Posted by Morry Teitelman | May 8, 2017 | Cases and Cooling | 11

Alphacool NexXxos Cool Answer 360 D5/UT kit Courtesy of Alphacool

Alphacool is a German-based company, known in liquid cooling enthusiast's circles for their high performance and innovative product designs. Alphacool provided us with one of their NexXxos Cool Answer cooling kits, featuring one of their 360mm (3 x 120mm) UT copper radiators, a Repack dual bay acrylic reservoir with integrated VPP655 D5 pump, and the NexXxos XP3 Light CPU block. With a retail price of 314.95 euros (approximately $330 USD), the kit comes at a competitive price compared with other higher-end DIY kits.

5.25 Dual Bay Reservoir Courtesy of Alphacool

NexXxoS UT60 Full Copper 360mm radiator Courtesy of Alphacool

NexXxos XP3 Light CPU Waterblock Courtesy of Alphacool

XSPC bundled in many of their high end components into the NexXxos Cool Answer 360 D5/UT kit, including the NexXxos XP3 Light CPU block, the NexXxoS UT60 Full Copper 360mm triple fan radiator, the Repack 5.25 Dual Bay reservoir with integrated VPP655 D5 pump, three meters of 10mm (3/8") inner diameter / 13mm outer diameter clear tubing, six black chrome compression barbs, three 1200 RPM NB-eLoop – Bionic Lüfter fans, 1000ml of their CKC Cape Kelvin Catcher Clear coolant, and all the hardware necessary to put it all together. The Repack dual-bay reservoir has an anti-cyclon design on the inlets and directly feeds the rear-mounted D5 pump. The included VPP655 D5 pump is rated for a 350ml/hr flow rate. All components are copper, brass, Acetal, or acrylic to minimize the possibility of mixed-metal corrosion occurring in the loop.

Technical Specifications (taken from the Alphacool website)

Hardware Editor at PC Perspective. Main focus is on motherboard reviews, but does branch out to other areas of interest from time to time (read that as water cooling). Morry has been building his own systems since the mid-90's and has a passion for PC modding and watercooling. If you've been to Quakecon, there's a chance you've seen one of his builds.

Talk about not understanding Talk about not understanding your market. A 2×5.25″ bay reservoir is a little bit passe these days no?

It would seem so, most new It would seem so, most new enthusiast cases don’t even have 5.25 bays anymore.

maury, would you please maury, would you please consider doing a review of a unit using quick connect couplings?

they would be the only thing that might, depending on your review, get me back to water cooling, which i gave up five years ago because of the hassle and the noise ironically

i have been using noctua’s since, but really am curious whether it would be relatively easy and hassle free with the quick connects?

i suspect there is a flow problem with them, but maybe some company has sorted out that issue

I use quick connects on my I use quick connects on my test benched when doing the stand alone block reviews and have found that they do not impact performance. It really depends on which quick connects you use and what fittings / tubing you connect to them. I’ve had really good luck with the Alphacool HF quick connects and the Koolance quick connects as well. They do get pricey though…

maybe you can do a video of maybe you can do a video of building a water cooling loop with quick connects for novices?

Perhaps passe a bit. However Perhaps passe a bit. However keep in mind that kit with old blocks and old bay res are very old by now. It belong to the old Alphacool before they basically sack everybody and hired new people with new ideas.

I would agree that old XP3 block is very high restriction block and it can’t compete with top of the line performers like EK Supremacy, BP Summit or WC Heatkiller. But I find absolutely astounding that 1200 rpm e-loops can’t deal with heat on 60mm 9FPI (!)rad. That does not compute. I’m using exclusively Alphacool rads U and X-flows and on one PC I’m running Scythe 500 rpm fans in push only on 60mm 480 with single AC D5 and I have no issues whatsoever. e-Loops are superb fans even at sub 800rpm they are perfect for low FPI rads. I don’t know what’s wrong with the setup but it simply isn’t possible for 1200 rpm bionic fans to fail at removing heat from 9 FPI rad.

Heck I’m using e-Loops in push @750rpms on 16FPI X-Flows and they are perfect in every way. Either pump is crap or its crap. 😀

I think the performance issue

I think the performance issue seen in testing was more with the low flow of the pump in combination with the thickness of the radiator, made for a "perfect storm" of sorts…

Strange, that looks like the Strange, that looks like the standard D5 VPP655 pump. Did you get a broken pump or something? Looking at your picture of the back of the res and the D5, it sure looks like their standard VPP655, a 1500 l/h pump. It should go to like 4800 rpm at the highest setting.

Datasheet for the D5 VPP655: https://www.alphacool.com/AtsdDataSheet/getDataSheet/articleId/10620

Product page: https://www.alphacool.com/shop/sets-und-systems/alphacool-nexxxos/16245/alphacool-nexxxos-cool-answer-360-d5/ut-set

The motor of the water cooling system: The pump Alphacool has combined the proven VPP655 pump technology with a new generation of the Repack reservoir.The pump is installed in a space-saving manner at the back of the reservoir. Coming with an impressive pressure head of 3.7m and a maximum flow rate of 1500l/h, this is a true performance pump.This makes it the ideal pump for larger loops with multiple water blocks, e.g. on the Mainboard and graphics card.

Edit: Looks like when I link directly to their English site, it changes to their German one in an incognito window. Needs to set a cookie or something by clicking the UK flag upper right corner.

The odd thing is that their

The odd thing is that their page lists two different max flow rates, depending on which page you look at.  The Description page shows a flow of 350 l/h, while the tech spec page lists it at 1400 l/h.  In any case, something was severely impacting the performance of the kit.

Found on this page on alphacool site:

https://www.alphacool.com/shop/pumps/alphacool-pumps/10620/alphacool-vpp655-single-edition

The 350 figure must be a typo The 350 figure must be a typo in the description, they have miss-spelled words too here and there. Also mixing English/German in a chaotic manner? Sheesh, when will they fix their site… Anyway, the “Technische Details” tab say 1500, same in the datasheet.

This datasheet has both the VPP655 and the VPP644: http://www.aquatuning.de/download/Alphacool-Laing-VPP655%20-%20TPP644-Datasheet.pdf This one seems to be for the PWM controlled version: http://www.aquatuning.de/download/Alphacool-Laing-VPP655%20-PWM-Datasheet.pdf

In any case, something was severely impacting the performance of the kit.

I don’t doubt that, performance was surely sub-par. That 90 degree bend at the back of the res that you mentioned on the podcast probably doesn’t help. And that XP3 block looks like a highly restrictive design, probably needs the pump at max rpm. Might work better with one of those high pressure DDCs like Swiftech MCP35X or MCP50X. I have a MCP35X and it can power through pretty much everything. Drawback is the DDC whine at high RPM, I’d take a D5 over that any day. All DDC pumps I’ve used have had that high pitched whine when over ~3000 RPM. A D5 is heaven in comparison, even at max RPM I can’t hear it outside the case.

Thanks for doing some custom loop stuff reviews, I appreciate it 🙂

Thanks for the additional information Pholostan.  I've updated some information in the review to better elaborate on the kit's performance mysteries as well as updating the pump flow rate numbers…

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