Enermax ELC 240 Liquid CPU Cooler Review

According to what Enermax have told us, the ELC 240 will come to market at £89.90. This means the Enermax ELC 240 occupies exactly the same price point as the Corsair H100i making it a direct competitor both in terms of price and physical specifications. The other main competitor, the Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme, costs around £105 but is disappearing from the UK shelves as Thermaltake appear to have discontinued it.

This means that the conclusion of this review in my mind comes down to one key question which is, how does the Enermax ELC 240 fare against the Corsair H100i? However, instead of answering that question directly we want to run through some of the positives and negatives of the ELC 240 first in an attempt to come to a fair and objective conclusion.

Kicking off with the positives we can see the Enermax ELC 240 is a well built and competent unit. I was very pleased with the bundled fans as they offer good performance, a nice design, excellent braided cables and for the most part – excellent acoustics. The flexibility of having three different fan operation modes is also a nice thing for Enermax to include, although it seems unlikely you’d ever want to go over 1500/1600 RPM in everyday usage scenarios because it makes a lot of noise. Secondly I believe that compared to the Corsair H100i the ELC 240 has a major design win in being able to remain quieter when idle or during everyday usage, this is thanks to quieter fans and no radiator-on-fan rattling. Even though the pump is noticeably more audible than the H100i pump, the much quieter fans at idle mean the day-to-day usage of this unit is quieter. Enermax have also stuck their neck on the line with the ELC 240 by offering a healthy five year warranty, although it is worth noting that Corsair do the same with their H100i. Thirdly, the Enermax ELC 240 mounting kit is very good. It is effective and reasonably simple and unlike the H100i kit which is prone to screw-snapping if you over-tighten things, this does not experience those same problems at all.

However, on the negative side the Enermax ELC 240 does skimp out on some key features that most of the competition has. The first is flexible rubber tubing. Enermax have opted for plastic tubing with the ELC 240 which even though is “flexible”, it just isn’t as flexible as its rubber counterpart. It is also very thin so I wouldn’t be surprised if this actually restricts the flow of water a bit too. Secondly, the Enermax ELC 240 does not have any LED lighting system. Now for some people this will not be an issue but when Corsair offers a fully controllable LED lighting system, you can’t help but feel a little bit short changed. Thirdly, the support for push-pull isn’t natively present. There are not extra fan ports on the pump and no extra fan screws are provided. Finally, the performance is weaker than the Corsair H100i. In our testing we saw four degrees less performance at equivalent noise levels. We are certain that this performance deficiency is mainly due to the pump design Enermax have used.

The Enermax ELC 240 offers decent cooling performance, good acoustics and a nice set of fans, with the lack of fan rattling being the significant advantage over the competition. However,  the Corsair H100i offers better performance, better acoustic performance at high system load, is 5mm thinner, offers the same warranty duration, the ability to natively add and control an extra two fans via the pump unit, a controllable LED lighting system, flexible rubber tubing and a stronger pump. If I was a Jury weighing up the evidence then I think you can see which way the hammer will fall.