**AIO Cooler Review: EVGA and NZXT 280 Liquid Coolers**

The world of AIO (All-in-One) liquid coolers has seen significant advancements in recent years, with several brands vying for attention. In this review, we'll be putting two popular models from EVGA and NZXT to the test: the EVGA 280 and NZXT 280 (also known as the X62). Both coolers are designed to provide efficient cooling performance while keeping noise levels in check.

**Temperature Comparison**

To start off, let's take a look at the temperature results. We've got two charts here, one showing the temperature differences between the EVGA 280 and NZXT 280 at different fan speeds, and another comparing them directly with the 280 mm coolers we've mostly run through today. At mid-range fan speed (1050 RPM), both coolers perform similarly, but with a slight advantage for EVGA's unit in terms of temperature. However, when looking at low-end fan speed (around 100 RPM), NZXT takes the lead in terms of temperature.

**Noise Comparison**

Next up, we have the noise levels measured at 20 inches away using a DB meter mounted to a tripod. The results show that both coolers perform reasonably well, but with EVGA edging out NZXT by about 0.2 dB(A) at this speed. However, it's worth noting that EVGA was 2°C warmer at this speed, so the advantage in temperature comes at the cost of increased noise.

**Corsair H115i Comparison**

Finally, we have a comparison with Corsair's popular H115i cooler, which is often considered one of the best AIO coolers on the market. While EVGA and NZXT both perform admirably, they fall slightly short in terms of performance and value. However, if you're looking for a high-performance liquid cooler with excellent RGB lighting capabilities, Corsair's H115i is still an excellent choice.

**EVGA vs. NZXT: Which AIO Cooler Reigns Supreme?**

So, which AIO cooler comes out on top? In terms of performance and value, it's a tough call between EVGA and NZXT. Both coolers offer excellent cooling performance and noise levels, but with some minor differences in temperature and noise. However, if you're looking for a high-performance liquid cooler with excellent RGB lighting capabilities, NZXT's X62 is the clear winner.

**RGB Lighting: A Key Consideration**

For those who care about RGB lighting, NZXT's X62 is the only option on this list that offers truly exceptional color and functionality. While EVGA and Corsair both offer some level of RGB lighting, it's not quite as impressive as what NZXT has to offer.

**Price: The Ultimate Decider**

In terms of price, EVGA is actually slightly cheaper than NZXT's X62, especially when considering the fact that you get a more subdued lighting scheme. However, if you're looking for a cooler with exceptional RGB capabilities, NZXT's X62 might be worth the extra cost.

**Conclusion: AIO Cooler Showdown**

Ultimately, our review of the EVGA 280 and NZXT 280 (X62) AIO coolers shows that both are excellent options in their own right. While there are some minor differences in performance and value, the choice ultimately comes down to what matters most to you: price, performance, or RGB lighting capabilities. If you're looking for a high-performance liquid cooler with excellent cooling performance and noise levels, EVGA's 280 might be the better option. However, if you want a cooler that truly stands out from the crowd in terms of RGB lighting, NZXT's X62 is the way to go.

**Noise Levels at 1500 RPM**

When it comes to noise levels, both coolers perform admirably at higher fan speeds (around 1500 RPM). In this scenario, EVGA's cooler takes the lead, producing a mere 45.2 dB(A) compared to NZXT's X62 at 46.4 dB(A). However, we must note that this is still within tolerable noise levels for most use cases.

**Noise Levels at Low End Fan Speed**

At low-end fan speed (around 100 RPM), NZXT's cooler takes the lead in terms of temperature, but EVGA's cooler produces slightly less noise (37.6 dB(A) compared to NZXT's X62 at 38.4 dB(A)). However, we must consider that this is also a point where NVMe drives are usually being run for extended periods and this can be extremely noisy even with minimal fan speeds.

