If it weren’t for the branding on the Kühler H20 620’s fan and water block, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for a Corsair product. Its mounting bracket is the exact same one used in Corsair’s Hydro H50 and H70 coolers, while its radiator looks like the H50’s and the pump unit looks like the H70’s. Is this a case of industrial espionage?
The answer is less sordid, but still full of intrigue. The reason that the Antec Kühler H2O 620 looks like Corsair’s last two coolers is that, well, that’s basically what it is. Antec has tapped Asetek, the OEM behind the Corsair H50 and H70, for its Kühler series, which feature’s Asetek’s newest pump unit and radiator.
Antec’s Kühler series looks just like Corsair’s earlier coolers, and there’s a reason for that.
While the new pump unit and radiator might look familiar, the Kühler 620 sports some features that are distinct from its Corsair-branded predecessors. First, its liquid-bearing tubes are smooth and rubbery rather than corrugated and plastic-feeling, and they feel more flexible. Second, the little plastic adapters that let you swap the mounting bracket between LGA 775, 1155/1156, and 1366 are green and blue instead of black. Finally, the radiator fan plugs into a lead on the pump unit, and the pump unit plugs into the CPU_FAN header. Previous coolers had both the fan and pump plug into the mother-board, which can lead to confusion. This system eliminates that confusion.
Installation of the Kühler 620 is easy. The 12cm fan and radiator mount in place of your case’s rear exhaust fan, and the pump/heat-exchanger unit is held tight against the CPU by a familiar backplate/clamp combination. The clamp has a series of barbs around the edge that correspond to ledges around the pump unit; once the pump unit is against the CPU, you turn the cooler a few degrees to match the barbs and ledges, then tighten the mounting mechanism to the backplate. We only had one slight issue—it’s very easy to overtighten the mounting screws and strain the blue 1156/1366 screw adapters on the mounting bracket.
Once installed, the Kühler H2O 620 performed well. At 100 percent CPU load on all cores using Intel’s custom Lynnfield thermal utility, the Kühler brought our overclocked CPU to 65.75 C—slightly cooler than Corsair’s H60, and 2 C cooler than the H50. At idle, though, the Kühler was the worst of the bunch, at 38 C with zero CPU activity. None of the liquid coolers outperformed our dual-fan Prolimatech Armageddon, our air-cooling champion.
The Antec Kühler H2O 620 performs better than the Corsair H50, which is built on the same framework, and the Corsair H60, which isn’t. It’s also $5 cheaper than the former and $10 cheaper than the latter. This is a whole lot of cooling with not a lot of noise, for not a lot of dough.
$70, www.antec.com
Great performance; smooth tubing.
Slightly pressure-sensitive mounting bracket.
| Antec H20 620 | Corsair Hydro H60 | Corsair Hydro H50 | Promilatech Armageddon Air Cooler (2 fans) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Idle (C) | 38.5 | 37.5 | 36.25 | 35 |
| 100% Burn (C) | 65.75 | 66.75 | 68 | 62.5 |
Idle temperatures were measured after an hour of inactivity; load temperatures were measured after an hour running Intel’s internal Lynnfield thermal testing utility at 100 percent load. Test system consists of Intel Core i5-750 overclocked to 3.2GHz on an Asus P7P55D Premium board in a Corsair 800D case with stock fans. Temperatures taken with HWMonitor.
jeremy39
February 12, 2012 at 8:32am
I would like to see AMD benchmarks as well. Not everyone is an Intel Zombie or are you becoming MaximumIntelPC?
Riskjudge911
April 21, 2011 at 9:42am
Ok I been off the track for awhile but isn't this Maximum PC? What happened to the Maximum? If you want to really see how well this sucker and the others cool..then get an I7-920..clock that bad boy to 4.2GHz and then lets see who wins..this overclock to 3.2GHz is a joke..I want to see the maximum not the "minimum"..a 2.4Ghz to 3.2GHz is a no brainer..
titan8813
April 18, 2011 at 5:34pm
Is Intel the NVidia of the CPU world? I have an AMD x4 840 that idles at 22C and never eclipses 55 under load... with the H50. Even overclocked the numbers weren't near what that i5 appears to be putting out with your test machine. Both processors are 95-watt so it's not an issue of TDP. Maybe you should mention what the ambient room temperature was during testing?
kiaghi7
April 18, 2011 at 2:58pm
At the end of the day, the contained liquid-cooled solutions are not as effective as even mid-range air-cooling solutions.
Megahalems style towers can beat it by multiple degrees in idle or load, with a methodology that is fail-proof! Even if both fans die, the heat sink is still a heat sink, however if the pump dies in the liquid cooling solution you've literally got a heater-core that isn't exchanging any heat sitting right on top of the heat source.
This isn't to knock proper liquid cooling systems, but the self-contained solutions are dubious at best... Meanwhile the highest end air cooling solutions are just that much better still. For instance dual-tower cooling solutions can potentially be as good as even some of the better liquid cooling solutions, for instance the exceedingly dubious and suspect review of the NH-D14 on MPC isn't aired out in other independent testing, especially with a triple fan array, particularly if they are all 140mm... If you've got room for the NH-D14 to begin with, you want 3 fans, and if you can you're going 140mm!
But I digress...
The sacrifice in performance here, potential longevity of the cooling mechanism, and possibly of catastrophic failure simply aren't off-set by the ability to say you have a liquid cooled system.
Fail-proof with superior capability trumps box-top selling points any day...
MattyMattMatt
April 18, 2011 at 1:51pm
And yet, it's still beat by air.
I would've really liked to have known how it compares to the H70. What about if it's setup in push-pull?
MrBlueCheese
April 19, 2011 at 12:30am
"I would've really liked to have known how it compares to the H70"
Here's how it compares (with the H70)
Benchmark H70 H60 H50 Armageddon Air Antec H20
Idle (C) 33.25 37.5 36.25 35 38.5
100% burn (C) 51.25 66.75 68 62.5 65.75
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