The release of the new AMD and Intel processors is usually accompanied by annotations of updated cooling systems for them. This also happens this time – at the same time as the AMD Ryzen 7000 and Intel Core 13xx releases, many companies have introduced new cooling systems compatible with these processors. However, in both cases, this is done for marketing reasons rather than for technical reasons, because most of the coolers compatible with Socket AM4 are compatible with Socket AM5 and Intel has no change at all. However, in the latter case, there is a nuance, and it is that the manufacturers of cooling systems have initially failed to take into account the low strength of the new LGA1700 and its deformation in the installation of the coolers. This particular deficiency was manifested with the refrigeration systems, with the plastic amplifier plates that were installed during installation.
*Technical specifications and cost
| Name of the characteristic ID-Cooling DashFlow 240 Basic Black Radiator Mass of System Collection, G1194 Guarantee Period, Years2 Country of Production |
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| Name of the characteristic ID-Cooling DashFlow 240 Basic Black Radiator Mass of System Collection, G1194 Guarantee Period, Years2 Country of Production |
♪ Packaging and packaging
The ID-Cooling DashFlow 240 Basic Black is delivered in a cardboard box in a black-orange gamma. The top of the box contains a picture of the water unit of the system and the name of the model.
The reverse side, in turn, contains the dimensions of the main components of LSAs, technical characteristics and a table of compatible platforms.
Inside the cardboard box, a shell of foamed polyethylene with compartments is inserted under each component of the LSO to protect them from external exposure.
The sets are sealed in a separate box, where you can find two amplifier plates for the Intel platform, three pairs of steel guides, three sets of screws, two sets of screws for the fans and the radiator, as well as a loose cable.
It's included in a set and thermopaste – ID-Cooling From X25 with a declared thermal conductivity of 10.5 W/ – in a 2-gram syringe. We've already tested this thermointerface several times before, and it's proven to be extremely positive.
*Construction features
The new ID-Cooling DashFlow 240 Basic Black is built on a classic for unserviceable liquid-cooling system scheme: the radiator is connected to a pomp, combined with a water unit, with two flexible hoses. The system is filled and fully operational, which is called a box, only needs to be installed in the body/processor and connected.
As you can see, no designer invention of the new SWU can boast, it's completely black, on the end of the radiator and the body of the pump, the name of the manufacturer, and the size of the main component of the system, the radiator, is 276.5 × 120 × 28 mm.
As in all the other FLS of this class, the radiator here is aluminium. It's equipped with loops of fan retention on both sides.
It seems to be common, no surprises, but the ID-Cooling engineers were able to surprise us and increase the radiator area by 25 per cent at once, without increasing its size! How? Yes, very simple: If conventional AiO radiators have a depth of 17 to 18 mm, in DashFlow 240 Basic Black it was increased to 22 mm within the standard 240-mm radiator body.
It is well known that in compact SWVs, to which we refer to 120- and 240-mm models, the radiator area has always been a weak spot, so it's nice to see that ID-Cooling is working on it. By increasing the area, the radiator heat conductor is increasing and the efficiency of the system as a whole is increasing.
Apart from increasing thickness, other structural changes in the DaschFlow 240 Basic Black radiator, there is no total number of channels equal to 12, the distance between them is 8.0 mm and the density is 21 FPI. These are standard parameters for such models based on the Astek platform.
One radiator is deaf, and the second, slightly enlarged, has two fittings with hoses pressured on them.
The length of hoses in the ID-Cooling DashFlow 240 Basic Black is 380 mm. Their outer diameter is 12 mm. The hoses are flexible enough to be able to pass safely inside the shell. On the other end of the hoses, they consist of two turning fittings on the pump. The dimensions of this LSO component are 92 x 83 x 54 mm.
The declared capacity of the pump is 116 litres per hour, at least twice as high as that of the traditional Astek systems. In the specifications, the speed of the pump rotor with a durable ceramic duct is 2100 rpm, monitored to be 2,200 rpm. The declared energy consumption is practically equal to that of 4.5 W. According to the manufacturer, the noise level of the pump shall not exceed 25 dBAs.
Another innovation in the ID-Cooling DashFlow 240 was an improved copper water unit. Its area is increased to better match Intel Core's 12th and 13th generation heat distributors. There is no mention of optimization for AMD in its description. However, the size of the copper base of the water unit is 60 x 54 mm, not only for Alder Lake, but also for AMD Ryzen Threadripper.
