** Tech Labs Value Kits - Affordable, Performance Watercooling **

rjk

rjk

rjk

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Hi Guys

Over the past few weeks I have been working on a new WC offering from us.
Our Tech Labs kits have proven to be really popular over the past few years but a lot of the feedback I receive on them is that they are targeted at end users looking for extreme performance and as such are quite expensive.

The goal of these new kits is to offer the expandable, adaptability of a custom watercooling setup for our best possible price.

With the launch of the new XSPC X2O 420 pump reservoir, we finally have access to a decent value pump reservoir option which has allowed me to start work on developing these kits.

I started watercooling using an all in one solution like this and it is perfect as a plug in play solution. The new version from XSPC has ironed out reliability issues that used to be a problem on some older units.

We are expecting stock of the pumps in a few weeks. As soon as they land, we will start shipping the kits. They will be on pre order until then.


Each Kit comes with the following:

1X Hardware Labs - Black Ice Radiator GTS-Lite
This radiator is a sturdy unit made by our exclusive partner, Hardware Labs. Featuring 30 Fins Per Inch, this radiator is perfectly balanced for performance and quietness with low air resistance.

1X Performance Pump & Reservoir Solution
This pump is submerged in a reservoir the size of a DVD drive which makes mounting the unit in a case really easy. Filling from the top makes this an ideal unit for newcomers when it comes to installation and maintenance.

1X EK Water Blocks Supreme LTX Performance CPU Block
EK Water Blocks are one of the most influential companies in Watercooling. Speak to any watercooling veteran and they will most probably have owned at least one EKWB product. The Supreme LTX is a cut down version of the popular Supremacy waterblock. Whilst not the absolute best performance block on the planet, the LTX offers immense performance for the price and will be built better than the other rubbish that usually ships in £100 watercooling kits.

Alpenföhn 120mm Föhn PWM Fan
Tested by myself for performance on the bundled radiator, the Föhn PWM Fan is a great fan for the money that performs well and maintains quiet operation with the benefit of PWM for user control. A feature that most value kit fans don't have. You get one fan in the 120mm kit and two fans in the 240mm kit.

1X Mayhems Pure H2O Coolant
Until Mayhems showed up, watercooling companies flapped about when it came to making coolant. The amount of money I have spent on snake oil products that dont live up to the hype and look rubbish after a few weeks is insane. Mayhems develop and produce their products in the UK.
This is the real deal, proper R&D goes into this stuff, rather than generic blue goop you get in most other value kits. Simply put, this is the only coolant you should consider putting in your WC system.
If you want a coloured coolant, we sell Mayhems dye on the website which will allow you to dye this coolant any colour you like.

1X XSPC Tubing
This is a fairly basic clear tubing with a nice bend radius which means it doesnt kink too easily. The tubing is clear and will allow you to see your coolant. Easy to cut and fits tightly to the included barbed fittings.

6X XSPC Barbed Fittings
Black Chrome fittings which are slightly larger than the included tubing to ensure a tight fit from the tubing. For extra security, you can use small zip ties around the base of the barbs if you wish.


The kits currently don't come with any instructions but I am working on an instruction manual which will eventually ship with the kit.

Until then, This thread has as much information as can be offered as well as instruction manuals from various generic WC kits which pretty much apply to this kit.
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18312749






OcUK Tech Labs - Value 120 Kit @ £94.99 inc VAT

BU-081-TL_400.jpg


Our OcUK Tech Labs - Value Kits have been developed to encourage first timers and system builders to adopt watercooling.

For years now, watercooling kits for circa £100 have been compromised in some way. To create a watercooling kit that fits into a £100 budget, there will always be parts in the kit which are not great.

Value kits by their very nature, appeal to newcomers. The worst thing that a newcomer can experience is poor quality components and associated failures.

Taking what we have learned from our Premium OcUK Tech Labs Kits, these Value kits have been cherry picked in partnership with established brands using products picked specifically for their high reliability track record and the customer service that each brand included with this kit prides themselves on.

These kits are perfect for newcomers but also represent excellent value for those looking to upgrade to watercooling.

If you can build a computer, you can watercool a computer!

This kit requires a case with a 5.25 bay and a 120mm fan mounting point in order to mount the pump & reservoir combo and radiator in order to install.

