We continue our tests with Silverstone who, in addition to their Grandia GD11 case, sent us their latest watercooling kit, the Vida 240 Slim. This is a rather special model due to its total thinness. This model, radiator + fan is 38 mm thick. Now, the question is to know what it gives from a performance point of view. That’s what we’ll see in this test, let’s go!
Presentation:
With this new series, Silverstone offers two watercooling kits all-in-one. They come with a 240 mm and 120 mm radiator. The series does not go further with a possible reference in 360 mm. Indeed, the purpose of these products is to take place in restricted spaces that are typically found in ITX cases… Or even in the front of the case with a large graphics card for example.
Of course, this model is equipped with a slim radiator measuring only 22 mm thick. This reminds us of the very old TD02-Slim that we tested in 2015… That goes back… However, the mindset was the same as now, to provide a kit with a thin radiator and slim fans to reduce the thickness of the whole. This way, the kit can fit in the tightest places with its total thickness of 38 mm!
However, the series relies on a pump whose positioning is most original since it is housed directly in the radiator. This is something we saw on the MSI MAG CoreLiquid C240, and with this, we learn that it has a six-pole motor to reduce noise by limiting interference.
On the ventilation side, we have two slim fans of 15 mm thickness. The brand indicates that they will produce a significant airflow and static pressure without sacrificing silence. For this, the mills exploit nine blades optimized for this exercise.
Finally, to take care of the aesthetic aspect, the cover of the waterblock turns from 90° to 180° so as to reorient the branches of the flake, Silverstone logo. And to underline all this, we find an RGB lighting at the level of the cover of the block, but also on the two fans.
As for prices, it’s simple, we find this Vida 240 Slim in two places, Amazon and Alternate.fr. At Amazon, you will have to deal with a merchant present on the marketplace with a price completely uncorrelated with the market. Count then $130,66 or 118,90 €, which seems to us more in phase with what the brand proposes.
[nextpage title=”Le Vida 240 Slim”]
Unpacking :
Again, we find a packaging specific to the brand with dark blue and gold colors. Apart from that, there is not much to highlight, except the photo of the kit on the front and the reminder of the features on the back.
Inside, we find the usual protections based on molded cardboard and plastic bag. Nevertheless, white foam wedges are also present. Remember that we are dealing with slim elements and that the box is intended for a more conventional kit!
The radiator:
Now it’s time to move on to the most interesting part: the radiator. And with this Vida 240 Slim, we find something out of the box. As you can see, this model is particularly thin with only 22 mm thickness. That’s 5 mm less than the classic 27 mm radiators… And in front of 38 mm, let’s not talk about it. On the other hand, out of the thickness, the dimensions are quite classic with 275 mm length for 120 mm width.
As we can see, the finishing remains clean with a totally square block, without apparent rivet as for the former productions of Asetek. We also have the right to a nice black paint ideally applied, in short, no particular criticism on this subject.
In addition, like the MSI MAG CoreLiquid C240, we find a remote pump in the radiator. Unfortunately, we don’t know much about it, apart from its speed and its power supply mode. For the time being, we can say that it draws its power from a three-pin fan plug and that it will work up to a maximum of 4200 rpm.
Finally, to connect the radiator to the CPU waterblock, we find two rubber hoses of 40 cm long. The finishing is neat since we find a nice nylon sheath finely braided. Nevertheless, these tubes remain rather rigid, which can complicate the integration in congested / demanding spaces.
The waterblock:
After the radiator, we move on to the waterblock of this Vida 240 Slim which displays a plastic construction. On the top, we find, from the start, the logo of the brand which stands out in a translucent way. Let’s not forget that the latter is adjustable. It will turn from 90° to 180° so that it is always positioned in the right direction, whatever your installation.
In terms of dimensions, this block measures 74 (W) x 74 (D) x 41 (H) mm. In the latter, we find a cable, but it will not be used to power the pump. Indeed, it is a connector type aRGB with three pins for the management of the lighting. Remember that the pump is in the heat sink.
