Fractal Design Kelvin T12, S24 and S36 Cooler Review

[section_title title=”User Experience”]

User Experience

I’ve been pretty impressed with the Fractal Design Kelvin range through my time testing, and blown away by the results when overclocking the CPU; they were so astonishing in fact that I re-installed all three coolers a few days later when the comparisons were available and re-ran the tests to make sure I hadn’t got something wrong. The re-installs were directly responsible for modifying the packaging as I was a little concerned about ruining the screw thread by attaching the fans repeatedly if I had to do it again.

Let’s just look back at that cooling performance. The high-pressure pump is capable of running through four different components however in our setup it’s only running through the CPU plate; that means there’s a lot of liquid flowing through that plate, and lots of liquid can move lots of heat to the radiator very quickly. It doesn’t really show its power on the normal graphs, other coolers easily match all three and even beat the mammoth Kelvin S36. It all changed however as soon as we start to increase the challenge with the CPU overclocked to 4500MHz. We see that the other coolers fall behind while the computer is idle but the Kelvin range doesn’t break a sweat, almost matching their idle temperatures from the 3900MHz test. At full load, all three coolers blast the opposition out of the water.

Leaving the performance aside though for the time being, what else have I discovered about the Kelvin S36, S24 and T12? Well, components wise Fractal Design have made some very sound and rather exciting choices. We have essentially a full copper radiator, copper CPU block and brass fittings, which means that you are not going to see the kind of corrosion that occurs in a mixed metal loop.

Going back to those fittings, the Kelvin range is expandable meaning that you can add in a GPU water block or two easily along with a RAM block and the whole loop will simply work due to that powerful pump. The rad has a fill port so you can replace the liquid after two years as recommended or when you expand the loop. The warranty might last for two years, but it’s clear that Fractal Design expects the Kelvin to last a lot longer.

They are designed to fit all modern chipsets as well as every series previously going all the way back to AMD AM2 and Intel 775, and with a Kelvin cooler to fit almost every case there really is something for everybody here.

The unscientific acoustic testing gave very impressive results all the same, and my experience from longer term testing and use of each of the units yields no different results. The sound from the case had nothing to do with the coolers when they were running on a standard thermal profile, and it was uncomfortably loud when they were turned up so I could play around with some benchmarking software along the way.

After all this time and extended testing involving three products, am I impressed on a personal level? Well, if you have read this review all the way through I think you already know the answer, but just in case, you can click through to the next page to find my conclusion.