Closer Examination

I can already tell that many will have the question of whether a DDC pump is included, so let me say right away that the SPC-60 from EK is not a Laing DDC but, rather, their take on a 6 W pump they have been selling for a few years now, and using in some of their kits and AIOs to replace a de-tuned, less powerful DDC. The EK-XRES 140 SPC PWM Classic RGB otherwise looks very similar to most reservoir/pump combo units employing the DDC pump, and there are even extremely similar versions sold by EK with this very pump too.

With the clear acrylic and black color scheme throughout and the chrome accents for the fill port at the top and new EK badge with a brushed finish that comes with a blue protective sticker—remember to remove it—there is most definitely a minimalist design going on here. Indeed, the reservoir top has an acetal cap that is threaded into the acrylic body with the fill port inset, but it is at this point that we figure out EK has not actually included an Allen key large enough to remove/tighten this stop plug, which is a big oversight, especially considering most people won't have a wrench of this size. That aside, there are two designated return and outlet ports on the pump top at the bottom, also made out of acrylic, so you are best off using these two ports with your loop and having the top port be a dedicated fill port. This way, you can just remove the cap entirely to fill the loop without worrying about finding an Allen key.


There are two separate flat ribbon-style cables. As with the black PWM extension cable we saw before, these are completely black. The shorter cable is a 4-pin PWM cable to help power and control the pump, and any standard 1 A PWM header on your motherboard or fan controller will work fine here provided it is at least compliant with the Intel PWM 1.3 spec. The other cable terminates in a female 4-pin LED connector for a compatible RGB header on your motherboard or LED controller.

There are four feet with rubber sections on them for vibration dampening, which come threaded into the pump body itself. These have a female thread such that you are supposed to drill through your case/pump adapter plate and have the provided screws and plastic washers from the accessory pouch go through and into these for a secure mount. If EK indeed includes a 120 mm hole mounting frame as mentioned on the product page, you would have another option for mounting to spare 120 mm spacings on your case or radiator, but I can't talk about that given this unit did not include such a frame.


At this point, I do not have a compatible motherboard with LED headers (working on that), but in the meantime, here are some example images and a quick video showing how the RGB effect is with the EK-XRES 140 SPC PWM Classic RGB. You will have to excuse the absence of coolant as I could not photograph that easily with my current setup.