviously
what it's built for.
Very baffling.
That leaves our only option being a 240mm AIO in the front, which is my preferred setup
anyway.
I will note here, that this case is pretty closed off in the front - I’m sure Gamers
Nexus would have a field day with it - and so that will be a big factor here.
I prefer real-world use cases, pun intended, and this is a brutal one.
So as mentioned in the intro, these coolers are very similar Asetek-based 240mm coolers
available for around $100.
The radiators and pumps are virtually identical, but I did encounter some performance differences.
Also, there were little nuances in build quality that may affect your decision.
The install process was mostly identical, though the Cooler Master was, by far, the
easiest.
It had nuts that keep the backplate in place while you place the pump and coldplate on
the CPU, then just fasten it down with thumbscrews.
Super straightforward.
Also, the screws that you use to attach the fans to the radiator to the case were much
easier to use when you only have two hands, as they had thumbscrew grips so you didn’t
have to start them off with a screwdriver.
The Gamdias, on the other hand, relied on those pretty meh spring-loaded screws to screw
into their backplate frame, which make it difficult to tell when you have even pressure,
don’t always want to stay at the proper angle, and are just not fun.
BUT the backplate for Intel 1151 was already set up with screws in place, whereas CoolerMaster’s
backplate needed a fair bit of assembly.
The major thing here was something severe that I had genuinely never seen before.
The plastic sheet stuck to the coldplate to keep it protected in shipping and then remove
before applying to the CPU… was perfectly normal and what I’ve encountered dozens
of times on the Cooler Master.
But on the Gamdias, the sheet left behind an ungodly amount of adhesive residue all
over the coldplate.
Like, this sounds silly, but it was baaaaaad.
My fingers would stick to the plate.
I wiped and wiped and wiped with rubbing alcohol, but it seemed like I was just gumming it up
more than anything.
And this wound up being a serious problem - as my first round of temperature testing
had it failing the Burn-In test almost immediately and running significantly hotter than the
Cooler Master 240r, almost caught up with the original 120mm AIO the rig came with.
This adhesive posed a significant thermal problem.
I pulled it back off and grabbed a kitchen sponge with a scrubbing side to it - we didn’t
have any actual scour pads - and scrubbed for like half an hour.
I’m sure this is terrible for the coldplate, probably introducing many more micro-scratches
and all that, but I got…
most of it off by the second round and temperatures cooled back down.
But this is really not good.
I probably got unlucky, but you really don’t want to skimp out on something so important.
We’ll talk about their visual differences after we cover performance.
Performance is fairly straightforward?
I pulled away a 10C max temperature drop with both of these coolers, on average.
Doesn’t sound like much, but during these tests, the CPU was staying at around 500MHz
higher clock speed under load than with the original cooler.
While I had an OC of 4.77GHz applied in BIOS, the chip would clock as far down as 3.89GHz
to keep cool and stable under load with the 120mm cooler, but I was holding anywhere from
4.3 to 4.5GHz in most tests with both of these coolers, returning to the 4.77 in time.
So I’m thinking in the long run I’ll tone this back to 4.5GHz in the long run, but needed
to keep it consistent for testing.
As you can see, The Gamdias and CoolerMaster coolers are mostly neck in neck, which is
what you’d expect for mostly identical coolers.
The only issue being that first round with all the adhesive goop still left on it, that
thing ran HOT.
But with enough scrubbing, it caught up to the Cooler Master.
For testing, I tend to use my own kind of benchmarks.
I have found that nothing stresses a CPU quite like a full-tilt FFMPEG encode on a SSD where
the only bottleneck is the CPU.
So “FFMPEG Short” is taking a short OBS Nvenc 4K 60FPS capture and encoding it to
ProRes at 60FPS, and “FFMPEG Long” is taking a 12 minute VP9 YouTube download of
a 4K 30FPS LinusTechTips video and encoding to ProRes at 30FPS.
Then I ran the PassMark Burn-In test just to have something more common, and then tested
temperatures in a 64-player match of the game I first noticed high temps in - Battlefield
4.
I don’t currently have a tool to measure average CPU temperatures over time, so you’re
looking at the max temps - which is why the clock speeds stayed so much higher; things
stayed much lower than these temps on average, but peak temps were the problem.