Component List:
1X 120mm Hardware Labs - Black Ice Radiator
1X Performance Pump & Reservoir Solution
1X EK Water Blocks Supreme LTX Performance CPU Block
1X Alpenföhn 120mm Föhn PWM Fan
1X Mayhems Coolant
1X XSPC Tubing
6X XSPC Barbed Fittings


Supported sockets for Intel Waterblock:
- Intel Socket 771
- Intel 1366 Socket
- Intel 1156 Socket
- Intel 1150 Socket
- Intel 1155 Socket
- Intel 2011 Socket

Was £119.62 Inc. VAT

Only £94.99 inc VAT.

ORDER NOW





OcUK Tech Labs - Value 240 Kit @ £104.99 inc VAT

BU-082-TL_400.jpg


Our OcUK Tech Labs - Value Kits have been developed to encourage first timers and system builders to adopt watercooling.

For years now, watercooling kits for circa £100 have been compromised in some way. To create a watercooling kit that fits into a £100 budget, there will always be parts in the kit which are not great.

Value kits by their very nature, appeal to newcomers. The worst thing that a newcomer can experience is poor quality components and associated failures.

Taking what we have learned from our Premium OcUK Tech Labs Kits, these Value kits have been cherry picked in partnership with established brands using products picked specifically for their high reliability track record and the customer service that each brand included with this kit prides themselves on.

These kits are perfect for newcomers but also represent excellent value for those looking to upgrade to watercooling.

If you can build a computer, you can watercool a computer!


This kit requires a case with a 5.25 bay and a 240mm radiator mounting point in order to mount the pump & reservoir combo and radiator in order to install.


Component List:
1X 240mm Hardware Labs - Black Ice Radiator
1X Performance Pump & Reservoir Solution
1X EK Water Blocks Supreme LTX Performance CPU Block
1X Alpenföhn 120mm Föhn PWM Fan
1X Mayhems Coolant
1X XSPC Tubing
6X XSPC Barbed Fittings


Supported sockets for Intel Waterblock:
- Intel Socket 771
- Intel 1366 Socket
- Intel 1156 Socket
- Intel 1150 Socket
- Intel 1155 Socket
- Intel 2011 Socket

Was £133.61 Inc. VAT

Only £104.99 inc VAT.

ORDER NOW
 
Great prices! Start to give you some real options as to go AIO or one of these! I know which I'd prefer!

Just a shame (well not really) that I have a H440 with no drive bays, so cant use em!
 
Mike19 said:
Indeed, I was aware - just poking at the description! :)

I quite fancy one of those 240mm kits to replace a H100, but I wonder if they are better?
Click to expand...

At a guess I'd say it would be considerably better, but I'm sure RJK will give you a more informed answer.
 
Kelt said:
At a guess I'd say it would be considerably better, but I'm sure RJK will give you a more informed answer.
Click to expand...


Tempted to buy one and do a little h100 vs this thing. Been meaning to change my h100 as it gets irritatingly loud (4 fans) so I'd be keen to see the difference this makes. Looking at videos online the flow rate of the h100 is very low so this should offer a little boost!
 
Mike19 said:
Tempted to buy one and do a little h100 vs this thing. Been meaning to change my h100 as it gets irritatingly loud (4 fans) so I'd be keen to see the difference this makes. Looking at videos online the flow rate of the h100 is very low so this should offer a little boost!
Click to expand...

Yeah I am interested in the Value 240 kit, But really interested to know what these are like compared to the AIO's as I'm a noob when it comes to water-cooling, Does Mayhems have the stuff to kill the algae and all that?
 
Hi Guys

had a night off the forums last night, so will attempt to answer these questions as best as I can now.

Firstly, nobody has mentioned. But we dont offer AMD with this kit.
the reason being is because intel blocks outsell AMD blocks 100:1 on our website.

In all of our kit sales, we have only ever sold 3 kits with AMD options.
as this is a value bundle, I didnt want to add another $5 onto the cost.

If you want an AMD block, we can do it but you would need to contact our sales team and they can change the bundle for you.



Mike19 said:
Indeed, I was aware - just poking at the description! :)

I quite fancy one of those 240mm kits to replace a H100, but I wonder if they are better?
Click to expand...

Cheers for pointing that out. always miss something when doing complicated bundle setups.
I have added that it comes with 2x Fohn fans. it was in the build list anyway.

being blunt, this will be better than a h100. the rad is better, the block is better, the pump is better.

this means that flow rate will be higher in the system. in turn, this will mean the coolant will take longer to heat up and less time to cool down. its just more efficient.

these bundles are selling the parts close to cost. whereas the cost price to manufacture a H100 is around $50. once you add corsair tax to it, it takes it to a similar RRP but ultimately it isnt in the same league cost wise. It is just presented that way to the end user as I belive £100 is the sweet spot and something we have been missing for a long time.


