Wednesday, September 1st 2010
Swiftech Announces the H20-X20 Edge Series High-Performance Liquid Cooling Kits
Rouchon Industries, Inc. dba Swiftech today announced the release of the H20-X20 EDGE series of "all-in-one" liquid cooling kits. The kits are composed of a patent pending heat exchanger combining pump and reservoir, and a CPU waterblock, which considerably simplifies the task of installation for the users. The patent pending heat exchangers called MCR Drive (Rev2) come in two sizes: for dual 120mm fans and for triple 120mm fans; they incorporate a new high power pump with variable speed control managed by the motherboard. The Apogee XTL CPU water-block included in the kits is derived from Swiftech's award winning Apogee XT.
Swiftech is counting on the versatility and performance superiority of their kits 'design to attract an expanded range of users. A key factor with respect to versatility is the kit's ability to easily support additional devices such as liquid cooled graphics coolers or extra radiators which is a must-have among power users; the extremely broad performance range of the H20-X20 kits is of equal importance in terms of competitive advantage, as the kits can be tuned to satisfy both ends of the users 'spectrum: from silent operations to extreme cooling; and finally the ease of installation is expected to appeal to quality oriented first-time users.
Capitalizing on 10 years of experience in designing and manufacturing liquid cooling systems, Swiftech also turbo-charges user-support by including multiple sets of accessories to accommodate various installation strategies, and they provide one of the most comprehensive installation guides in the industry which includes dozens of fully detailed pre-built 3D models.
"While Swiftech's Ultra, Ultima and Apex series of liquid cooling kits have set the performance standard among power users for the past 5 years, the Edge series combine equal or superior performance with the new triple radiator, a broader gamut of utilizations, and most of all a stupendous ease of installation that will appeal to anyone willing to make the jump into serious liquid cooling" said Gabriel Rouchon, Swiftech's Chairman and CTA.
MSRP:
Swiftech is counting on the versatility and performance superiority of their kits 'design to attract an expanded range of users. A key factor with respect to versatility is the kit's ability to easily support additional devices such as liquid cooled graphics coolers or extra radiators which is a must-have among power users; the extremely broad performance range of the H20-X20 kits is of equal importance in terms of competitive advantage, as the kits can be tuned to satisfy both ends of the users 'spectrum: from silent operations to extreme cooling; and finally the ease of installation is expected to appeal to quality oriented first-time users.
"While Swiftech's Ultra, Ultima and Apex series of liquid cooling kits have set the performance standard among power users for the past 5 years, the Edge series combine equal or superior performance with the new triple radiator, a broader gamut of utilizations, and most of all a stupendous ease of installation that will appeal to anyone willing to make the jump into serious liquid cooling" said Gabriel Rouchon, Swiftech's Chairman and CTA.
MSRP:
- H20-220 EDGE: $309.95
- H20-320 EDGE: $339.95
40 Comments on Swiftech Announces the H20-X20 Edge Series High-Performance Liquid Cooling Kits
great job... finally easy liquid cooling that doesnt suck at life. price is a little extreme tho. one could easily build something comarable for $100 less.
I like the idea behind this, but seriously the pricing doesnt seem that effective for me to choose this over the conventional setup. I mean if I have room for a triple rad, I got room for a pump and res.
Radiator, Pump, reservoir, block, fans, fittings, tubing, clamps and coolant add up pretty fast no matter how cheap you try to do it.
Yeah the pricing of the 220 variant should probably be a bit lower but you are paying for convenience with a setup like this.
I just went to their site and the price of the block and radiator with integrated pump adds up to 285.94 and that does not include fans, tubing or clamps.
Although i'm not saying a min cost loop would give the same temps as this, im still interested to see some reviews and temps, just very put off by the pricing
But yeah, for that price, you can score a custom lc with a fatter tri rad, a laing d4, and a good block.
But in fact, you wouldn't even need to replace the block, as we thought about the people who already have gear that they want to re-use; all you would need to do is to procure the MCR X20 Drive radiator(220 or 320) with or without the pump (you could use the motor of your MCP350, MCP355, Laing DDC, or DDC2), and then use whatever block you have or prefer.Price: I think I clarified part of it above, but will further clarify the price issues below.. read on :)
Room in the case: That's an excellent point you are bringing, and also very true. But step back a moment and give this another thought: in a conventional kit you have 4 main elements to connect and install: the radiator, the reservoir, the pump, and the water-block; it means, tubing, fittings, mechanical placement & fastening, and hydraulic setup.. a lot of work there. With this kit, you only have to worry about the radiator really.
So, it's not so much a question of having the space, it's a question of simplifying the installation, reducing the number of connections (leaky joints anyone?), and ultimately the reliability of the liquid cooling system. So when people below talk about being lazy etc.. they are missing the point. Don't get me wrong though, I do understand the pleasure in building a system: part of the fun in building it is the challenge it represents, and there is a well deserved pride in finding elegant ways to resolve that challenge; the explosive growth of the fittings business is a perfect illustration of the length to which people will go to setup nice looking liquid cooling systems! So in a sense, this new generation of kits is indeed removing part of the fun (difficulty)associated with building your own system. But wouldn't it be fair to call this progress?What this small difference between dual and triple rad really tells you is that Swiftech doesn't gouge consummers based on perception. In effect, if we charged the price based on perception, the triple rad being 30% bigger than the dual should be 30% more expensive.I'll answer to both of the above. This is an issue of perception, and I can understand why. In a conventional kit, you get 4 separate components, here you only get two. So it is natural to think that the later should be cheaper. In reality, the 4 components are still there, but 3 of them got combined into 1. The reservoir is still there, and making that shape out of sheet metal is quite expensive (equal to the cost of a Micro Res for example); the pump housing is also there, soldered to the radiator body, and making it out of CNC brass costs an order of magnitude more than the standard injection molded plastic top of the MCP350/355/DDC pumps.