Finally, the contact with the processor is ensured by a non-nickel-plated copper base. The latter is screwed by a total of six Torx screws and two One-Way… From there, we can forget any disassembly operation. Nevertheless, this base is wide enough to perfectly cover theIHS of a processor with socket LGA-1700 and AM5.
Compatibility :
With the Vida 240 Slim, Silverstone ensures a near-exemplary compatibility since the vast majority of recent platforms are compatible:
- Intel : LGA-1100 – LGA-1200 – LGA-1700 – LGA-2000
- AMD : AM5 – AM4
As we can see, the Silverstone kit is not compatible with Threadripper CPUs . At the same time, it is normal, these models have very particular needs. On the one hand, you need a wider base to cover the whole IHS, and on the other hand, it is not sure that a slim radiator is enough for cooling.
Fans:
Always with the aim of offering the thinnest possible watercooling kit, the 22mm thick radiator is accompanied by two slim fans. As you can see, the two mills have a particularly thin frame of only 16 mm thick. Coupled with the radiator, this makes us a set of 38 mm, enough to fit almost anywhere.
Our fans have a frame with rubber buffers on all four corners. Of course, the objective is to reduce parasitic vibrations as much as possible. With this, we can count on a total of nine thin blades with little curve. And for the connection, two cables are present, a first one of PWM type for the power supply. The second one will be used for the lighting management and will propose two proprietary male and female plugs. The goal is to connect the fans and the pump between them.
Regarding their technical characteristics, we know that they have a speed range between 300 rpm and 1800 rpm. At full speed, they will generate an air flow of 66.83 CFM while the static pressure will reach 2.59 mmH2O.
The bundle:
As for the accessories, we find something complete since the brand offers :
- A warranty guide
- Two instructions, one for the assembly, the second for the remote control
- Two Intel backplates , one for the LGA-1700, the other for the LGA-1000
- Two mounting arms, one for Intel, the other for AMD
- One 3-pin Molex/fan adapter
- A splitter to two four-pin fan sockets
- The necessary connectors for the RGB remote control
- A three button remote control for the RGB
- The necessary screws and bolts for mounting
As you can see, Silverstone provides everything necessary for the assembly of its watercooling kit. Similarly, all the necessary connectors for the connection of the RGB remote control or even to connect the AIO to a motherboard to control the lighting is available. We would have liked perhaps a set of longer screws to fix fans in 25 mm thickness in the batch. This would have allowed a change from the current fan to something more “universal”.
Roughly speaking:
Silverstonne delivers a rather original watercooling kit, but above all thin and go anywhere. The finish will not be a problem, but it is sure that you will save space with this model. Now we just have to see how it fits on a motherboard.
[nextpage title=”Installation and RGB”]
For the installation part, you will have to keep your AMD backplate, the manufacturer does not provide one. If you don’t have it anymore, a quick look on eBay should allow you to find one easily.
Preparation of the pump :
The setup is still pretty similar to what we had with MSI’s MAG CoreLiquid C240. The first step is to prepare the pump by installing the correct mounting arms. For this, no screwdriver is needed, just insert them sideways into the groove just above the base.
Mounting the pump:
Once the pump is ready, we tackle the motherboard. On Intel platform, we will have to put a backplate on the back of the motherboard. Then, we will screw the corresponding spacers around the socket.
If you have an AMD motherboard, you will have to remove the original mounting arms and replace them with spacers. On these platforms, you can’t go wrong because the screws have a small collar at the base. On Intel sockets, you’ll have to differentiate the screws according to the shape of the bead grooves or their color.
The final step is to put a small amount of thermal paste on the processor. Then, we put the pump on the CPU and we screw it with spring nuts. In short, nothing complicated.
Now, all that remains is to wire the kit and this is perhaps the most unpleasant part of the assembly. You will have to connect the fan and the waterblock together via their proprietary aRGB connector and then use an adapter to connect them to the remote control. Then, we will pull a SATA connector from its power supply to connect this remote control. Finally, we will connect the fans and the pump to the motherboard. In short, that’s a lot of cable to manage, it makes a mess in the PC especially since the cables are very thin.