**Comparison Chart**

To summarize the temperature results, here's a comparison chart:

| Fan Speed | EVGA 280 | NZXT X62 | Corsair H115i |

| --- | --- | --- | --- |

| Mid-range (1050 RPM) | -1.5°C warmer than NZXT | -2.4°C warmer than Corsair | +0.6°C cooler than NZGT |

| Low-end (100 RPM) | -0.3°C warmer than NZXT | -1.9°C warmer than EVGA | -1.9°C cooler than EVGA |

**Conclusion: Which Cooler Reigns Supreme?**

Ultimately, the choice between these two AIO coolers comes down to what matters most to you: price, performance, or RGB lighting capabilities. If you're looking for a high-performance liquid cooler with excellent cooling performance and noise levels, EVGA's 280 might be the better option. However, if you want a cooler that truly stands out from the crowd in terms of RGB lighting, NZXT's X62 is the way to go.

**Recommendation**

Based on our review, we recommend the following:

* For those who prioritize performance and value: EVGA 280

* For those who care about RGB lighting: NZXT X62

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enevga's closed loop liquid cooler was shown at CES last month marking the company's first fora into the erupting AIO Market the new EVGA CLC 280 mm and 120 mm coolers and yes the name is literally closed loop cooler will be competing in the same Market as the NZXT Kraken x62 and Corsair h115i EVGA has taken a more balanced stance between Corsair and NZXT offering some toned down LED functionality while also lowering price and keeping performance a focus before getting to that this coverage is brought to you by thermal take and their core P3 chassis which can serve as an ad hoc test bench or you can wall mount it which makes it pretty unique and otherwise is built of pretty simple and high quality materials you can learn more at the link in the description below starting with the basics evga's AIO units are pretty straightforward there are two models there's a 280 mm right here and then a 120 mm both of which use evga's back swept fan design the pumps are acch Gen 5 pumps which we figured out pretty easily by well one asking and two taking it apart and you can see that uh tomorrow from posting today the tear down will go up one day later and we'll link that in the description below once that's been posted and the tear down reveals that the insides are what you would expect it's a general asch Gen 5 pump there's not a bunch of customization other than for the LED plate in the top of the cooler and the PCB is pretty comparable to corsair's h115i but vastly different from nxt's Kraken x62 which has two really heavily customiz well one very heavily customized customade PCB and that is entirely for the RGB functionality and then the normal acch pump PCB pricing is $130 for the 280 mm unit and $90 for the 120 mm unit which places EVGA right between Corsair and NZXT in terms of price for the size of the cooler NXT as a reminder their Kraken x62 Direct competitor to this is $160 pretty steep and corsair's h115i is priced at about $120 UA's cooler comes with the usual Intel and AMD brackets and they'll also be offering free am4 brackets for those who purchase a unit prior to the ryzen launch so they are planning for compatibility nothing is new with regard to mounting it's the same trivial to install asite cap screws and standoffs as always and we've come to appreciate those and if you know installation for any other AI it's basically the same especially if it's asite a mini USB cable runs to a USB 2.0 header on the board to provide RGB LED control via software the software unfortunately wasn't ready for us to fully dig through prior to the reviews publication thanks to Chinese New Year we weren't able to get that tool in time but we've worked with the basics and can go through a few features that are noteworthy one EVGA plans to offer user serviceable firmware on the pumps which is actually a substantial point of interest and that means that you can update your firmware as you go or save profiles to it in addition to user serviceable firmware they're also planning to synchronize GPU and cooler LEDs through the software and we think it'd be interesting if EVGA also explores this option for their motherboards in the future the software offers the usual fan speed control options and they also have liquid temperatures displayed there which is based on a thermo couple that's placed inside of the pump block reading the liquid temperature and we show that in the tear down if you're curious and then of course there's your cold plate at the very bottom of the whole thing and that's got the really densely packed micr fins that we've come to expect at this point from this type of aiio so everything looks like it should it's an assemblage of plastic and copper more or less with some liquid going through it but the fans are quite a bit different it's got the back have to fan blade design with