Antec Kühler 1250 H20 – Hardware Review
There are those who say: bigger is always better. A bold statement indeed. Let’s put that to the test. Antec kindly supplied us with their Kühler H20 1250. We’ve already reviewed it’s little brother, the 950, and were quite positive about it. The 1250 is twice the size, does it pack twice the punch?
Exterior
The Kühler H20 1250 looks very similar to its little brother, almost like two of them were pasted together. This is of course not the case as here we get a 240mm aluminium radiator. It comes with the two 120mm fans preinstalled, of course featuring Antec’s integrated pump design. The product as a whole looks quite pleasing and the black and white colour scheme ensures it’ll match most systems. There’s however the downside, just as with its little brother, that the fans can’t be easily replaced. Should you want to use your own preferred fans you’re out of luck. Also no additional fans are included so no push-pull configuration out of the box.
Installation
As with most all-in-one liquid coolers these days, the Antec Kühler H20 1250 is usable on a variety of CPU sockets. Its installation is very similar to the 950’s. Inside the box, you’ll find a manual explaining the installation well. There’s also a cd included containing the Grid software which is of course redundant (get the latest version off of their website). Sadly there’s no extra thermal paste included (the gray stuff that’s between the CPU and heatsink of the cooler). While the unit comes with thermal paste preapplied, when you take it off again and want to use it on a different system you’ll have to use your own. Another thing I noticed was the amount of different sections of tubing. There are 10 total points where a section of tubing meets the unit which are all possible leaking points (our own Corsair unit has 4). While I’ve never personally had any problems with leaks in all-in-one liquid coolers, it might be a cause for concern for some.
Should you wish to install 2 additional fans, 2 extra headers are provided for that in the 1250’s harness of wires. Powering everything is a single 3 pin connector which you can plug into one of your motherboards fan headers. Should you wish you use the Grid software, you’ll have to plug in the USB-cable on one of your motherboard’s USB headers. The Grid software is still the same as it was when we reviewed the 950. It’s very easy to use and offers a clean UI which is easy to navigate. Still missing is a way to set up custom fan profiles. Options available are silent mode, a performance mode and a custom mode which only lets you set one certain fan speed at that time.
Performance
In our testing, opposing the 1250 was the smaller 950 and our default CPU cooler which is also an all-in-one liquid cooler: the Corsair H100i. The Corsair also has a 240mm radiator and two 120mm fans just like the Antec 1250. As usual, we tested all coolers both on idle and 100% CPU loads to mimic daily computing and heavy gaming. Performance-wise, Antec’s cooler performs well. It in fact keeps up with the H100i while set in performance mode using the Grid software. This is quite surprising seeing that the H20 1250 is priced at around the same amount as 120mm all-in-one coolers are (which are half the size). The kicker here is the noise though. When the fans are turned up to a 100% rpm, the sound is almost unbearable.
Own Opinion
I really missed those 2 additional fans when working with the 1250. You can of course purchase additional fans yourself but it would be nice to get them included. Installing this cooler into our test system was easy enough, no CPU cooler is very easy to install really, and I would be happy to use it in future systems. That is if they don’t have to be extremely quiet.
Conclusion
The Antec Kühler H2O 1250 will satisfy most users. Its software is easy to work with and installing the unit is quite straightforward. People who aim at complete silence however should look for another alternative. Also PC-enthusiasts who are keen to do a lot of tweaking themselves, for example setting up custom fan curves, will be disappointed with the Grid software supporting this cooler.
Antec Kühler 1250 H20 - Hardware Review,
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