Cooler Master Nepton 280L Liquid Cooler

[HardOCP News]

The Neoseeker gang just published a review of the Cooler Master Nepton 280L all-in-one liquid cooler today. If you are shopping for a CPU cooler, this review should be of interest.

We have the Cooler Master Nepton 280L on review, a 280mm closed-loop water cooler designed to test the limits of the AIO concept. Supporting all modern CPU sockets, it features a thick 30mm radiator and mounting holes for up to four 120mm or 140mm fans. An ultrafine micro-channel cold plate and high pressure water pump tout efficient heat exchange especially for overclocking.

 

[GonzoP]

7ºC better load temps than a H100 huh, you have my attention CM

 

[Makaveli@BETA]

7ºC better load temps than a H100 huh, you have my attention CM

I seen that too.

The H105 should close that gap abit.

Can we get a AIO cooler round up @ hardocp which will include the H220 unit?

I have to decide on one of these for my Haswell E build in the next few months and so many options!

 

[savagepagan]

What is awesome about this unit is that it has mounting holes for 120 and 140mm fans. So you can mount 140mm fans with 120mm mounting holes. This opens up a ton of 140mm fans that you can now use. Many of the best 140mm heatsink pwm fans have 120mm mounting holes.

 

[geok1ng]

actually the 120mm fan mounting holes are kind of useless, because they do not match standard 120-240 radiator mounting holes of cases, so to use 120mm fan you must , at minimum, use another set of screws on the 1400 mounting holes anyway.

about 140mm radiator fans: they are few and apart, and do not offer better temp/noise than the best 120mm fans.

i have a nepton 280l, and the radiator steel is softer than the screws steel, so after testing 2 mount locations several of the radiator holes begin to break in ad gape, and i was forced to use larger screws to fit the gaped holes

also mepton 280l is too big, and i could use the extra space for a second PSU and have almost as good temps with a H105, glacer 240 ou H220.

 

[MacLeod]

Im kinda wanting some noise reduction in these AIO coolers. My H100 is capable of cooling my FX 8350 at 4.8 GHz which is no small feat but it cant do it without cranking up the noise noticeably. All these new AIO's are getting better and better cooling results but it seems like theyre either getting louder or not quieting down any at all. I think we've reached the point where we've got a sufficient amount of cooling performance out of these things at least for the vast majority of overclocks, I am now more interested in something that is as quiet as a D14 but performs as well as my H100 does on High.

 

[Araxie]

Im kinda wanting some noise reduction in these AIO coolers. My H100 is capable of cooling my FX 8350 at 4.8 GHz which is no small feat but it cant do it without cranking up the noise noticeably. All these new AIO's are getting better and better cooling results but it seems like theyre either getting louder or not quieting down any at all. I think we've reached the point where we've got a sufficient amount of cooling performance out of these things at least for the vast majority of overclocks, I am now more interested in something that is as quiet as a D14 but performs as well as my H100 does on High.

have you tried changing the fans?. try using high performance low noise fans like the Corsair SP120 or Noctua NF-F12... or with a bigger 280mm radiator like the h110. the h110 have similar performance to the H100i (which its still better than the H100.) but WAAAY less louder i have a h110 in push/pull (noctua NF-A14 fans) with a FX8350@5ghz working perfectly fine and very very quiet even under stress. AIO shines really with this kind of hot chips with a larger surface area than intel tiny 155X chips.. when i've tested with my 3770K performed exactly the same as my h100i with stock fans.. when i passed to push/pull (noctua NF-F12) in the h100i it was able to outperform the h110 and i kept it and changed the h110 to the FX8350 machine.

 

[MacLeod]

Ive thought about trying some of the Corsair SP fans. Seem to get pretty good reviews. Have even thought about ditching it and going for a D15 but really like these AIO's and how little room they take up in the case. Mine isnt that terribly loud. I can run on Medium speed and keep my temps in the 40's while gaming and it doesnt get too loud.

 

[MorgothPl]

Was thinking first of H220-x, but as it's unaviable in Europe, and noone knows when it will show up here - Swiftech promises end of month, but all major resellers in Eu, I mailed, claim that they will not be selling it. since the shipping + VAT would make me pay double price of H220-x, I went for Nepton, since it was getting good reviews.

Assembling was simple, mounting was bit more problematic - Didn't want to get the board out of case, andCarbide 540 is broad, so pushing the backplate, while trying to attach the screws on pump was tricky, but doable. I put it on top, with fans pushing out the heat from the case. Unluckily, due to 540 size, push/pull on top is impossible, unless I'd get rid of the top mesh.

Results so far are nothing less of impressive. On my old Xgmatek Darkknight frostbourne, after like 1 hour of Final Fantasy (or other games) 4790K on stock was doing from 76 to 82c (on most hot core). Right now, top temp I'm getting is 62C with fans working under control of Asus Fan Expert 3, set on auto mode. they are unnoticeable. Of course, if I'd get at full speed they are loud as hell, but so far, temps are kept in check and there is no need for tchem to spin fast.

One intriguing thing - the pwm splitter has 1x4 pin that goes to CPU opt header, and then 1x4 and 1x3 pin. I wonder, why CM didn't attach 2x4 splitter, so both fans can be under PWM control (no prob so far, as Asus uses voltage control of the non-pwm fans).