The real question here is this: do these kits bring more value than equivalent performance kits such as the H20 Ultima XT for example, which have been leading the kit market for over 5 years? H20-220 Apex XT: $309.95 - H20-220 Edge: $309.95 - Equal top performance, broader range of utilizations, simpler to install, more reliable (less potentially leaky joints).. You tell me.
Now if the question is "can I make a kit out of the components that I like for much cheaper" then the answer is possibly yes, but will it perform as well, as reliably, and will it be as simple to install is something that we cannot objectively assess without a serious apple to apple comparision. I emphasize objectively here, because you can also get a CoolIT or a Corsair kit for less than half the price. Will they meet your needs for integrating other components -no; will they perform as well? probably not either.. but I know many people who really do not care about a 5 to 10 degrees difference on their CPU, so the two types of kits can certainly co-exist, at least for now, since they cater to two different segments of the market.That's another interesting argument there, so I wanted to check-it out for myself. I went online to over%^$%*.co.uk and decided to build myself a kit. Here is what I came up with (I didn't pick the most expensive components mind-you as you can see below)
all prices below vat included:
EK Coolstream XT360 radiator: £40
3 fans @ £8 each: £24
EK Supreme LT waterblock: £28
EK Multioption reservoir: £27
MCP655 Vario pump: £75
6 x 12mm fittings @ 2.3 each: £13.8
2m x 12mm value tubing @ 1.6 /m : £3.2
Coolant: £7
Total: £218
It looks eerily close to the £220 retail value that you calculated for our kit above no? so what am missing? What's the VAT over there? about 18% ? So if we assume in effect that our kits will sell without VAT at about the same MSRP as in the US, and at the current conversion rate, then the difference between the above custom kit and our Edge kit would be about 18% or say about £40; so £40 it is, but certainly not the £100 that you estimated in your post. Feel free to correct my math if I'm wrong of course.
So now, let me ask you this: are truly enhanced reliability and simplicity with equal or better performance worth £40? Only your wallet can answer this, I do realize it. So what I can promise you here, is that the price of these kits will go down over time, as we continue to make progress in production and design efficiency.I think I responded in detail above. But also feel free to contradict me, that's what forums are all about ;)When we designed these kits, we focused on enabling the top of the case as one of the primary default installations because it is also one of the most common spots where people CAN install a large radiator in current full-tower cases. so yes, it works great at the top of the case!Thanks, I do appreciate the feed-back. We have a list of compatible cases on the product page too.. but you have to scroll down a lot, since I had a lot to say in this propduct description (probably too much in fact).
Cheers you all!
I think the price is a bit high as well. I do understand the points you've made, however, to buy a complete loop comparable to what's offered by this kit, built with swiftech parts, will cost me a fair bit less, and I have added some extra parts, like an AM3 mount for A swifttech block.
While I agree that conveinence is important, and you make some valid points about that, I think you are bang-on wit hthe "perception" part of it. And the way I perceive this, grouping all these bits together and selling as a kit, it should cost less than assembling the parts.
Your Ultima Xt kit, for example, at my retailer, is actually quite a bit more expensive than peice the same parts together, and I think you must agree that paying more, in this example, for the exact same parts, seems a bit foolish. I can actually peice together the exact same kit as the 220 Ultima kit, but with a 360mm rad, for $20 less(which also includes the AM3 adapter). You can check this for yourself @ NCIX...
Now, of course, this may be retailer gouging, but...
Should any parts in the "seperates" kit fail, they are easy to replace. In htis new kit, replacement is not so easy, as the rad and such are kinda specialized.
So, with all of this in mind, I think the $100 less price is fair..because we are expecting retailers to add on top of that cost. If you can actually bring this to market for $299 retail, then I think you guys have done a good job, but $5 more, and it's not going to be worth it for most of us. $300 for cooling a single component, for most of us here, is pretty steep.
My question is why didn't Swiftech use the MCR Drive series? Dur it is... I couldn't tell that from the pic. The MCR Drive photo shows the front of the rad/pump/res, where this shows the back side.
Choosing this technology corresponds to a need, or a choice that you make to simplify installation, and enhance reliability. With regards to replacing the parts, I can tell you this: the pump is not about to change. As to the radiator, yes it will evolve over time, but in a downwards spiral price-wise, since we are pushing hard to bring costs down. It may take some time, but we'll get there! Oh, and I almost forgot a critical point: the more parts you have the more possibilities of failure, the less you have is indeed the opposite. Finally, the components that are the most susceptible to fail are those with moving parts, and we do offer a 2 year warranty on the pump. so I am not sure that the argument about replacing failing parts is any different in a a pieced-together-kit versus this all=in-one technology.We revised the MCR Drive to allow the radiator to work perfectly at the top of the case, which has become the most popuilar mount.
The price is decent, but not great. 299 or less should be an aim
I think we'll get there in a relatively quick period of time. A few months probably.