EVGA CLC 280mm All-In-One RGB LED CPU Liquid Cooler, 2x FX13 140mm PWM Fans, Intel, AMD, 5 YR Warranty

I purchased this 280MM cooler after the original 120 CLC cooler by EVGA wasnt cutting my needs. This offers exceptional cooling capabilities and offers most bang for buck vs competitors. Read below for a more detailed review.Packaging - So for newbie builders (such as myself) let me first start off by saying that the box this ships in is rather huge! The packaging of of this cooler is really big and for a moment feels intimidating when thinking that you'll have to fit this in your tower. The box came packaged in a shiny black sleeve with EVGA's branding over it. The brown box slides out easily and there is only one sticker/seal that you have to slice in order to get to the goodies inside. Inside the actual cooling block has thermal paste (by Shin Etsu) pre-applied and is of great quality, this is all protected by a plastic covering and is neatly tucked in between its foam cutouts. The radiator is the biggest thing in the box (obviously) and is also tucked away neatly in the foam cutouts with all of its cables/wires folded and tied. Overall presentation and packaging upon opening is excellent. There is also a small opening in the foam in the middle that is housing several ziplock bags full of all different screws and clamps and brackets, all neatly labeled for what board you are using them for (AMD vs Intel).Installation - One word, EASY! As a novice builder, making my 2nd pc after 15 years this was super easy to install and i had no trouble with it whatsoever. The first thing i did was take the plastic cover off the block and swap the pre-installed Intel mounting bracket with the AMD one included. All you have to do is turn it counter-clockwise and it will pop right off (use a bit of force, dont be afraid it wont break). Once i did that (i put the plastic cover back on to protect the thermal paste) i began to install the radiator. In my Phanteks P400 case the only space i had for such a huge radiator was the front of my system (attached a pic for reference). I had to remove the original preinstalled case fan to the top of my case otherwise this wouldnt fit, it practically takes up the entire front space. Once the radiator was installed i was able to pop the block right onto the cpu mount, line it up perfectly and start tightening it down. One step i forgot to mention is that you need to install the mount bracket to your mother board prior to anything else so that your cpu block can rest on that, these are the screws that are double sided, they screw into the plastic bracket usually underneath the motherboard and then the brackets of the cpu clamp just slide on top and you close the top with another screw. More detailed instructions are in the included booklet - Overall very straight forward and easyPerformance - I have thrown literally every game and ultra settings (paired with a GTX 1080TI) and have never had my processor go above 47 degrees (celcius). I enabled a feature in the EVGA flow process APP to have the RGB lighting indicate if the temp is running hot. Blue means its cool and red means its getting hot. This has never turned red even once and i have had gaming sessions (including gamestreaming to a shield tv) for multiple hours at a time, no heating issues whatsoever. Compared to the 120MM CLC model, that one used to get hot after about 30 minutes of playing an intensive game like Doom 2016. It would then force pressure on the rest of the system causing my graphics card fan to go insane (honestly not 100% sure if this was interrelated but it stopped happening once i got this clc). This offers better performance (in my opinion) than the Nzxt Kraken or other CLC CPU coolers out there. Another important factor is the noise level. I can barely here this thing when its in my Phanteks P400 case. There is minimal to no noise at all of the radiator fans.Quality - The build quality of this is exceptional. It feels like a premium product and the most important part, the tubes, are braided strongly and dont look like they will wear out or break. I was not scared at all that i may be bending them too much or that they could snap off easily.Overall Result - The EVGA CLC 280 Liquid / Water CPU Cooler is (in my opinion) the best liquid cooler (asides from custom water loop coolers) that you can buy in the market now for your CPU. It is very competitively priced and offers superior cooling compared to is little brother variants and competition. It also offers little to no fan noise which makes it pleasant to sit next to and game for multiple hours without feeling like you're at an airport tarmac! I highly recommend this to anyone with the budget to spend, plans to do extensive gaming and would like to have a liquid cooled CPU without spending hundreds of dollars on a custom water cooled setup. Dont hesitate before buying this. EVGA has made another high quality product.

This 280mm aio installed easily in my Phanteks p350x case. I had read some reviews on my case saying a 280mm radiator would not fit in the front without modifying the front panel switch housing, but this fit just fine with no mods needed. All necessary hardware was included to mount it configured with the fans between the radiator and case sucking in fresh air and blowing it over the radiator.I have the fans connected to my motherboard's cpu fan headers and the pump connected to the aio pump header on my Asus Prime X470 Pro motherboard. I am using my bios to control the fan and pump speeds instead of the EVGA Flow software. I tried the software and it's definitely the worst part of this product. It lets you set a curve for the fans, but you can only manually adjust the pump speed. I only installed it to change the color of the leds.Using my bios to set the fan and pump speed curves worked just fine. The pump is set to stay at 60% and then ramp up to 80% at 60 C and then 100% at 67 C. The fans stay at 20% until 60 and then ramp up to a max of 80% at 67. At set idle speeds the pump is slightly audible. With the case on the floor about 4 feet from me it makes a quiet high pitched whine. It's only noticeable in a silent room and not if I am watching video or playing games or music. The included 140mm fans are near silent at 20%, making a low pitch wooshing air sound and not obnoxious. I could set them even lower and they would be inaudible, but I like at least some airflow through the case at all times.I recently upgraded from a Ryzen 5 2600 to a new 3600. The 3600 boosts higher, so it generates more heat. I had a Scythe Mugen 5 Rev. B cooler. Under heavy load gaming the 3600 was reaching 83 C, which isn't horrible, but it was thermal throttling slightly under the heaviest loads and wouldn't go over 4 ghz. After installing this AIO it now boosts to its maximum at 4.2 ghz and maxes out at 65 C with the pump at 80% and fans at 60%. It would run eve cooler with higher pump and fan speed, but I like to keep noise to a minimum. My Vega 56 GPU has also benefited and runs cooler without the top 140mm case fans blocked by a large cpu heatsink. The air coming through the aio radiator blows over the gpu and is still capable of cooling the gpu.I am very happy with this AIO. It exceeded my expectations performance wise, and the poor software can be overlooked since my motherboard does a better job by itself anyways. The software did accurately report the temperatures of my Ryzen cpu at least. I have read other reviews saying it had issues with Ryzen, but those appear to have been fixed.Sorry for the poor photo, my old phone does not do well in low light and my case needs a cleaning.