ID-Cooling Frostflow 240L Liquid Cooler Review

Liquid cooling has always seemed like a dodgy subject to me -- you want to put actual liquid inside your electricity-powered computer? I had visions of long metal pipes winding their way around all of the components, starting to gather condensation when the weather changed… It was terrifying.

But actually holding a liquid cooler in my hands -- obviously I mean ID-Cooling’s Frostflow -- it turns out that it’s not that complicated at all. Yes, it says on the box that it can pump 76 litres of water per hour, but literally everything is in the box, and it doesn’t need to hook up to your hosepipe.

The unit is made up of a water block which sits on top of your processor (it comes with brackets for Intel and AMD processors), and two pipes which run up to the radiator. I’m guessing the liquid runs from one pipe, up through the radiator and down the other pipe into the pump (housed in the water block), but as the whole thing is either braided or metal it’s not easy to see inside. The water block has a light on it to illuminate your rig, I got a white one to review, not that it made a difference as my case doesn’t have a window. It also comes with two 120mm fans which you can attach as either exhaust or intake, it’s up to you.

Also in the box is an installation guide, a dual fan Y-splitter, a mini tube of thermal paste and all of the various screws and washers required to fit everything together.

Installation is pretty straightforward, especially if you've previously installed a CPU cooler. The main difference is that you now have to find space for the radiator, which needs to go on either one side or the top of your case. You need to attach it to the motherboard first, so depending on the layout of your case you might want to figure out where you’re putting it before you fasten any screws.

Once the radiator is on, you need to attach the fans to it, so work out where fans need to plug into your motherboard! The Y-splitter that it comes with lets you plug both radiator fans into one port, but don’t forget your case fans and the water block.

During use I’ll admit that the fans are quite a bit louder than my old cooler. It’s double the fans, and each one is probably twice the size of the old one, so I’ll forgive it that. The temperature of my CPU rarely rose above 60oC with the old cooler, now even under load it’s rare that it gets close to 60oC, and the air coming out of the top (where I placed the radiator) never gets higher than room temperature so the extra room in the case appears to have improved the efficiency of my graphics card cooling, as well.

As I mentioned, I haven’t had a lot of experience with liquid cooling. As a first step into the arena, I can highly recommend the ID-Cooling Frostflow for ease of use, as well as the price. It’s about twice what I paid for my old cooler, and if you don’t mind the increase in noise it’s well worth it.