All tests were done with the Arctic MX4 thermal compound.
Performance is close enough between the two to be possible margin of error, and this is
with the Gamdias fans running at max speeds allowed by the RGB controller, as I’ll mention
in a minute, while the Cooler Master fans are running from the motherboard on the default
setup fan curve I already had on it.
Then we have aesthetics.
Both have a RGB ring around the pump’s outer edge, but handle the logo differently.
The Cooler Master 240r just has the border of their logo lit up with the actual “Cooler
Master” text mostly illegible, which is a tad..
Odd.. but might be good for those who don’t want to show specific logos.
Especially since Gamdias gives you the full logo lit up, but their logo is a bit… well…
ehhhhhh?
For the fans, Cooler Master gives you ALLL the RGB from the center outward, though you
do clearly see hot spots of the actual LED sources around the bearings.
This is probably the look that most people would prefer, based on what I’ve seen from
other RGB builds.
THAT BEING SAID, I was actually attracted to the Gamdias fans due to the fact that this
CyberPowerPC build actually came with red fans that were only lit around the ring and
with this darker tempered glass that only shows what’s lit up through it, the effect
is really cool.
And I’m pretty sure I still feel that way with these Gamdias fans, here.
Much better - that green Nvidia LED was looking real weird with all the red fans before, haha.
Oddly enough, by the way, this rig came with an RGB controller adhered to the back of the
motherboard tray and connected to SATA power, but with no RGB components in it.
A proprietary one, too.
I’m not sure if this is a default for optional configurations or what, but it was very weird.
The RGB controllers are where I have some serious issues.
Both use their own connector - to the extent that the Gamdias fans have two wires running
out of the fan - one for power, one for RGB - but run to a single connector.
You can’t control the fans at all via the motherboard headers.
Not cool.
Cooler Master’s fans run to the motherboard just fine, but their RGB controller has no
built-in way to keep it mounted in the case, Gamdias’s has magnets built-in!
Both controllers support extra LED strips and the pump LEDs, etc.
The Cooler Master controller, however, connects via MicroUSB and a USB to USB header adapter
to the motherboard to be controlled via software, or just buttons on the controller itself.
Their software is pretty decent and an improvement over my experience with similar ideas from
Corsair.
Gamdias has no buttons on the controller, nor software support.
Simply a remote.
A remote which operates on the same frequency as some of my behind-the-monitor LED strips,
causing a lot of chaos when I was trying to control them.
Plus, this is the only way you can control fan speed!
And there’s no feedback as to the speed you’re on or anything, really, unless you
have your ear on the case.
Just a reset of the LED spinning to indicate you did anything at all.
This was pretty frustrating while testing.
This might not be a problem for you, as both RGB controllers are compatible with ASUS,
ASRock, and MSI RGB modes, and the Gamdias controller lists Gigabyte support as well.
However the RGB pins on my MSI X370-A Pro motherboard are… missing inexplicably.
The product photo on Amazon of this board seem to reflect this, so..
That’s my usual bad luck, there.
I knew I’d likely prefer the RGB style of the Gamdias cooler, so I also requested that
they send out a fan pack.
Their 5-fan pack, the 1205R, costs about $80 bucks and comes with the full RGB controller,
screws, and other setup needed if you’re buying them alone.
The price seems steep - almost as much as the cooler itself with two fans, but Cooler
Master’s fan packs range from 35 to 60 bucks for just 3 fans, so the prices are similar.
I was able to deck out the original 3 front-facing fans to resemble the original look of the
case, make the rear fan RGB, and add another intake at the top.
Now the radiator does block the view of the two radiator fans from the inside of the case
- I could use the extra two fans for push-pull if I wanted to try to link the two RGB controllers
together, but that seems unnecessary for now.
Maybe in the future if I get bored.
My gaming PC is nice and cool again, and looks a little slicker, too.
Plus, it’s not any noticeably louder than it was, from under the desk, which is great.
Both coolers are pretty solid, though I should turn down my OC a bit.
I prefer the Gamdias style of RGB, but the choice is yours!
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