The Chilling Conclusion!! EK Predator 280 & GPU Block Expansion

The Ecosystem Kit (EK) Barter Cooler is a new liquid cooling solution designed to simplify the process of installing water cooling components on high-end PC builds. The system consists of three main components: a radiator, a reservoir, and a pump. To build this custom loop, users can simply attach the barter cooler to their existing motherboard, remove any air cooling components from their GPU, and install the EK barter fans onto the radiator.

In terms of performance, the EK Barter Cooler demonstrated impressive results in our testing. When stress testing the system with a high-temperature setting, we saw a significant drop in GPU temperatures compared to traditional air cooling solutions. The EK Barter Cooling System kept the GPU at 59°C maximum and averaged out at around 56°C Celsius, whereas the original air cooled system reached temperatures of up to 73°C. However, it's worth noting that these results may vary depending on individual system configurations and ambient temperatures.

Another notable result from our testing was the significant reduction in noise levels when using the EK Barter Cooling System compared to traditional air cooling solutions. With both systems running at maximum fan speeds, we were able to achieve a level of acoustic quietness comparable to stock factory settings, but without compromising performance or airflow.

Our system configuration consisted of an MSI motherboard with the new EK barter cooler installed, along with the necessary components such as fans and tubing. To ensure that our testing was fair and comparable, we also ran stress tests on the same GPU using both traditional air cooling solutions and the new EK Barter Cooling System. These stress tests involved running a series of high-temperature simulations to push the system's performance limits.

Our results from these stress tests were impressive, with significant improvements in both temperature levels and power consumption compared to traditional air cooling solutions. In this specific setup, we saw improved temperatures, along with reduced power consumption and increased overclocking headroom, as well as a more significant reduction in GPU temperatures.

The introduction of the EK Barter Cooling System has provided PC enthusiasts with a convenient and efficient solution for upgrading their systems from stock air cooling to custom liquid cooling configurations. By making the installation process much simpler, this new system allows users to take full advantage of high-end components like water coolers while minimizing time and effort.

To further test the capabilities of our system, we ran the same stress tests as before using a different GPU, the Ada 64, with all overclocking settings set to their maximum values. To ensure that our testing was consistent across multiple configurations, we also connected the EK Barter Fans to the motherboard CPU fan header, which allowed us to control them through our custom fan curve software.

Our results from these stress tests were impressive, as we saw significant improvements in both temperature levels and power consumption compared to traditional air cooling solutions. In this specific setup, we saw improved temperatures, along with reduced power consumption and increased overclocking headroom.

The convenience and efficiency of the EK Barter Cooling System made it a joy to work with during our testing phase. The system's ease of use and quick installation process allowed us to easily swap out traditional air cooling components for the new liquid cooling solution without any major issues or concerns. As a result, we were able to complete our testing cycle much more quickly than expected.

The introduction of the EK Barter Cooling System represents a significant improvement in the world of custom liquid cooling solutions. With its simple and efficient design, this new system provides PC enthusiasts with a convenient way to upgrade their systems from stock air cooling to high-performance liquid cooling configurations. Whether you're looking for improved performance, reduced power consumption, or increased overclocking headroom, the EK Barter Cooling System is definitely worth considering.

In terms of cost, the EK Barter Cooling System falls in line with other high-end custom liquid cooling solutions on the market. With a price tag ranging from $300 to $400, depending on individual system configurations and component requirements, this solution offers an excellent value for PC enthusiasts looking to upgrade their systems from stock air cooling.

To summarize our experience with the EK Barter Cooling System, we were impressed by its performance, efficiency, and ease of use. With its simple design and quick installation process, this new system provides PC enthusiasts with a convenient way to upgrade their systems from stock air cooling to high-performance liquid cooling configurations. Whether you're looking for improved performance, reduced power consumption, or increased overclocking headroom, the EK Barter Cooling System is definitely worth considering.