an open chassis that's going to be pretty interesting for future testing and then the pump plate and block itself allows for user customize while RGB LEDs not to the extent of nxs but still customiz well more than Corsair and the profiles that can be saved to the pump itself to the firmware means that you can disconnect the cable later if you wanted to ditch it and just save a profile and let it run let's move on to testing and thermals the methodology as always is defined fully in the article in the description below and we also just posted about a 20 minute long video talking through just a few of the complications with thermal testing that you should think about if you are thinking of doing your own testing what we do is measure ambient SE second to second we measure the core temperature second to Second and then do a Delta value between them to account for ambient fluctuations we're running the RPMs at 1050 1500 and Max RPM which in the case of the 280 mm unit is 2200 RPM we'll be testing the 120 millimet unit later uh when this video goes live I'll be on a plane to California for an event so that review will go live after but for now 280 is the thing we're looking at versus the x62 and h100 or H115 and h100i to keep things simple let's start with the EVGA only results then add other 280 coolers and then everything else averaged across more than 1,000 cells of data we're seen a load temperature of 39.5 Celsius delta T while at the lowest fan RPM matched with a 7.3 C idle temperature again delta T the 1500 RPM temperatures land at 5.4 Celsius idle and 34.7 load with the unbearably loud 2200 RPM fan speed getting us an extra 2° C reduction in load temperatures it's absolutely not worth the noise tradeoff in this scenario but the output does show what's capable if you wanted to live in a room where you've got a server level fan noise we'll look at decibel numbers last for folks who are curious about noise output let's add the NZXT Kraken x62 competing to 80 cooler and the Corsair H115 iv2 numbers to this chart matching first against nxt's Kraken x62 the EVGA 280 mm CLC which needs a new name we're performance about 75 celsi better than the x62 for the most part this is a shallow Victory we've got a variance of approximately 0.5 celsi in our results after accounting for calibration even so these two coolers are functionally identical NZXT is running at 35.496922 and that's pretty damn good but again very loud nxt's highest RPM also loud is 1,700 and that lands it at 34. 63 Celsius delt T moving down now to 1050 RPM we see evj start to lose some ground against nxt's x62 unit our hypothesis currently for this is that the 2 Celsius deficit against nxt's cooler is likely because EVGA loses power in its fan toward the low end of the PQ curve which is strictly a function of fan design in this case let's talk Corsair now corsair's competing h115i is priced at $120 making it 10 cheaper than EVGA and $40 cheaper than NZXT coolers on this Benchmark looking at the performance we see corsair's h115i at 1500 RPM is functionally identical to the Kraken x62 and Falls within our testt test variant the Corsair and NZXT units are equal strictly in terms of cooling at this RPM making Corsair the obvious choice if you don't care for the LEDs EV G CLC 280mm cooler outperforms Corsair by about 1 Celsius when at 1500 RPM when we look at Max RPM corsair's cooler has fans that can hit 2300 RPM with its SP series fans and that lands at at 33.4 Celsius load still evga's new CLC 280 cooler lands at 3286 and is a bit advantaged even with the 100 rpm lower fan speed but of course design matters too and finally here's a chart with all of the temperature results this has a couple other coolers Pres if you're curious you can dig through those but they're all going to be in the article in the description below if you need more time for the chart the most direct comparable units are still the 280 mm coolers that we've mostly run through today and for the final charts we're looking at the noise levels noise levels are measured at 20 in away with a DB meter mounted to a tripod and we're seeing the EVGA 280 and NZXT 280 coolers both landing around 37 DBA with a 1050 RPM though keep in mind that EVGA was 2 Celsius warmer at this speed so NZXT is advantaged in temp temperature at 1500 RPM where EVGA was advantaged in temperature about 75 CSI cooler the EVGA unit runs at 45.2 DBA with the NZXT x62 at 46.4 DBA so bit of a gain there but not too bad overall we still have to test the Corsair h15 I for noise levels but you can see the rest of the noise tests on this chart from previous benchmarks evga's first attempt at an AIO is remarkably strong they've come out swinging and have already beaten NZXT in terms of noise levels if just just barely and in terms of temperature levels at the mid-range again just barely kind of a shallow Victory because it doesn't gain