As summer kicks off in the Northern Hemisphere, today we're bringing the water to our PC cooling testbed with a look at a pair of kits from AlphaCool’s range of ready-to-install liquid cooling sets. Specializing in liquid cooling, the German firm offers a complete range of liquid cooling parts – from radiators and reservoirs to tubes and connectors – both on an individual basis and as part of complete cooling kits. These kits essentially are collections of individual parts that are conveniently packed together, saving the trouble of picking items one by one and getting everything needed for a CPU liquid cooler at a small discount.
For today's review, we're looking at two of the three series of kits that AlphaCool currently offers, the Core Storm XT45 240 mm and the Core Hurrican XT45 360 mm. Paired with 240 mm and 360 mm radiators respectively, the two kits are largely similar in scope as high-end open loop water cooling sets. However the Hurrican kit, besides offering more cooling headroom overall via its larger radiator, diverges from its Storm counterpart by using hard, molded tubing. The end result is a very different building experience, even if the underlying physics at play are much the same.