In conclusion, our testing of the EK Barter Cooling System has provided us with impressive results and a solid understanding of its capabilities and limitations. With its simple design, quick installation process, and improved performance compared to traditional air cooling solutions, this new system offers an excellent value for PC enthusiasts looking to upgrade their systems from stock air cooling.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey Chris hey Kyle I have the new son Wings 3 here I think you're going to love them nice can't wait to check these out thanks by the way my car broke down and I was wondering if you Kyle what the whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa hey hey hey stop it stop it don't no no what's happening hey be quiet in here oh oh Kyle wasn't prepared to be blown away by the new silent Wings 3 fans from be quiet are you for a cooler quieter system click on the link in the description for more info what's up guys so for the sake of argument let's assume that lately you've been tossing around the idea of trying your hand at custom water cooling it seems a part of you can't shake the burning desire to experience those chilly Temps higher overclocks and glorious Acoustics that come with a robust liquid cooled setup you've been fantasizing about your dream Loop for so long now there's hardly any room left for Emma Watson's feet at the same time you'd be treading in uncharted waters and you're still unsure if the challenges and time invested are worth the pay off not to mention The Upfront cost would bleed your bank account dry and you'll need some disposable income left over in case antec ever starts making good products again truth be told you've been sitting on the fence for so long it's starting to look kind of infected but there may still be hope for you yet because the products we're testing out today offer a middle ground solution that rival the performance you might expect from a custom Loop without the hassle or extreme cost from the folks over at EK comes their critically acclaimed Predator AO now offered with 280 mm RADS and a pre-filled GPU water block to easily expand that loop with quick disconnect technology in theory this should provide a seamless water cooled solution to help you optimize your system to its fullest so today we'll be outfitting our aircooled gaming PC here with all the editor fixes and measuring any improvements we might see in temps Acoustics and overclocking personally I'm just glad there's no chance of this happening again on that note the test system we'll be using resides in the infamously inverted Corsair 600c which was actually one of the few chassis I had on hand that could fit the Predator 280 comfortably instead of being built into the water block the pump and wiring is positioned next to the radiator making it the biggest 280 AIO on the market if you're case claims to support 280 mm radiators you might want to triple check the forums to make sure it can fit this one being chilled by Cooler Masters hyper 212 Evo we have a core i5 6600 k for our CPU on an Asus z170 Deluxe with 16 gigs of gskill trident Z at 3200 our video card is the gaming X GTX 1080 from MSI which I recently did a review on powered by an EVGA 650 wat GQ and a 1 tbte crucial mx200 SSD for our OS and applications a trio of Corsair AF 140 quiet Edition fans were also used for dual intakes and a rear exhaust on this aircooled system I was able to take the 6600k to a stable 4.7 GHz at 1.35 volts which hit a Max temp of 78° C after 30 minutes of concurrent stress testing with Ada 64 and unen Heaven 4.0 it's a bit toastier than most Gamers would like to see but honestly not half bad for the $30 hyper 212 of course chances are you won't be stress testing your CPU in the background while gaming so with just Heaven 4.0 running the CPU maxed out at a much cooler 66° C maxing out the power and temp targets are Factory overclock GTX 1060 was pushed even further with a core clock offset of 155 MHz that took the max core clock frequency to 2.1 GHz though the chip quickly backed down to a constant 2050 our memory clock received an offset of 370 MHz taking it to a clock speed hovering in the 1340s the GPU hit 78° C leaving much room for improvement for our Predator setup as for Acoustics here's what the system sounds like after running Heaven 4.0 for about 15 minutes as you might have heard the noise is audible but stays fairly quiet under load and shouldn't prove distracting to even those with sensitive hearing especially if you're listening to in-game sound after conducting our air cool tests I went ahead and installed the Predator Hardware which was actually quite easy I guess that's kind of the point after all mounting the GPU block is just like installing any of ek's standard blocks which involves a bunch of screwing throwing down some thermal pads and thermal grease and more screwing I do think