Yooooo what’s goin on guys Jerry Neutron here and I’m back with another video. Today we’re gonna take a look at, actually the first all-in-one cooler I’ve reviewed on this channel, this is the Antec Kuhler H2O 1250. And the thing that makes this 240mm all-in-one unit unique is that not only does it have dual pumps but they also sit just below the fans instead of over the CPU waterblock in an attempt to bring some of the heat away from the CPU.
So as you can see it comes with two 120mm PWM fans attached to the 240mm radiator. There’s also splitters on the wiring in case you want to add two additional fans in a push-pull configuration. The only bad thing about this setup is the two included fans are not easily swappable and as far as I can tell the two fans and pumps are wired together. Which is unfortunate because it takes away potential options from the user.
As for the rest of the unit you get rubber tubes connecting back to the cold plate. No issues with the tubing although it would be nice to have pivoting fittings coming out of the radiator just to give you some extra flexibility when positioning the tubing in your case. I’m not sure if that would affect the overall reliability of the unit but that’s just a small nitpick anyway.
And lastly, the waterblock has RGB lighting which either changes based on the temperature or you can manually set a color through the Antec software which I think is a pretty cool feature.
Overall first impressions are good with this cooler.
Now that did change a little bit once it was time to install the 1250. The install instructions are clear and you do get everything you need to install this on current Intel and AMD sockets however there are a few things I was not a fan of.
Number one is the backplate, it’s plastic and it comes with adhesive strips to secure it to your motherboard. Now I don’t know about you but I’m not too crazy about sticking anything to my motherboard. Hopefully it’s not too much of a pain to remove if I decide to go with another cooler. I’d like to see them go the be quiet! route and give us a metal backplate with pre-installed foam on the end that is secured against the motherboard.
I’m also not crazy about the mounting method for the CPU waterblock. There are small threaded metal inserts that snap into the backplate and pass through the motherboard and on the other side you have to screw the waterblock into these inserts. It was kind of a pain to do so while making sure everything was lined up properly and it took a while to do. Honestly I’d just like to see a completely revised installation method.
But once you finally get over that hump, everything looks pretty good installed. Gimmie a thumbs up if you agree!
Antec also has GRID software which allows you to change things like LED color or switch between preset fan curves. It even lets you set a static fan RPM and save a log of your temps. In the future I’d like to have the ability to set my own custom fan curve that way I can tailor the noise levels to my liking. Aside from that my only gripe with the GRID software is that it looks absolutely terrible. Like something out of a low level programming class. It’s functional but man a re-design would benefit them greatly.
Noise-wise this thing can get pretty loud but here’s a sample of my entire system running with the cooler at about 1200RPM.
Now during benchmarking, I ran the system on the Extreme preset which maxes the fans at about 2000RPM. I don’t expect anyone to actually run the cooler with the fans at this RPM because it is insanely loud but I did want to show the maximum cooling potential of this all-in-one unit.
At idle, my AMAZING CPU, the best and fastest one on the planet aka the A10-5800K running at 4.2GHz was sitting at 39*C.
Oh and btw, don’t buy a $100 CPU and $100 cooler, that’s just not smart. I didn’t pay for this so yeah…
Anyway, after about 25 min. of Prime 95, under load it reached 57*C which seemed way too close in comparison to the Dark Rock TF. And I thought, maybe my case is holding me back based on it’s top cover design. So I took it off and my temps almost instantly dropped 5* so one thing to note here is case selection is important with these coolers. Something like an Enthoo Pro should work a lot better with a top mounted radiator. It’s likely gonna be louder but if you want max cooling you need to be able to push that heat out ASAP.
So in conclusion, the 1250 seems to perform pretty well, albeit at the sacrifice of your ears but it just seems like it needs some improvements in user friendliness across the board. Once Antec can do that they should have a solid product on their hands.
That’s about it guys! Leave a comment down below letting me know what you think of this all-in-one cooler from Antec. If you don’t have anything to say, just leave the comment Blue Powerade down below.
Don’t forget to like this video if you’ve found it helpful or entertaining, subscribe for more similar content and until next time…see ya!
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