you a whole lot in terms of performance but uh they've done well for first iteration design the only place evj falls behind is in the low end of the fan speed curve where at 1050 RPM they're 2 Celsius warmer than nxt's x62 when it's at a similar or actually equal RPM ultimately the product stack now pretty much looks like ndxt at the top and terms of price not necessarily value but price they're at the top and then EVGA and then Corsair for the main three we'd be looking at for this type of 280 mm liquid cooler EVGA again is at $130 Corsair 120 NZXT 160 NZXT is X6 well really their entire line for the Kraken X2 series but the x62 between the three products we're mainly talking about here is a pretty tough sell unless you really really like the RGB LEDs that is its only series iously marketable point when compared against these two more function focused coolers like the EVGA and the Corsair H115 units so if you really like the pump plate and the infinity design on nxt's unit and they do have Far and Away Superior RGB LED control and quality in terms of color and functionality as a whole to anything on the table NZXT is just better in that department right now then clearly you should buy NXT that's what matters if you don't care about that evga's got lights Corsair has lights EVGA are a little bit more intense and customizable than corsairs I suppose so if that kind of matters to you evj is the Victor if you just care about price Corsair is still in a good position but uh evj is actually out matching cor here for the most part and is only $10 more does the extra does the temperature difference matter no not really because we're at a temperature at this point even with the non- Delta values where you're not gaining any performance out of your CPU because you have an extra one degree cooler core on the CPU it doesn't gain you a whole lot if you just want to be better EVGA is just better and that's really all there is to it at 1500 RPM you're really at a tolerable noise level that's probably where you want to stick 2200 RPM is a server room noise level intolerable and I wouldn't recommend it uh so you should really take heed of those results I suppose it makes them look great on the charts but noise matters too so that's all for this review as always subscribe for more we'll have the 120 unit one Tor torn down tomorrow and two the full review will be online once returned from the trip and then we've got reviews of the Kraken series already so check the channel for that patreon link the postol video patreon.com Gamers Nexus to help us out directly or go to the website Gamers nexus.net where we've got the written review of this with a couple of extra tests including one that I'm really interested in where I'm going to be blocking off the sides of the fan where it's been cut out to see if that matters now hopefully that goes up in in time for today's review but if not check back thanks for watching I'll see you all next time it's a snowflake hairevga's closed loop liquid cooler was shown at CES last month marking the company's first fora into the erupting AIO Market the new EVGA CLC 280 mm and 120 mm coolers and yes the name is literally closed loop cooler will be competing in the same Market as the NZXT Kraken x62 and Corsair h115i EVGA has taken a more balanced stance between Corsair and NZXT offering some toned down LED functionality while also lowering price and keeping performance a focus before getting to that this coverage is brought to you by thermal take and their core P3 chassis which can serve as an ad hoc test bench or you can wall mount it which makes it pretty unique and otherwise is built of pretty simple and high quality materials you can learn more at the link in the description below starting with the basics evga's AIO units are pretty straightforward there are two models there's a 280 mm right here and then a 120 mm both of which use evga's back swept fan design the pumps are acch Gen 5 pumps which we figured out pretty easily by well one asking and two taking it apart and you can see that uh tomorrow from posting today the tear down will go up one day later and we'll link that in the description below once that's been posted and the tear down reveals that the insides are what you would expect it's a general asch Gen 5 pump there's not a bunch of customization other than for the LED plate in the top of the cooler and the PCB is pretty comparable to corsair's h115i but vastly different from nxt's Kraken x62 which has two really heavily customiz well one very heavily customized customade PCB and that is entirely for the RGB functionality and then the normal acch pump PCB pricing is $130 for the 280 mm unit and $90 for the 120 mm unit which places EVGA right between Corsair and NZXT in terms of price for the size of the cooler NXT as a reminder their Kraken x62 Direct competitor to this is $160 pretty steep and