Are you always envious of water blocks with screens? CORSAIR launched the iCUE ELITE radiator LCD screen upgrade kit, which upgrades the water-cooled radiator’s water pump motor (water block) to a version with an LCD screen, allowing you to customize your creativity. The kit sells for NT$ 3290 and comes in black and white.
iCUE ELITE Radiator LCD Screen Upgrade Kit
This LCD screen uses a 2.1-inch IPS panel with a resolution of 480×480. The kit is fairly simple, the LCD screen is already mounted in the frame and comes with cables to connect to the controller of the iCUE ELITE series heatsink.
The inner side of the screen is connected to the water block body with an 8 pin connector, and is adsorbed against the surrounding 4 magnets, so there is no need to fix it with screws. The included hexagonal wrench is used to remove the top cover of the water block.
Through CORSAIR’s own iCUE Software, you can customize the screen to display dynamic GIFs, still pictures, and information such as temperature, fan/pump speed, etc. Of course, the LED light beads around the screen and on the RGB fan can also control the lighting effect. It is worth mentioning that after some lighting effects and screen display settings are completed, iCUE Software can be removed to reduce resource usage.
iCUE H150i ELITE CAPELLIX Radiator
The demonstration radiator is iCUE H150i ELITE CAPELLIX, which adopts the CoolIT integrated water cooling solution, with a water cooling radiator up to 360mm, and three 12cm RGB fans are attached. You can use software to control the water cooling motor, fan speed, RGB lighting effects, and LCD screen.
The fasteners of the water block can be compatible with Intel LGA 115x / 1200 / 1700 / 2011 / 2066, and AMD AM4 / sTRX4 platforms, covering current mainstream and high-end CPUs. Among them, LGA 1700 and LGA 115x / 1200 use the same type of fasteners, only the height of the screws and copper posts differs by 1mm.
Effectiveness measurement
We use Intel’s current highest-end Core i9-12900K / KS processor as a test platform. When running Prime95, the Core i9-12900K with a maximum power consumption of 241W can be suppressed below 85°C, but at this time, the highest power consumption of the Core i9-12900KS can be suppressed. Reaching 324.48W, the maximum temperature can only be controlled at 102°C.
If the AIDA64 Stress FPU is used instead, the maximum power consumption of the Core i9-12900KS will be reduced to around 293W, and the maximum temperature will be 98°C. Although it seems to reach the frequency reduction temperature of 100°C, it is not easy to generate this kind of heat in general applications, so there is no need to worry too much.
Summarize
This LCD screen can indeed bring richer personalization settings to the host, and it is supplied in the form of an upgrade kit, which can also save users who used the same series of mid-to-high-end water-cooling radiators the cost of replacing the entire radiator. The kit can also be replaced without removing the original water-cooled head fastener, which greatly reduces the process of re-assembly and assembly, which is quite convenient.
However, due to the limitation of the design of the water-cooled radiator itself, additional controllers must be used to connect the LCD screen, fans, and RGB lighting effects, resulting in the need to connect a lot of cables (3 RGB fans need to connect 6 cables to the controller), It is hoped that future designs will simplify wiring and further improve the ease of installation.
In short, if you are using the old iCUE ELITE series radiator, and also hope that the host has playability other than RGB lighting effects, you can try to start with this upgrade kit to play.