Mike19 said:
Tempted to buy one and do a little h100 vs this thing. Been meaning to change my h100 as it gets irritatingly loud (4 fans) so I'd be keen to see the difference this makes. Looking at videos online the flow rate of the h100 is very low so this should offer a little boost!
Click to expand...

Honestly, I would really appreciate that. Independent testing of the kit is really going to be better than any info I can provide. Despite me being as honest as I can when I review products for the forums, I am still the Product Manager for these items and there is always the question of how biased I am towards the products.

When the pumps are here, I will be sending a kit out to review somewhere.

I will also get a kit from stock and do my own testing for the forums. I will use this kit to make the instruction manuals and put these with the kits to make it easier.

This kind of product will obviously take time to develop and improve but we did it with the Premium Tech Labs kits over time. Comparing the first V12 kit to the one currently for sale, its almost all totally different but the performance is much better for the same money.

Evian said:
Yeah I am interested in the Value 240 kit, But really interested to know what these are like compared to the AIO's as I'm a noob when it comes to water-cooling, Does Mayhems have the stuff to kill the algae and all that?
Click to expand...

The Value 240 is obviously designed to be a H100 killer. The reasoning behind the choice of a lot of parts was to make it so that a user who could install a H100, would be able to install this. As I mentioned with performance, this unit would be better in the respect that it would run quieter and cool more efficiently. The bonus of this unit is that if you wanted to improve things later down the line [and once you get the bug, you will] you can just buy a bigger radiator or better fans or a high performance block etc and upgrade over time.

With the mayhems coolant, the standard Pure H2O included with the kit has no corrosion inhibitors or biocides included. This is basically very pure water that beats deionised and distilled water in purity but also allows for excellent heat transfer.

If you wish, you can add mayhems biocide to it for peace of mind but using pure water on a new system shouldnt be a problem. For the cost of a bottle [~£5] you can just replace it every 8-12 months and even then that would probably be a little on the over cautious side.
 
was just about to ask about the amd blocks, is there a additional charge? secondly I've never watercooled before and I've read that the VRM's on amd boards often get hot, obviously with a watercooled cpu there will be no air on it, what would you reccomend to do about the issue?
 
haxxbaxx said:
was just about to ask about the amd blocks, is there a additional charge? secondly I've never watercooled before and I've read that the VRM's on amd boards often get hot, obviously with a watercooled cpu there will be no air on it, what would you reccomend to do about the issue?
Click to expand...

Friend of mine bought the 240 kit from OCUK on an AMD 8350 system. His solution was to wedge a 80mm fan between the CPU and IO port over the VRMs and it worked very well.
 
It also depends on the board. The cheaper boards are not suited for the FX8000 series cpu's as they tend not to have any heatsinks at all on the vrm's. It's always better to spend a bit more for a decent board with decent cooling to give you a headstart on the temps.
 
xbenjiiman said:
This would be great without the bay res. Am I right in saying it can't be mounted vertically? Since the bays in my air 540 are vertical.
Click to expand...

ideally no. but you could probably get away with it as the pump just needs to be submerged. I will test this when the pumps come in.

At the moment, let me say, its not advisable until i have tested it. but in theory, it should work as long as you mount it in this orientation with the pump at the bottom:
420-5.jpg


haxxbaxx said:
was just about to ask about the amd blocks, is there a additional charge? secondly I've never watercooled before and I've read that the VRM's on amd boards often get hot, obviously with a watercooled cpu there will be no air on it, what would you reccomend to do about the issue?
Click to expand...

no additional change if you just swap out for an equivalent LTX block [we dont usually have a lot of stock of them, as I say, they aren't that popular].

if you wanted to upgrade any part of the kit to a higher performance unit, better rad, block, pump etc, you can of course to that and just pay the difference over the phone.

The beauty of watercooling is that it is modular and upgradeable. no one set up is the 'right way' of doing things, these kits are not 'the best money can buy' they are just designed to work well, be beginner friendly and trouble free. so anybody looking to improve their kit by adding uprated parts, go wild. our CS team on the phones will be able to assist. even if you just want to change the coolant to a pastel or something simple like that.

RCoon said:
Friend of mine bought the 240 kit from OCUK on an AMD 8350 system. His solution was to wedge a 80mm fan between the CPU and IO port over the VRMs and it worked very well.
Click to expand...

agreed, with certain boards you will need to be mindful of how your board performs with reduced airflow around it. most will be fine, but lower end boards may struggle.
honestly, if your board isnt capable of running well in a low airflow environment, then it may be worth looking at upgrading the board before considering switching to WC.
 
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