We might as well face it at this point, Cooler Master is on a roll. It seems like every other day the tech news has something to say about this or that new or innovative CM product. Everything from cases to keyboards, even a new mechanical key switch type. But all this kinda makes me wonder, are we just being hit with an exceptionally successful marketing scheme, or are these products really worth spending your hard earned cash on? Today we’ll be taking a close look at the Nepton 280L. This new CM AIO boasts a twin 140mm radiator amongst other features, and it’s time to find out if this is the real deal or simply another of the countless AIO’s ignore.
Special Thanks to Cooler Master for providing the Nepton 280L for review.
Features
– All-in-one cooling system includes a 280mm radiator for optimal heat dissipation and includes compatibility for 140mm or 120mm fans.
– Pump and waterblock guarantees the best water flow and system performance. Waterblock is factory filled with coolant, then fully sealed and pressure tested for zero maintenance.
– The Nepton series uses strong and durable tubes for superior heat dissipation. Eliminates kinks for easy installation.
– New UltraFine Microchannel Enables superior heat transfer from cold plate to coolant and increases waterflow to 100% efficiency.
– Includes 2 JetFlo 140 mm fans. Powerful air pressure and radiator heat change efficiency; includes rubber padding for vibration reduction
– Includes glowing ambient lighting for performance system builds.
Packaging
If you’ve checked out any of my other reviews of CM AIO’s you will notice an immediate similarity in their packaging. It’s a dark theme, with deep purple and chrome accents. It’s actually a very well designed theme, and works great to attract the eye. As well as these colors you will find a photo of the cooler itself and some of the features listed on the front of the box.
On one side you will find a complete listing of the specifications. And on the back some performance notes, dimensions, and multilingual feature lists.
Flipping the cardboard top open you will first find a thin sheet of protective foam. Removing the foam sheet reveals all the components held in an egg carton cardboard form. Each component is found enclosed in it’s own plastic bag.
Cooler Master Nepton 280L Overview
Removing the components from the bags you will find a pretty standard selection of parts. Of course there is the unit itself, two JetFlo 140mm fans, a bag of installation accessories, a warranty card, and an installation guide.
The JetFlo fans claim a max dBA of 39 at 2000rpm while pushing 122.5 CFM and creating 3.5mm of pressure. By the specs, these should be excellent for the thin 280mm radiator in this kit. The rubber dampening pieces on the corners should be very helpful at reducing any noises caused by vibration.
One of the most important parts of a watercooling loop is the pump. If it is too weak it won’t be able to circulate water efficiently enough to cool the CPU. It is also the most likely part to fail. Thankfully CM has included a pump in this kit that is a proprietary design to CM. This pump while taller than many others we’ve seen lately, is built to a high standard and should last 70,000 hours of use. We have very high expectations for this pumps functionality. The base of the pump is an all copper cold plate with ultra thin micro channeling for maximum heat transfer to the factory filled coolant. And finally powered by a single 4 pin plug the pump top has a built in LED.
Attached to the pump we find some pretty thick FEP tubing that is extremely durable and should be plenty long enough to allow for an easy installation of the 280mm radiator.
The radiator itself as mentioned is quite thin. It’s actually one of the thinnest radiators we’ve seen used in an AIO kit. Fortunately though we find that it has a pretty high fin count which will help to make up for it’s lackluster width. Additionally the high speed JetFlo fans will help as well.
And finally of course we have the bag of installation accessories. You will find all the parts needed for installation in most all Intel and AMD socket types. Also included is a fan splitter and a tube of CM brand thermal paste good for 3-4 installs depending on the amount and method used.
Installation
Installing the Nepton is surprisingly fairly straight forward. The first step is to attach the fans to the radiator. You want to make sure you have selected the shorter of the two sets of thumbscrews to avoid puncturing the radiator. Also consider which side the wiring should be on once the radiator is inverted and installed. Then simply attach all four screws to each fan, the thumbscrews make this much easier to accomplish.
Next you will want to install the radiator into the case itself. Again this is as simple as attaching a few screws. There are multiple sets of holes in the radiator and you shouldn’t have a problem getting enough to line up with the slots in your case. Attach 4 screws per side and you are all set.
One benefit of the ultra thin radiator is amount of space it leaves you to work with. We had ample room around our mother board with the rad and fans installed. Our 8 pin did get a bit compressed, but that is pretty normal for this motherboard layout.
With the rad installed you now need to attach the wings for your socket to the pump. This design is pretty clever and leaves the pump looking clean afterwards. Simply slide the wing into place and secure with two screws per side.