the screws could be a bit higher quality especially since the four screws surrounding the GPU need to be tightened as much as possible and it felt like I was close to stripping them once or twice but overall this was a straightforward procedure the CPU AO installs much like any other competitor though the fans come pre-mounted to the radiator and I had to flip them around in order to set them to intake air at the front of our chassis once everything's installed attaching the quick disconnects literally takes 5 seconds and is the easiest thing ever all without leaking a single drop of fluid be warned however that you're likely to end up with a lot of excess tubing unless Building inside of a massive case so you may have to restrain the tubes with zip ties or velcro straps to keep them from interfering with objects like your s panel or chassis fans also what's up with that GPU sag it seems removing the air cooler leaves your PCB a bit flimsier than it was hopefully EK can solve this by including some sort of support bracket or back plate in the future cuz the MSI back plate I carried over from our GTX 1080 didn't seem to correct the droop at all so for an Apple's to Apples comparison I initially ran the Ada 64 in unen stress test on our Now liquid cooled PC with all the same overclock settings and look at this the better thermal conditions actually pushed our GPU boost clock to 2.1 GHz a 63 MHz improvement over air without touching a single setting GPU temps fell all the way down to 59° Max and averaged out at around 56° C with an ambient temp of 81° f pretty neat during this stress test our CPU saw less impressive temps reaching 71° C and only going as low as 67° C while gaming the temperatures here could stand to be a bit cooler so perhaps more time should be spent adjusting the fan curve to create the thermal and acoustic profiles we comfortable with before we dive into the Acoustics demo I should mention the EK barter fans were connected to the motherboard CPU fan header which was controlled via a custom fan curve I set up in the Bios this was the same fan curve and testing methodology used for those Corsair af-1 140s we heard earlier what was already a pretty quiet experience with the air cold system is made even quieter with the introduction of the AO it also means we could probably set a more aggressive fan curve to further improve thermals without being a nuisance to our ears so at this point it's not a huge shock that switching over to water cooling allowed us to hit the same settings with lower temps and Acoustics but the final question remains how much more were we able to overclock the system Within These cooler operating parameters well I failed to get the CPU to hit 4.8 GHz without exceeding unsafe voltages but I was able to maintain our 4.7 GHz frequency with a lower VC core of just 1.32 volts although this is just a 03 volt difference coming from Air it's still a noteworthy bump and power efficiency and may even help to extend the lifespan of our CPU on the GPU side of things we gain 20 MHz on the core clock and 30 MHz on the memory clock giving us a constant core clock speed of 2113 MHz and a memory clock of 1350 MHz overall switching to liquid gave us a 63 MHz increase on the core clock which isn't spectacular but it is something I guess the takeaway here is don't expect your frame rates to Skyrocket from slapping on a couple of these water blocks it seems the real gains made today were primarily in temperatures and Acoustics speaking of which here's a final back-to-back sound test with all three configurations we looked at today on a final note this liquid cooling duo will set you back $300 or $400 which I'd only consider affordable if comparing it to the cost of buying all the water cooling Hardware separately so without prolonging the inevitable question any longer is it worth it well if performance is the only thing you're after I can't say the solution is a worthwhile investment since we couldn't get the CPU to go any faster and we only saw a minor speed increase with our GTX 1080 the upshot is that if you're suffering from my video card is on fire syndrome our GPU temps drop 22° C coming coming from Air which is absolutely insane CPU temps were a tad underwhelming in our setup but then again the loop runs so damn quietly there's definitely room to push the fans harder while maintaining a reasonable sound profile the final appeal here is convenience and Time Savings a lot of us want that custom water cooled experience but lack the time or patience to take the plunge so EK has really done a bang up job here to make the entire process super quick and easy if you're looking for the kind of results we saw here today and you've got a few hundos to spend then maybe you should buy this thing but that is going to do it for now guys so before you go don't forget to toss me a like on this video If you enjoyed it and feel free