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Maldives, Malรฉ
1 Level
727 Review
68 Karma

Review on ๐ŸŒ€ NZXT Kraken X62 280mm - CAM-Powered AIO Liquid Cooler with Infinity Mirror Design and Aer P140mm Radiator Fans by Alex Tilden

Revainrating 2 out of 5

NZXT has a well-deserved reputation for their terrible CAM software, and you need it to set up your Kraken.

It performed better than reviews leading me to believe it would run with noise and cooling performance with a 2700x processor running 24x7 Folding @ home. Control the fans by connecting them to the headers on the motherboard. You want to use as little CAM control software as possible. The current version when I built the machine was fine, causing no problems and obeying my settings of not polling/monitoring other hardware. In the two latest versions, it tries to read data from a special chip on my motherboard to monitor non-standard devices and results in a fatal error each time. A hard fault is defined here when the motherboard goes haywire when you turn it off and won't turn back on until you turn off the power supply AND the open circuit voltage on the capacitors in the power supply is cleared. Luckily, CAM takes the time to figure out what I banned it from, so I was able to easily and hastily uninstall it without going into safe mode. Unfortunately, if you're dumb enough to connect your fans to the Kraken instead of the motherboard, the CAM software is required to set the pump speed, control heatsink fans, and the color scheme. Shutting down the computer it's in is long enough to reset the standby voltage, long enough to go to the standard LED layout, and you have to use CAM to reset it. It doesn't seem to remember the pump speed settings, which is why you're stuck with it. Hopefully a future version of CAM will address this issue, but Data Corruption Roulette is a crappy game that should be played essentially for aesthetic reasons. If I had to do it again knowing what I know now. I probably would have spent more money to build a Noctua NF-A12x25, replacing the Corsair H150 or H115 and skipping the NZXT's ALMOST unforgivable handling issues, not to mention the spy aspect, which I also find intolerable. I'll sort it out within the next year or two and just throw it away (although I still have a week to return it) and move on to something else. I would advise avoiding NZXT AIO until they have installed a few years of CAM uptime. software releases. Trust the haters on the internet. In the case of NZXT CAM, it worked well and has worked for a long time. Last update 10/05/2018: I replaced the x62 that the fan replaced with Noctua NF-A14 fans (much quieter and better than the included NZXT fans), with the Noctua fan using the NF-a12x25 NH heatsink assembly -D15 SE replaced -AM4. The temperatures rose by 2-4 degrees under full load, but clock and performance remained the same. In fact, the system processor runs slightly colder in games and in idle/light mode. So my worst case peak temp with the Noctua solution is 68C in Prime 95 Small FFt versus 65C with Kraken sound. The Noctua solution is so quiet that I have to physically put my ear to the case to hear anything, whereas with the Kraken x62 I was always able to at least hear the pump noise. The pump was relatively quiet, if you scratched your hand the sound of the pump was muffled but it was uncomfortable to hear. For many reasons, I suggest you use something other than NZXT. I gave x62.

Pros
  • Internals
Cons
  • poorly thought out

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