Next using the correctly labelled bracket for your socket, install the screws and secure with the plastic clips. The clips allow you to easily adjust the position of the screws for different sockets and help to keep them from falling out. The correct position can be found in the install manual, or simply by lining them up and adjusting as necessary. Once they are in the correct position, slide them through the motherboard holes and hold in place.
On the chip side of the motherboard install the black spacers onto each screw. These prevent you from over-tightening the pump and secure the back plate as well.
With everything all set apply your thermal paste, remove the plastic protector from the pump and press firmly into place. The pump is secured at the four corners with four thumb screws.
The only thing left is attaching power. The pump should be plugged into the CPU_FAN header and the fans can be plugged into their own headers, or into the included splitter and attached to a single header.
Testing
The test rig consists of the following parts:
Processor: Intel Core i7 3770K
Motherboard: Gigabyte G1.Sniper3
Video Card: EVGA GTX 690
Memory: Samsung Green MV-3V4G3D/US – 16GB
Power Supply: Enermax Maxrevo 1350W
Storage: OCZ Vertex 3 240 GB raid 0 Running Windows 7 64bit
Cooling: Cooler Master Nepton 280L
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Luxe
As always testing was done using Intel Burn Test (IBT) with the AVX instruction set. The reason to use this instead of Prime95 with this setup is that it pushes our i7 3770K a whole lot harder. This gives us a better sense of extreme load temps. Most of the testing was done at the max memory setting for a single pass. While admittedly this in no way would qualify the chip as stable while overclocked, it gives us a realistic idea of what temps it will be hitting. Additionally we are going to run 3DMARK Fire Strike Extreme to give you a realistic idea of performance while gaming.
Our baseline was established using a bequiet! Dark Rock Pro 2 with the 3770K on stock settings:
Ambient temps: 22.22C/72F
Idle temps: 38.75C/101.75F core average
IBT temps one pass max memory: 63.5C/146.3F core average
And here are the results for stock settings for the Nepton 280L:
Ambient temps: 20C/68F
Idle temps: 32.5C/90.5F core average
IBT temps one pass max memory: 59.75C/139.55F core average
As opposed to simply going for a max overclock, we are simply going to shoot to hit 4.5ghz pass or fail. If the cooler will allow our 3770K to hit 4.5 ghz we note the temperatures and move on to test it on 3DMARK Firestrike Extreme. If not then back down to a more acceptable and stable overclock. Not as extreme, but slightly more consistent and far more analogous to normal use.
For the Nepton 280L, here are our results for i7 3770K @ 4.5ghz with 1.248V vCore:
Ambient temps: 20C/68F
IBT temps: 78.5C/173.3F with one core hitting 83C
This is a very good temperature range for the absurdly hot 3770K. With 90C as our max temperature we have plenty of more room to go, but we would likely just stay here for 24/7 use.
With a positive result from IBT, we went ahead with a single run through 3DMARK Fire Strike Extreme @4.5ghz:
Ambient temps: 20C/68F
3DMARK: 65.75C/150.35F with one core hitting 68C
These are totally acceptable temps for gaming and we would feel comfortable with the Nepton cooling our OC’d chip for hour after hour of gameplay.
The last thing we like to mention is sound. While I don’t find the JetFlo fans to be obnoxious, when you are getting the temperature up during runs of IBT or hard gaming they do become very noticeable. I recommend getting a set of headphones, load surround sound, or maybe just a different pair of fans.
Final Thoughts
The Nepton 280L is one of the newest product offering that CM has on the market. It is also basically top dog from their product offerings. As such we expect big performance and a well designed product. And truthfully I feel that CM delivers on both of those levels. For performance, the Nepton 280L is the leader in our new style of testing. Additionally I felt that it left room for further performance to be extracted from our CPU. From an ease of use perspective I found this AIO to be second to none. It was very simple getting this installed. Even more so than some of the 120mm AIO’s we’ve tested recently. Overall the construction is great and doesn’t feel cheap and you feeling ripped off.
The one thing that I will say is that being such a thin radiator, the fan noise is necessarily a bit too loud. A quieter set of fans would be on my wish list for this cooler.
The price is neither here nor there, it is exactly where I would expect it to be for a 280mm AIO kit.
Overall ThinkComputers would like to award the Cooler Master Nepton 280L with a 10 out of 10 score!
Pros:
– Great Performance
– Ease of Use
– Quality Materials and Construction
Cons:
– Little Bit Noisy