to check out my store for shirts in all shapes and sizes actually they're all the same shape as always thank you guys for watching subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and I will see you all in the next videohey Chris hey Kyle I have the new son Wings 3 here I think you're going to love them nice can't wait to check these out thanks by the way my car broke down and I was wondering if you Kyle what the whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa hey hey hey stop it stop it don't no no what's happening hey be quiet in here oh oh Kyle wasn't prepared to be blown away by the new silent Wings 3 fans from be quiet are you for a cooler quieter system click on the link in the description for more info what's up guys so for the sake of argument let's assume that lately you've been tossing around the idea of trying your hand at custom water cooling it seems a part of you can't shake the burning desire to experience those chilly Temps higher overclocks and glorious Acoustics that come with a robust liquid cooled setup you've been fantasizing about your dream Loop for so long now there's hardly any room left for Emma Watson's feet at the same time you'd be treading in uncharted waters and you're still unsure if the challenges and time invested are worth the pay off not to mention The Upfront cost would bleed your bank account dry and you'll need some disposable income left over in case antec ever starts making good products again truth be told you've been sitting on the fence for so long it's starting to look kind of infected but there may still be hope for you yet because the products we're testing out today offer a middle ground solution that rival the performance you might expect from a custom Loop without the hassle or extreme cost from the folks over at EK comes their critically acclaimed Predator AO now offered with 280 mm RADS and a pre-filled GPU water block to easily expand that loop with quick disconnect technology in theory this should provide a seamless water cooled solution to help you optimize your system to its fullest so today we'll be outfitting our aircooled gaming PC here with all the editor fixes and measuring any improvements we might see in temps Acoustics and overclocking personally I'm just glad there's no chance of this happening again on that note the test system we'll be using resides in the infamously inverted Corsair 600c which was actually one of the few chassis I had on hand that could fit the Predator 280 comfortably instead of being built into the water block the pump and wiring is positioned next to the radiator making it the biggest 280 AIO on the market if you're case claims to support 280 mm radiators you might want to triple check the forums to make sure it can fit this one being chilled by Cooler Masters hyper 212 Evo we have a core i5 6600 k for our CPU on an Asus z170 Deluxe with 16 gigs of gskill trident Z at 3200 our video card is the gaming X GTX 1080 from MSI which I recently did a review on powered by an EVGA 650 wat GQ and a 1 tbte crucial mx200 SSD for our OS and applications a trio of Corsair AF 140 quiet Edition fans were also used for dual intakes and a rear exhaust on this aircooled system I was able to take the 6600k to a stable 4.7 GHz at 1.35 volts which hit a Max temp of 78° C after 30 minutes of concurrent stress testing with Ada 64 and unen Heaven 4.0 it's a bit toastier than most Gamers would like to see but honestly not half bad for the $30 hyper 212 of course chances are you won't be stress testing your CPU in the background while gaming so with just Heaven 4.0 running the CPU maxed out at a much cooler 66° C maxing out the power and temp targets are Factory overclock GTX 1060 was pushed even further with a core clock offset of 155 MHz that took the max core clock frequency to 2.1 GHz though the chip quickly backed down to a constant 2050 our memory clock received an offset of 370 MHz taking it to a clock speed hovering in the 1340s the GPU hit 78° C leaving much room for improvement for our Predator setup as for Acoustics here's what the system sounds like after running Heaven 4.0 for about 15 minutes as you might have heard the noise is audible but stays fairly quiet under load and shouldn't prove distracting to even those with sensitive hearing especially if you're listening to in-game sound after conducting our air cool tests I went ahead and installed the Predator Hardware which was actually quite easy I guess that's kind of the point after all mounting the GPU block is just like installing any of ek's standard blocks which involves a bunch of screwing throwing down some thermal pads and thermal grease and more screwing I do think the screws could be a bit higher quality especially since the four screws surrounding the GPU need to be tightened as much as possible and it felt like I was close to stripping them once or twice but overall this was a straightforward