The quality of treatment of the contact surface of the water unit is far from ideal, but the marks from the fresco are not at least tactile.
There's nothing wrong with the flatness of the water unit, and the unevenness of the prints is caused by the bulging of the lid of the heat distributor of our test processor.
To install the radiator into the ID-Cooling DashFlow 240 Basic Black package, there are two 120-mm branded TF-12025-Pro fans.
They are equipped with nine-paste wings with a diameter of 114 mm and are mounted on the statues with the spokes curved in the opposite blades of the side.
The speed of rotation of fans shall be controlled by the broadband-impulsive modularization method between 700 and 1,800 rpm with an error of ± 10 per cent at the maximum revolutions. The maximum air flow of one fan is declared at 82.5 CFM, the static pressure is 2.55 mm H2O and the noise level is between 15.2 and 35.2 dBAs.
The hydrodynamic bearing of the fans shall provide at least 50,000 hours, or more than five and a half years of continuous operation, although the characteristics of the system itself do not show this for some reason. A sticker bearing a screw label and its electrical characteristics is affixed to a 41 mm-diameter.
Each fan consumes not more than 3 W and can start at a relatively low voltage of 3.6 V.
Rubber corners designed to reduce the transferable vibrations and noise levels shall be placed on the corners of the plastic fan frames.
The fans are fixed on the radiator with screws, and in the collected and ready to be installed in the shell, the ID-Cooling DashFlow 240 Basic Black looks as follows.
The length of the fan cables is 400 mm, but an additional 200 mm is added to it by a Y-shaped ventilator to connect to a single distribution on a mother ' s pay or rebus. The total mass of the collected system is 1,194 grams. The most interesting part is that the SWO specifications state that it must handle 260 watts of processors.
*Compatibility and installation
ID-Cooling DashFlow 240 Basic Black is designed to install Socket AM4/AM5 and Intel LGA115/2066 processors on the AMD processors. As you can see, the spectrum of compatible processors is very wide. The instructions are not yet available in electronic form, but we have taken a couple of photos of pages from the paper version that make it clear that there is nothing difficult to install in the process of installing a LSA.
It's convenient that the water unit set for each type of processor is sealed in a separate bag - you won't be wrong to assemble.
Special attention should be paid to the LGA1700 reinforced plate, which is made under a given sketch and has an increased thickness to avoid deformation.
Together with a reinforced press system, such a plate maximizes the pressure of the water unit to the processor, resulting in the most efficient heat exchange between them.
It is important to remember that with such a "draconian" fastening, spring screws need to be pulled evenly.
In order to house ID-Cooling DashFlow 240 Basic Black within the system block, two adjacent landing spaces under a 120-mm fan are needed. Now even low-cost Chinese hulls, not to mention the name manufacturers models, are equipped with these. In our building, we installed a system on the upper panel of the hull and directed the fans to blow it out.
The LSO has only a strip on the pump lid, but it's barely visible even in the dark, and the fans of the lighting system don't have any.
♪ Test configuration, toolbox and test methodology
The evaluation of the performance of the ID-Cooling DashFlow 240 Basic Black system and its rival was performed in the following system configuration:
- System board: ASUS ROG Strix Z690-A Gaming WiFi D4, 135mm fan.
- System: Gigabyte GP-AG4500G 500.1 Gbyte;
- System: Gigabyte GP-AG4500G 500.1 Gbyte;
In order to produce stable and objectively comparable results, the main parameters of the processor were recorded in the following values: BCLK – 100 MHz frequency, production nuclei factor 50, total frequency 5 GHz, energy efficiency factor 40, total frequency – 4 GHz, Vcore voltage – 1.215 - 1.22 V. The BIOS has set the sixth level of voltage stabilization on the core of the processor out of seven available.
All energy limits of the BIOS processor have been removed, energy-saving technologies have been deactivated, resulting in maximum heat output of the stress-load processor exceeding 175 watts. The effective frequency of operational memory has been increased from nominal 3.2 to 3.733 GHz at 1.4325 V and its main timemings have been recorded at 15-15-30 CR2.
The test was performed in Microsoft Windows 11 version 21H2. Software used for the test:
- Prime9530.8 billd 16 – to create stress load on the processor; HWiNFO647.31-4875 – to monitor temperatures and visually monitor all parameters of the system.
The image of the screen during one of the test cycles is as follows.