[nextpage title=”Protocol”]
Small update of our test protocol. Indeed, we changed the software we were using to stress our configuration. The same goes for the different profiles. By the way, you will see that our configuration has recently received a new power supply. It is a RM750x from Corsair. Of course, we will always focus on temperature and noise measurements.
The wiring of the fans is not supported by our rehobus, so we set the ventilation manually via the bios of our motherboard. They will work respectively with a PWM signal of 30%, 50% and 100%.
- Glacier One 240 T30 (Phanteks)
- H170i Elite Capellix (Corsair)
- Kraken X53 RGB (NZXT)
- Liquid Freezer II 240 (Arctic)
- LT720 (DeepCool)
- MasterLiquid ML240 Illusion (Cooler Master)
- PL240 Flux (Cooler Master)
- Pure Loop 240 (be quiet!)
- ToughLiquid Ultra 240 (Thermaltake)
- Vida Slim 240 (Silverstone)
[nextpage title=”Speed and noise”]
Fan speed :
So we attack our series of temperature readings. Here, we start from scratch. Let us specify all the same the speeds of ventilation recorded at the time of our statements (for 12V, 8V, 5V):
As far as fan speeds are concerned, as can be seen, we have a fairly classic profile with a maximum speed of 1800 rpm. However, both mills will prove to be quite fast at low speed as well as at mid-range. With 1100 rpm and 1600 rpm respectively, this Vida proves to be faster than average. It remains to be seen what impact this will have on the noise!
Noise :
Despite the fans being quite fast at low speeds, the noise they generate doesn’t make our sound meter go crazy. In fact, we only found 30.5 dB at low speed, which is quite quiet. However, be careful, because this model can quickly become audible as the speed of its fans increases. At medium speed, we found 38 dB, higher than most of the kits in the comparison. Finally, at full speed, we read 44 dB, far from being catastrophic, but still audible.
[nextpage title=”Temperatures”]
Processor at 65W :
Despite a more violent 65W profile, this still represents the least stressful phase of this protocol. It allows to highlight the performances obtained with compact/entry-level heatsinks. These results are only indicative for the largest heatsinks (AIO, large dual tower heatsink, etc.).
With a low power consumption of 65W, the little Vida does well and stabilizes our CPU at less than 40°C at low rpm. However, on these higher speeds, it does slightly less well than the Pure Loop 240 from be quiet!
Processor at 95W :
Here, our CPU will run at 3.90GHz constantly and on all its cores. We apply a VCore of 1.375V to obtain a consumption of 95W approximately. To simplify the reading of the graph, we may have rounded some values to the nearest integer.
At 95W, the situation gets tighter, especially at low speeds where temperatures rise quite rapidly. As it is, Silverstone’s kit is positioned against the Kraken X53 RGB and the PL240 Flux from Cooler Master. On the other hand at high speeds, it stands out quite clearly from the Kraken from NZXT.
Processor at 125W:
Finally, we finish with our 125W profile. Here the heat release is more important, let’s see how our coolings do!
On our 125W profile, the Silverstone kit does not do too badly when the fans are running at high speed and mid-range. In these conditions, it falls slightly behind Thermaltake’s ToughLiquid Ultra 240. On the other hand, at low speeds, temperatures soar again. We can feel that, despite the fairly fast fans, the radiator has trouble handling high power consumption.
Summary:
Despite a slim radiator and fans, the Vida 240 Slim remains a rather interesting kit thermally. It’s resourceful, especially with the fan and pump set to full speed. Nevertheless, as the power consumption increases, it is more and more in trouble at low speed, despite faster than average fans. We feel that the radiator is penalizing in these conditions.