procedure the CPU AO installs much like any other competitor though the fans come pre-mounted to the radiator and I had to flip them around in order to set them to intake air at the front of our chassis once everything's installed attaching the quick disconnects literally takes 5 seconds and is the easiest thing ever all without leaking a single drop of fluid be warned however that you're likely to end up with a lot of excess tubing unless Building inside of a massive case so you may have to restrain the tubes with zip ties or velcro straps to keep them from interfering with objects like your s panel or chassis fans also what's up with that GPU sag it seems removing the air cooler leaves your PCB a bit flimsier than it was hopefully EK can solve this by including some sort of support bracket or back plate in the future cuz the MSI back plate I carried over from our GTX 1080 didn't seem to correct the droop at all so for an Apple's to Apples comparison I initially ran the Ada 64 in unen stress test on our Now liquid cooled PC with all the same overclock settings and look at this the better thermal conditions actually pushed our GPU boost clock to 2.1 GHz a 63 MHz improvement over air without touching a single setting GPU temps fell all the way down to 59° Max and averaged out at around 56° C with an ambient temp of 81° f pretty neat during this stress test our CPU saw less impressive temps reaching 71° C and only going as low as 67° C while gaming the temperatures here could stand to be a bit cooler so perhaps more time should be spent adjusting the fan curve to create the thermal and acoustic profiles we comfortable with before we dive into the Acoustics demo I should mention the EK barter fans were connected to the motherboard CPU fan header which was controlled via a custom fan curve I set up in the Bios this was the same fan curve and testing methodology used for those Corsair af-1 140s we heard earlier what was already a pretty quiet experience with the air cold system is made even quieter with the introduction of the AO it also means we could probably set a more aggressive fan curve to further improve thermals without being a nuisance to our ears so at this point it's not a huge shock that switching over to water cooling allowed us to hit the same settings with lower temps and Acoustics but the final question remains how much more were we able to overclock the system Within These cooler operating parameters well I failed to get the CPU to hit 4.8 GHz without exceeding unsafe voltages but I was able to maintain our 4.7 GHz frequency with a lower VC core of just 1.32 volts although this is just a 03 volt difference coming from Air it's still a noteworthy bump and power efficiency and may even help to extend the lifespan of our CPU on the GPU side of things we gain 20 MHz on the core clock and 30 MHz on the memory clock giving us a constant core clock speed of 2113 MHz and a memory clock of 1350 MHz overall switching to liquid gave us a 63 MHz increase on the core clock which isn't spectacular but it is something I guess the takeaway here is don't expect your frame rates to Skyrocket from slapping on a couple of these water blocks it seems the real gains made today were primarily in temperatures and Acoustics speaking of which here's a final back-to-back sound test with all three configurations we looked at today on a final note this liquid cooling duo will set you back $300 or $400 which I'd only consider affordable if comparing it to the cost of buying all the water cooling Hardware separately so without prolonging the inevitable question any longer is it worth it well if performance is the only thing you're after I can't say the solution is a worthwhile investment since we couldn't get the CPU to go any faster and we only saw a minor speed increase with our GTX 1080 the upshot is that if you're suffering from my video card is on fire syndrome our GPU temps drop 22° C coming coming from Air which is absolutely insane CPU temps were a tad underwhelming in our setup but then again the loop runs so damn quietly there's definitely room to push the fans harder while maintaining a reasonable sound profile the final appeal here is convenience and Time Savings a lot of us want that custom water cooled experience but lack the time or patience to take the plunge so EK has really done a bang up job here to make the entire process super quick and easy if you're looking for the kind of results we saw here today and you've got a few hundos to spend then maybe you should buy this thing but that is going to do it for now guys so before you go don't forget to toss me a like on this video If you enjoyed it and feel free to check out my store for shirts in all shapes and sizes actually they're all the same shape as always thank you guys for watching subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and I will see you all in the next video\n"