The acoustic performance of the Enermax ELC 120, at idle, was dominated by the pump. Even though the pump wasn’t loud, at stock speeds it was louder than the fans and consequently we found the Enermax ELC 120 was offering similar acoustic performance to the Corsair H100i and the Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme. Now this seems about right seeing as they all have two fans each but to me the Enermax pump sounded noticeably louder than the pumps I’ve heard on equivalent CoolIT and Asetek systems.
With overclocking the fans finally started to ramp up a bit and as a result the ELC 120 found itself falling to the bottom of our graph. This isn’t a good thing and I think Enermax could of made things so much better for themselves by using a quieter and more efficient pump. It doesn’t need to be much quieter, literally we are talking a few decibels quieter compared to the Asetek/CoolIT competition which is near-silent in terms of the pump.
It probably just needs some fettling and refining. Rubber hoses definitely won’t go amiss. Maybe the gen 2 will provide just that.