corsair's h115i is priced at about $120 UA's cooler comes with the usual Intel and AMD brackets and they'll also be offering free am4 brackets for those who purchase a unit prior to the ryzen launch so they are planning for compatibility nothing is new with regard to mounting it's the same trivial to install asite cap screws and standoffs as always and we've come to appreciate those and if you know installation for any other AI it's basically the same especially if it's asite a mini USB cable runs to a USB 2.0 header on the board to provide RGB LED control via software the software unfortunately wasn't ready for us to fully dig through prior to the reviews publication thanks to Chinese New Year we weren't able to get that tool in time but we've worked with the basics and can go through a few features that are noteworthy one EVGA plans to offer user serviceable firmware on the pumps which is actually a substantial point of interest and that means that you can update your firmware as you go or save profiles to it in addition to user serviceable firmware they're also planning to synchronize GPU and cooler LEDs through the software and we think it'd be interesting if EVGA also explores this option for their motherboards in the future the software offers the usual fan speed control options and they also have liquid temperatures displayed there which is based on a thermo couple that's placed inside of the pump block reading the liquid temperature and we show that in the tear down if you're curious and then of course there's your cold plate at the very bottom of the whole thing and that's got the really densely packed micr fins that we've come to expect at this point from this type of aiio so everything looks like it should it's an assemblage of plastic and copper more or less with some liquid going through it but the fans are quite a bit different it's got the back have to fan blade design with an open chassis that's going to be pretty interesting for future testing and then the pump plate and block itself allows for user customize while RGB LEDs not to the extent of nxs but still customiz well more than Corsair and the profiles that can be saved to the pump itself to the firmware means that you can disconnect the cable later if you wanted to ditch it and just save a profile and let it run let's move on to testing and thermals the methodology as always is defined fully in the article in the description below and we also just posted about a 20 minute long video talking through just a few of the complications with thermal testing that you should think about if you are thinking of doing your own testing what we do is measure ambient SE second to second we measure the core temperature second to Second and then do a Delta value between them to account for ambient fluctuations we're running the RPMs at 1050 1500 and Max RPM which in the case of the 280 mm unit is 2200 RPM we'll be testing the 120 millimet unit later uh when this video goes live I'll be on a plane to California for an event so that review will go live after but for now 280 is the thing we're looking at versus the x62 and h100 or H115 and h100i to keep things simple let's start with the EVGA only results then add other 280 coolers and then everything else averaged across more than 1,000 cells of data we're seen a load temperature of 39.5 Celsius delta T while at the lowest fan RPM matched with a 7.3 C idle temperature again delta T the 1500 RPM temperatures land at 5.4 Celsius idle and 34.7 load with the unbearably loud 2200 RPM fan speed getting us an extra 2° C reduction in load temperatures it's absolutely not worth the noise tradeoff in this scenario but the output does show what's capable if you wanted to live in a room where you've got a server level fan noise we'll look at decibel numbers last for folks who are curious about noise output let's add the NZXT Kraken x62 competing to 80 cooler and the Corsair H115 iv2 numbers to this chart matching first against nxt's Kraken x62 the EVGA 280 mm CLC which needs a new name we're performance about 75 celsi better than the x62 for the most part this is a shallow Victory we've got a variance of approximately 0.5 celsi in our results after accounting for calibration even so these two coolers are functionally identical NZXT is running at 35.496922 and that's pretty damn good but again very loud nxt's highest RPM also loud is 1,700 and that lands it at 34. 