[nextpage title=”The temperature/noise ratio”]
On these graphs of perf/noise ratio, we remind you that the best is to be placed as much as possible on the bottom left of the graph. For the reading, the left most point symbolizes the ventilation in 12V, the one in the center the ventilation in 8V and the right most in 5V.
On our CPU consuming 65W, the Vida 240 Slim struggles to stand out from the competition. As we can see, it is behind and is outdone by the other models in the comparison. On the other hand, its good performance at low speed allows it to limit the damage where it proves to be quite formidable.
With an increased consumption, our kit stands out a little more from the competition. We think especially of the Pure Loop 2 (be quiet!) and the ML240 Illusion (Cooler Master) that it outperforms. Nevertheless, at low rpm, we feel that the situation starts to get tense due to the stretching of the curve.
At 125W, we notice that the situation remains tense at low rpm. Clearly, despite faster low speed fans, the slim radiator is felt. But this does not prevent our kit from competing with thicker AIOs. Despite this, it offers a temperature to noise ratio similar to the Kraken X53 RGB at low speed.
[nextpage title=”Conclusion”]
We are now at the end of this test of the Silverstone Vida 240 Slim. So, what is this model worth? Let’s review.
Only 38 mm thick!
As you can see, the particularity of this kit lies in the thinness of its radiator and its fans. Once assembled, we find a set measuring only 38 mm, which offers a serious space saving compared to the 52 mm of more conventional kits. This space saving can be useful in ITX configurations, but also in medium tower cases. We think especially with a front installation of the radiator with a large graphics card in the tower.
Beside that, we find a rather well finished kit with a nice square radiator and a nice paint. It’s always nice, especially when you compare it to some models where the rivets are visible. Moreover, we can orient the pump from 90° to 180° so that the logo is always in the right direction. Also, the aRGB lighting proposed by the brand is convincing.
While we are at it, let’s talk briefly about the assembly which is not difficult in itself. There are few elements to handle: spacers, a mounting arm and possibly a backplate. You will just have to deal with tubes that are a bit rigid. On the other hand, the big difficulty concerns the cabling which will not necessarily be obvious because of the big quantity of cable brought by the aRGB part.
Good temperatures despite a slim radiator!
As far as temperature readings are concerned, despite a thinner than average radiator, the kit does quite well. At low revs, the kit runs out of steam on our most demanding consumption profiles, but that’s not surprising. On the other hand, it does quite well at high speeds, allowing it not to lose face compared to other models.
As for noise, the noise levels displayed by this kit are far from being catastrophic, even at full throttle. But we will remember that the noise levels are higher than average at mid speed. As the load on your CPU increases, the noise is likely to be present more quickly than other kits. Be careful to manage your fan curve!
An interesting price, but availability at half mast:
Finally, the good surprise of Silverstone comes from the pricing. If you look hard enough, you can find it on Amazon.com for $130,66 and in Europe for under 120 €. This price allows the kit to compete with more imposing references such as the Pure Loop 2 240 from be quiet! or the ML240 Illusion from Cooler Master. In short, even without trying to gain a compactness, it is a reference that deserves attention.
Silverstone Vida 240 Slim :
We like:
- The good finish of the radiator
- The adjustable pump cover to have the logo in the right direction
- The serious space saving due to the thickness of the radiator/fan
- Easy to mount the pump
- Convincing aRGB lighting, good light intensity, good colors
- The temperatures are far from catastrophic despite its size
- The well studied pricing
We liked less:
- The pipes are a bit rigid, not easy to put in place
- The big quantity of cable brought by the lighting part
- Careful with the temperatures at low speed!
- The noise is higher than average at mid speed
- Very little spread in our countries
Finally, we choose to award the silver to this Silverstone kit. For about 120 €, we have an original kit with a slim radiator. Despite a compact kit, the temperatures are not worse than a more classic model, be careful at low rpm and on big consumptions. As far as assembly is concerned, it goes well, even if the pipes are quite rigid and there are many cables. Finally, the pricing is aggressive, but we only have a few dealers!
A big thank you to Silverstone !
