Given its price of just under £80, Antec's Mercury 240 liquid cooler is clearly targeting those after some AIO action without breaking the bank. The addition of two LED fans, plus a LED pump, will certainly help its appeal as well. Whether or not the Mercury 240's performance and noise levels justify the price is another thing, though.
Adding LEDs to liquid coolers has proved popular over the last couple of years and now Antec has joined in the fun with its Mercury 240 liquid cooler. It is not RGB though, but the pump LED can change between blue, green and red depending on the CPU temperature. Intrigued?
Specification
- Socket Compatibility : 1150, 1151, 1155,1156, 1366, 2011, 2011-3, 2066, 775, AM2, AM2+, AM3, AM3, AM4, FM2
- Included Fan Configuration: 2 x 120mm w/ Blue LEDs
- PWM Fan: Yes
- LED Lighting Colour: Blue
- Approx Fan Speed: 900 ~ 1800 rpm
- Adjustable Fan Speed Controller: No
- Fan Airflow: 73.31 CFM
- Air Pressure: 2.25 mm H2O
- Sound Level (dB): 30 dB
- Fan Material: Plastic
- Heatsink Material: Aluminium
- Fan Dimensions: 120 x 120 x 25 mm
- Heatsink Dimensions: 274 x 119 x 27 mm (WxHxD)
The Antec Mercury 240 ships in a dark box with blue and white accents, along with a photo of the cooler on the front.
Inside, the hardware does come in labelled bags, but for some reason the Intel mounting arms and LGA 2011 screws were inside the ‘AMD' bag. Someone was probably having a bad day at the factory.
The manual is also included, but far more interesting are the two 120mm LED fans. They are not RGB, mind, but sport blue-only LEDs.
Lastly, the AIO itself. It is a slim design, measuring 274 x 119 x 27 mm (WxHxD), so the total thickness of 52mm (27mm radiator + 25mm fan) should ensure compatibility in most cases.
The pump/waterblock is quite hefty and features a relatively innocuous Antec logo in the middle. The white top-plate is where the temperature-reactive LED will shine through.Here I will walk you through the installation process. It is worth noting we test using a Z97 motherboard – socket LGA 1150. The process below reflects that.
The first thing to do is screw the two fans to the radiator.
After that, two mounting brackets need to be screwed onto the pump. Each bracket uses two screws.
Next, prepare the backplate – pass the four screws through the central LGA 115x holes and secure them with the small plastic clips.
Then you can go ahead and mount the backplate behind the motherboard socket, using two small adhesive pads to keep it from falling out as you flip the motherboard over.
The pump is now ready to be mounted, so place it on your CPU and pass the four long screws through the mounting arms and into the backplate screws. Tighten it down until the pump is secure.
That is it for installation, and overall it is a fairly pain-free process. It is a bit long-winded compared to the Asetek method, and the instruction booklet could be clearer, but it is simple enough.
I do have to mention the tubing, though, as it is very inflexible and will really fight you if you try to get it into a desired shape. The fittings where the tubing attaches to the pump aren't rotatable, either, so getting the tubing to look neat is not very easy.
Just to show you the LED pump as well, I took that photo with the CPU idling, so the LED was blue. At 36-40C the LED is green, while it turns red once your CPU reaches over 41C.To test all CPU coolers, we devised an easily repeatable test with no variables other than the coolers themselves. This ensures that figures from every cooler we test are comparable with each other.
Test rig
Using an open-air test bench, we deploy an Intel Core i7-4790K plugged into a Gigabyte Z97X-SOC Force motherboard. Alongside this is 16GB of 2400MHz Corsair Vengeance DDR3, as well as a 120GB OCZ Trion 150 SSD. Powering everything is a Corsair RM750x PSU.
The test process
Testing coolers involves taking a total of 4 temperature readings per cooler. First, we measure the idle temperature of the i7-4790K at stock speeds (turbo boost disabled), before measuring its temperature under load at stock speeds. Next, we overclock the CPU to 4.5GHz using a 1.3 Vcore, ensuring greater heat output. In its overclocked state we then measure the idle and load temperatures of the CPU again. The figures we present are temperature deltas – meaning we take each temperature reading and minus the ambient temperature from it. This allows us to test in an environment that is not temperature-controlled.
To ward off potential comments or questions, we know 4.5GHz using a 1.3 Vcore is not the ‘best’ overclock – this particular CPU could reach that frequency at closer to 1.25 on the Vcore, which is more efficient. That is not the point, however. We are trying to stress the coolers to see how they deal with excess heat … hence the higher than necessary Vcore.