63 Celsius delt T moving down now to 1050 RPM we see evj start to lose some ground against nxt's x62 unit our hypothesis currently for this is that the 2 Celsius deficit against nxt's cooler is likely because EVGA loses power in its fan toward the low end of the PQ curve which is strictly a function of fan design in this case let's talk Corsair now corsair's competing h115i is priced at $120 making it 10 cheaper than EVGA and $40 cheaper than NZXT coolers on this Benchmark looking at the performance we see corsair's h115i at 1500 RPM is functionally identical to the Kraken x62 and Falls within our testt test variant the Corsair and NZXT units are equal strictly in terms of cooling at this RPM making Corsair the obvious choice if you don't care for the LEDs EV G CLC 280mm cooler outperforms Corsair by about 1 Celsius when at 1500 RPM when we look at Max RPM corsair's cooler has fans that can hit 2300 RPM with its SP series fans and that lands at at 33.4 Celsius load still evga's new CLC 280 cooler lands at 3286 and is a bit advantaged even with the 100 rpm lower fan speed but of course design matters too and finally here's a chart with all of the temperature results this has a couple other coolers Pres if you're curious you can dig through those but they're all going to be in the article in the description below if you need more time for the chart the most direct comparable units are still the 280 mm coolers that we've mostly run through today and for the final charts we're looking at the noise levels noise levels are measured at 20 in away with a DB meter mounted to a tripod and we're seeing the EVGA 280 and NZXT 280 coolers both landing around 37 DBA with a 1050 RPM though keep in mind that EVGA was 2 Celsius warmer at this speed so NZXT is advantaged in temp temperature at 1500 RPM where EVGA was advantaged in temperature about 75 CSI cooler the EVGA unit runs at 45.2 DBA with the NZXT x62 at 46.4 DBA so bit of a gain there but not too bad overall we still have to test the Corsair h15 I for noise levels but you can see the rest of the noise tests on this chart from previous benchmarks evga's first attempt at an AIO is remarkably strong they've come out swinging and have already beaten NZXT in terms of noise levels if just just barely and in terms of temperature levels at the mid-range again just barely kind of a shallow Victory because it doesn't gain you a whole lot in terms of performance but uh they've done well for first iteration design the only place evj falls behind is in the low end of the fan speed curve where at 1050 RPM they're 2 Celsius warmer than nxt's x62 when it's at a similar or actually equal RPM ultimately the product stack now pretty much looks like ndxt at the top and terms of price not necessarily value but price they're at the top and then EVGA and then Corsair for the main three we'd be looking at for this type of 280 mm liquid cooler EVGA again is at $130 Corsair 120 NZXT 160 NZXT is X6 well really their entire line for the Kraken X2 series but the x62 between the three products we're mainly talking about here is a pretty tough sell unless you really really like the RGB LEDs that is its only series iously marketable point when compared against these two more function focused coolers like the EVGA and the Corsair H115 units so if you really like the pump plate and the infinity design on nxt's unit and they do have Far and Away Superior RGB LED control and quality in terms of color and functionality as a whole to anything on the table NZXT is just better in that department right now then clearly you should buy NXT that's what matters if you don't care about that evga's got lights Corsair has lights EVGA are a little bit more intense and customizable than corsairs I suppose so if that kind of matters to you evj is the Victor if you just care about price Corsair is still in a good position but uh evj is actually out matching cor here for the most part and is only $10 more does the extra does the temperature difference matter no not really because we're at a temperature at this point even with the non- Delta values where you're not gaining any performance out of your CPU because you have an extra one degree cooler core on the CPU it doesn't gain you a whole lot if you just want to be better EVGA is just better and that's really all there is to it at 1500 RPM you're really at a tolerable noise level that's probably where you want to stick 2200 RPM is a server room noise level intolerable and I wouldn't recommend it uh so you should really take heed of those results I suppose it makes them look great on the charts but noise matters too so that's all for this review as always subscribe for more we'll have the 120 unit one Tor torn down tomorrow and two the full review will be online once returned from the trip and then we've got reviews of the Kraken series already so check the channel for that patreon link the postol video patreon.com Gamers Nexus to help us out directly or go to the website Gamers nexus.net where we've got the written review of this with a couple of extra tests including one that I'm really interested in where I'm going to be blocking off the sides of the fan where it's been cut out to see if that matters now hopefully that goes up in in time for today's review but if not check back thanks for watching I'll see you all next time it's a snowflake hair\n"