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Wading into the deep end of the pool
Deepcool has been around for 18 years, but it’s kept out of the closed-loop liquid cooling (CLC) fray until now. Its Gamer Storm series includes several CLCs, and the Maelstrom 240 is the top of the line. It’s a sleek red-and-black affair with ribbed tubing, sleeved cables, and a slowly pulsing logo on the top of the pump. They’ve clearly put some work into visual appeal. But since the CLC market has gotten pretty crowded in the last couple of years, we’ll need to see performance to match.
Installation is fairly standard. You get two sets of brackets for the pump, one for AMD and one for Intel. Pre-installation of the Intel bracket is common now, but Deepcool leaves that part off. It only takes a minute to put the brackets on, though, and it gives us an appreciation for their machining—these thick pieces of metal are unlikely to bend or dent. The backplate is also thick metal, as are the screws that go through and get secured on the other side.
The cabling is a bit funny, though. Instead of using a splitter cable, Deepcool opted for a triangular bar a few inches long that acts as a fan hub. You get adhesive to stick the bar to a flat surface inside the case, but the gadget itself seems an unnecessary expense. Many builders also prefer to hide as much of their cabling as possible, which makes the hub’s relative bulk a little tricky. On the bright side, the hub has connectors to hook up two additional fans.
Spin City
Speaking of fans, the Maelstrom’s are encased in hard TPE rubber, which is clever. It helps to reduce noise in a way that doesn’t require extra widgets or finicky installation. You just treat them like normal fans, although you have to be careful not to overtorque the screws (the rubber has more give around the corners of the fan).
The Maelstrom doesn’t come with software to control the fans, but the light on the pump at least indicates the unit is running. Besides, we can use the “Fan Xpert” software on our Asus Rampage IV mobo. On the "silent” setting, we got good performance when idle and under load, though the cooler didn’t perform at the highest tier. When we switched to “Turbo,” the fans spun up louder than usual, and the temperatures weren’t as good as the noise level would indicate. So at the 240mm level, Corsair still has the best performance we’ve seen (though its software can be tricky). 280mm coolers, such as the Cooler Master Nepton 280L, still reign supreme in the CLC department. But we can’t recommend those universally because the majority of cases on the market aren’t large enough.
The gap between the Maelstrom 240 and the Corsair H100i is only a few degrees Celsius, but it means the H100i can also handle higher CPU voltages when overclocking. And the Corsair unit has a five-year warranty, whereas the Maelstrom has a more standard three-year plan. The Maelstrom 240’s retail availability was also unclear as this issue went to press. So, if we needed to buy a 240mm CLC right now, it would still be Corsair’s H100i.
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Deepcool has been around for 18 years, but it’s kept out of the closed-loop liquid cooling (CLC) fray until now. Its Gamer Storm series includes several CLCs, and the Maelstrom 240 is the top of the line. It’s a sleek red-and-black affair with ribbed tubing, sleeved cables, and a slowly pulsing logo on the top of the pump. They’ve clearly put some work into visual appeal. But since the CLC market has gotten pretty crowded in the last couple of years, we’ll need to see performance to match.
The cabling is a bit funny, though. Instead of using a splitter cable, Deepcool opted for a triangular bar a few inches long that acts as a fan hub. You get adhesive to stick the bar to a flat surface inside the case, but the gadget itself seems an unnecessary expense. Many builders also prefer to hide as much of their cabling as possible, which makes the hub’s relative bulk a little tricky. On the bright side, the hub has connectors to hook up two additional fans.
Spin City
Speaking of fans, the Maelstrom’s are encased in hard TPE rubber, which is clever. It helps to reduce noise in a way that doesn’t require extra widgets or finicky installation. You just treat them like normal fans, although you have to be careful not to overtorque the screws (the rubber has more give around the corners of the fan).
The Maelstrom doesn’t come with software to control the fans, but the light on the pump at least indicates the unit is running. Besides, we can use the “Fan Xpert” software on our Asus Rampage IV mobo. On the "silent” setting, we got good performance when idle and under load, though the cooler didn’t perform at the highest tier. When we switched to “Turbo,” the fans spun up louder than usual, and the temperatures weren’t as good as the noise level would indicate. So at the 240mm level, Corsair still has the best performance we’ve seen (though its software can be tricky). 280mm coolers, such as the Cooler Master Nepton 280L, still reign supreme in the CLC department. But we can’t recommend those universally because the majority of cases on the market aren’t large enough.
The gap between the Maelstrom 240 and the Corsair H100i is only a few degrees Celsius, but it means the H100i can also handle higher CPU voltages when overclocking. And the Corsair unit has a five-year warranty, whereas the Maelstrom has a more standard three-year plan. The Maelstrom 240’s retail availability was also unclear as this issue went to press. So, if we needed to buy a 240mm CLC right now, it would still be Corsair’s H100i.
More...