Where possible, each cooler’s fans are plugged directly into the motherboard using the CPU_Fan or CPU_Opt headers. Some AIOs, however, ship with their own fan controllers or PWM hubs. If we are unable to plug the fans directly into the motherboard, it is specified in the performance section of the review.
An idle reading comes from leaving Windows on the desktop for 15 minutes. A load reading comes from running Prime95’s (version 26.6) Small FFTs test for 15 minutes – enough time for temperatures to plateau.
Noise output
Unfortunately I am unable to properly measure the sound output of CPU coolers using a digital sound meter. This is because I am based alongside a busy road (with high ambient noise levels). Using a sound meter is, as such, not possible as there are variables out of my control. However, I will try my best to subjectively describe the noise output in a helpful manner.Temperatures
All temperature charts are sorted with lowest load temperatures at the top.
***Original test figures***
As you can see, across both tests, the Mercury 240's performance is a bit disappointing. I re-mounted and re-ran my tests to confirm the accuracy of the figures and I got the same results. The Cryorig H7 – a £35 air cooler – actually out-performs the £80 Mercury 240 in both tests.
***Updated figures 20/9/17***
We have since received a new sample from Antec, as they thought we had been sent a pre-production sample that was not indicative of the cooler's true performance. Having tested this new Mercury 240, there is some merit to what Antec said – the CPU came in around 1.5C cooler when overclocked, and 0.5C cooler when running at stock. This is not a huge difference, but it is certainly better than before.
However, we have since reviewed the Game Max Iceberg 240, a £60 liquid cooler, and that perform more-or-less identically to the Mercury for less money. Ultimately, even the updated Mercury 240 sample we received struggles to really standout in a crowded market. It is decent, certainly, but ‘decent' isn't quite enough considering the Arctic Liquid Freezer 240 can offer substantially better cooling for less money.
Acoustics
The Mercury 240 isn't all bad, though, as it is not too loud – and certainly not as loud as the jet engine-rivalling ID-Cooling FrostFlow 240L. I have heard quieter coolers, but the fans are not noticeable when idling and are far from intrusive when under load, so I can't complain.Overall, the Antec Mercury 240 is an unspectacular liquid cooler.
It does have the advantage of LED fans and a temperature-reactive LED pump, but I find the latter feature to be a gimmick quite frankly. For instance, the pump glows red once the CPU temperature reaches 41C, as if 41C is somehow a dangerous temperature for your processor. Given the vast majority of CPUs will get hotter than that while gaming, the feature seems pointless to me.
Installation is pretty straightforward, though, and shouldn't take too long, but it is not as simple as Asetek's method. I also found the corrugated tubing to be very inflexible, making life difficult if you want a clean-looking installation.
Performance is also disappointing, as we found the Mercury 240 was actually outperformed by the Cryorig H7 – a £35 air cooler – across both our tests. I would expect a bit more from an £80 liquid cooler. Update 20/9/17: We have since tested a new sample of the Mercury 240 and found it to perform a little better than our original sample, though it still could not overhaul the H7.
The last thing to touch on here is acoustics, and honestly the Mercury 240 is fine in this regard. It is far from the loudest cooler I've heard, so I cannot be too critical.
On the whole, though, I have to say those with £80 to spend on a liquid cooler could do a lot better than the Antec Mercury 240. The Arctic Liquid Freezer 240, for instance, is cooler, quieter and cheaper.
You can buy one for £79.99 from Overclockers UK HERE.
Update 27/7/17: Antec got in touch with us and it seems we may have been shipped a pre-production model of the Mercury 240. We will be getting another sample soon and will test it when it arrives. We will continue to update this original review as the story unfolds.
Update 20/9/17: We have tested our new Mercury 240 sample and found it to cool better, but not by much. For full details, see page 5 (‘performance and comparisons'). Overall, we still feel that there are more compelling options than the Antec Mercury 240.
Pros
- Reasonably quiet.
- Installation is simple enough.
- LEDs may appeal to some.
Cons
- LED pump turns red at 41C – rendering it pointless.
- Tubing is very inflexible.
- Out-performed by a £35 air cooler.
- Arctic Liquid Freezer 240 is an all-round better product for less.
KitGuru says: There are a few too many issues with the Mercury 240 for us to give it an award. Primarily, it is outperformed by a £35 air cooler which is hard to take considering this is an £80 liquid cooler.
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