The processor load was created by two consecutive Prime95 cycles. The CPU temperature stabilization between the cycles was set at 14 to 15 minutes. The final result, which you will see in the diagram, is the highest temperature of the hottest six production cores of the central processor in peak load and idle mode, as well as the average maximum temperature for all such kernels. In addition, a separate table will show the temperatures of all the processor kernels, their average values and the temperature delta between the kernels. The temperature in the room was controlled by an electronic thermometer installed adjacent to the system unit with an accuracy of 0.1 °C and with the ability to monitor the temperature changes in the room by hour in the last 6 hours. During the test, the temperature fluctuated between 25.6 and 26.2 °C.
The noise level of the cooling systems was measured by an electronic noise meter "OCTAVA-110A" between zero and three hours in a fully closed room of about 20 m2; the noise level was measured outside the system block when only the cooling system and its fans were the source of the noise in the room. The noise meter, recorded on the tripod, was always located strictly at one point at a distance of exactly 150 mm from the fan rotor. The cooling systems were placed at the very corner of the table on the substrate of a foamed polyethylene. The lower limit for measuring the noise meter is 22.0 dBA and the subjectively comfortable noise level of the cooling systems at this distance is about 36 dBA. We accept a value of 33 dBA for a conditional low noise level.
The cooling efficiency and noise level of the new ID-Cooling DashFlow 240 Basic Black we compared with the supercalcular performance of Noctua NH-D15S chromax.black with two 150-mm fans.
The rotation speed of the fans of the refrigeration systems tested was adjusted by means of a special controller with an accuracy of ± 10 rpm between 800 rpm and the maximum possible with a step of 200 rpm.
Refrigeration efficiency
Unfortunately, the miracle has not happened. As in the past, the 240-mm radiator system and a pair of 120-mm fans are capable of resisting the air superculaire only at the maximum speed of the fans and at the cost of very high noise levels. The ID-Cooling DashFlow 240 Basic Black has not helped either the increased radiator area, the reinforced water unit anchorage, the high-volume pump, or the high-pressure fans. It has won only at the speeds of 1840 and 1,600 rpm, and the system has since seriously lost the efficiency of cooling and in the quietest modes is below the Noctua NH-D15S chromax.black to five degrees Celsius.
We then dispersed the processor up to 5.1 GHz at 1.265 - 1.270 V, with heating up to 195 watts, and made another comparison of cooling systems.
The results are shown in the chart and the table.
The temperatures are higher but generally similar to the previous diagram. At the fan speeds of 1840 and 1600 rpm, the ID-Cooling DashFlow 240 Basic Black won, and then the initiative intercepts Noctua NH-D15S chromax.black and no longer gives it up to 1,000 rpm. Although it is worth paying tribute to the SWO: in this case, it is not too far behind the superculaire.
At the end, we dispersed the processor up to 5.2 GHz at a voltage of 1.335 to 1.340 V and tried to cool it down with a new UAV.
With heating up to 215 watts, the ID-Cooling DashFlow 240 Basic Black was able to hold the processor almost at the boundary of the trottling at 96 degrees Celsius.
But she did it only at the top speed of the fans and at a high noise level. It's obvious that it's her limit, and it's not gonna reach 260 watts of the new SWU. At least it's true for Intel Core i5-12600K.
♪ Noise level
Surprisingly, ID-Cooling DashFlow 240 Basic Black does not have much to brag about. Generally, the noise level of smaller fans at the same speed is lower than that of larger fans, but this is not the case. A pair of 120-mm ID-Cooling screws on the same with 150-mm Noctua fans is louder. DashFlow 240 Basic Black is near 850 rpm, and the really quiet system can only be called 750 rpm. The only thing that's been happy is the virtually silent SLSO pump.
♪ Conclusions
Another liquid cooling system with a 240-mm radiator and, alas, losing another superculaire. It shows that ID-Cooling did not simply set the lighting, but did try to make the new system better. It increased the radiator area, reinforced the water unit's mounting, increased the pump power, and put high-pressure fans in place. However, all of this did not help the LSO to confront a productive air cooling system. The very high noise cost it bypassed the supercooler's maximum and close to the fan's maximum speed, but with reduced speed it can no longer do anything to counter it. The overall sound level of the ID-Cooling is also higher, although we will note separately the presence of a silent pump. On top of DashFlow 240 Basic Black – universality, comparative compactness, and ease of installation, as well as the expected low cost, but these benefits still do not outweigh the shortcomings of the system.