Lighting, performance and conclusion
Let there be light! Here I connected the block with the included adapter cable to the header of the Asus Maximus Z690 Apex motherboard. Already the block glows like there is no tomorrow and in almost identical colors as the illumination of the mainboard. Bubbles never looked so good. Thanks to the LEDs around the “underbody”, the mainboard around the socket is also illuminated, which also creates a nice surface effect. Also there are no disturbing light spots. I’ve already mentioned several times that I’m not really an RGB advocate, but this is really something to behold.
But even aside from the luminosity, I really like the block. With its black brushed look, it visually blends in well between the aluminum heatsinks of the motherboard. Also, the block is relatively flat, so it effectively sits even lower than the adjacent heatsinks of the motherboard and RAM, here Kingston Fury Beast DDR5. So even in a small form factor PC with little space above the motherboard this water cooler could integrate well.
Now looks are all well and good, but at the end of the day a custom watercooler should also perform properly, especially if you have such a temperature-sensitive Alder Lake CPU sitting under it as described in the beginning. Does the Corsair XC7 RGB PRO manage to keep the i9 12900K under control?
See for yourself. And for those without a screen magnifier, the essentials are summarized once again: With P-cores statically at 5.3 GHz and cache at 4.9 GHz in LinpackXtreme, the CPU remains at a maximum of 98 °C absoulte and 66 °C delta to the water temperature. Those famliliar with LinpackXtreme know what that means. The load is similar to Prime95 small-FFTs with AVX2, only with even heavier transient loads.
On the other hand, with my previous cooler, which was not specifically designed for LGA 1700, I only managed 5.2 GHz on the P-cores and 4.8 GHz on the cache stably at the same voltage. A good water block, like this one, with optimal contact pressure thus spends 100 MHz more on the P-cores and on the cache. It’s almost impossible to see more clearly what a good cooler can do for the new Intel CPUs.
By the way, the GFlops only dropped after the second loop because I then started HWInfo to monitor the temperatures and voltages and not because the CPU was clocking down. Monitoring also needs compute. And further, the temperatures seen above were achieved with the pre-installed thermal paste. I’ve counter tested with my various aftermarket tubes, MX-5, MX-4, NT-H1, Kryonaut, but none perform measurably better. So again, the XC7 block does nothing wrong.
A detailed test with one or the other competing product will hopefully be available soon. And of course, our Alder Lake OC guides for CPU and RAM are also in the pipeline. Good things come to those who wait. But if you are already looking for a CPU block for your new Alder Lake CPU that not only impresses visually, you should definitely consider the Corsair XC7 RGB PRO.
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