I’ve been following a growing market trend these last two years where more computer case manufacturers have been offering white cases, and even a few offering full white interiors. MSI is notable for offering full white motherboards kind of starting with the Titanium line, then going into the Tomahawk Arctic for Ryzen, Mortar Arctic for Intel, and recently the Gaming Arctic H310 M-ATX and the one we’re building with today, the Gaming Arctic B360 ATX board. I went online to find matching parts and the only CPU cooler I found that was full white was from Enermax.
I reached out to Enermax locally and told them about my ambitious project, as I’ll likely need to custom paint the interior of a new case anyways, and they surprised us by not only donating the Enermax ETS-T50 cooler we wanted to test for the build, but a whole slew of other supplies too, including a great white tempered glass case.
The custom paint and final assembly will be a later episode as I’ll need several days with good weather to complete the work. So we’ll be using Enermax’s RevoBron unit they sent, which is a semi-modular 700 watt power supply. Priced at 3390nt here, it goes for just under 90 dollars on Amazon. With two 35 Amp rails for GPUs, an 80 plus bronze rating, Japanese caps and a reversing on startup dust free feature, it also comes with the Coolergenie box to control your CPU fan and three case fans. The top of the RevoBron is well done, with its black grill and Enermax logo.
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Enermax ETS T50 Cpu Cooler Review + Build. Enermax LIQFusion on
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The white panels are really nicely finished
The case Enermax sent us is the Arctic Tank, which I think is currently only available in Asia, this one retails for 1990nt or 65 dollars us. The white panels are really nicely finished, with black trim and a top interface area.
The top has a power button, one USB 3.0, two USB 2.0, and audio jacks all with covers. On the right is the reset. There was nice attention to detail on the right side top, with this curved vented section. And the back metal panel has an extra centimeter out to help fit all your cables in. Inside the standoffs are pre-installed for ATX, and you should check to make sure they always match your motherboards’ mounting spots. And there’s two spots for SSDs along with a good sized CPU backplate cutout, and the case ships with a fan. Access to the back motherboard area is big.
So the Enermax ETS-T50 AXE cpu cooler really caught my eye as its the only current model on the market with both white painted fins AND white shrouds on the fans. Going for 1990 nt here, it goes for 59.99 on Amazon though I found it on sale for 48 bucks. The cooler measures 160 millimeters high by 120 wide and 139 long with the fan and shroud.
Inside the box from the left there’s the AMD top plate, the dual CPU backplate mount, top are the Intel top rails, and a whole bunch of mounting parts. The Enermax ETS-T50 can handle up to 250 watt TDP loads, and weighs in at 860 grams or 1.9 pounds.
The Enermax ETS-T50 front fan blades have a half white, half chrome design with 36 LEDs built into the shroud. The fan goes from 800 to 1800 rpm pushing up to 62 cubic feet of air a minute, at 19 to 25dba, so it’s pretty quiet. The unique feature is the completely white coated fins and sides, which will allow system builders to achieve almost completely white aesthetic.
The rear has a unique air guide which is rotatable to aim the exhaust directly towards your rear case exhaust. The V shape away from the fan is Enermax’s “pressure differential flow” which breaks up the airflow to better cool the five heat pipes carrying the heat away from the CPU. The five copper pipes come down to the contact plate for the CPU, which has plastic we’ll remove to install the cooler.
Enermax ETS-T50’s rear has a rotating air guide
I’ll be choosing the middle of these three spots which is the mounting position for LGA 11-50 X sockets. The plate reads “this side for Intel” we’ll use for the MSI B360 Gaming Arctic board. I’m inserting the bolt and making sure it’s completely flush. You may have to turn it a bit to get it aligned properly. Then slide on the plastic shroud which keeps the bolt in place and makes for an easier installation process. And repeating this for the remaining 3 bolts.
Finished, I’ll put the bracket on the back of the Gaming Arctic. Note the AMD legs we aren’t using are raised up and away from the board, so it doesn’t short out and kill your shiny new hardware. Time to attach the top plates and cooler. First, the spacers slide down the bolts. Next the Intel plates go down. They will also use the middle slot to match our choice earlier.
Nuts go on the top to lock down the top mounting plates. The CPU already has some grease applied from my last build. Undoing the clips is easy, as we remove the front fan and back shroud from the cooler. The front of the mounting plate is easy to get to as the cooler is positioned off center towards the back.
Enermax supplied a hefty amount of cooling compound, you should use a couple of grains of rice sized dollops on the top of the CPU. You can use the spreader to help cover the top, though the cooler pressing down will spread the compound evenly. So the cooler female bolts sit on the male bolts coming up from the middle of the plates. Everything looking good so far, I’m just tightening it down halfway. Now for the back.
Need an extra long screwdriver
And I run into a problem here, as a normal screwdriver isn’t long enough to drive the bolt even being careful, it slips. My second attempt with even more force and carefulness also slips as the spring gets compressed and provides more resistance.
So I need to find a store that sells hardware that’s open at this time. I’m filming this on the weekend so there’s not much open when evening falls. I’m going to the local hypermart which is about a 10 minute drive away. Let’s hope they have something I can use. I measured before I left and know I need a Philips that’s at least 13 centimeters or 5 and a quarter inches long.
RT-Mart Zhonghe to the rescue, hopefully. Their hardware section is minimal but looks like we have a contender. Survey says… 14 centimeters! We have a winner.
My point with this section is yes, I do have a small selection of tools especially considering producing vids about computer hardware, just not many people may have a non standard sized screwdriver handy. Back in the studio, and hey, look at that! We have a long enough screwdriver.
Here we gotta do it again from scratch.
On the back, I’m putting a lot of pressure down on the bolt, but it still slips. I gotta use another surface or I’m gonna flatten my motherboard box, so I end up finishing this off camera using a reversed mouse pad so the board doesn’t scratch the table. Installed, it’s time for the back shroud to go on, which is very easy. And the front fan is last, it just clips right on. The fan has a control switch to select the 5 settings, we’ll see that soon. Very clicky. The white sleeved fan cable is held in the notch, but for a cleaner build I’ll carefully push it out.
Enermax ETS-T50 is a great upgrade
I’m fitting the wiring in the hidden area under the cooler, then plugging it into the CPU fan header. Since the top plate of the switch is metal, I found a safe area to stow it here. Mounted on the board, it’s a really great compliment to the white MSI B360.So here’s the finished build so far. The Enermax ETS-T50 makes a statement as the centerpiece of the case, with a really nice light spill from the cooler’s main fan.
The tests were conducted at an ambient temperature of 26*C, with the case side open to keep it the same as my previous tests. Using HWinfo, I logged the CPU package and fan data for these results on the MSI B360 Arctic Gaming with an i3-8100 at 3.6 gigahertz. Running the Intel extreme tuning utility CPU stress test, the Enermax ETS-T50 keeps the temperature around the 43 degree mark after five minutes at full load which is 11 degrees lower than the stock cooler. Max temp for the T50 was 45 degrees, max for stock is 57.
As for the Idle tests, the Enermax came in at 33 degrees, and the stock cooler also idling at 33, no surprise there. With larger fan blades the Enermax posted an average of 850 rpm, and at the end of five minutes pretty much staying the same, averaging 848 rpm. Intel idle fan speed was around 1055 rpm, ramping up to 1350 to handle the load near the end of the stress test. The Enermax ETS-T50 likes to stay at 850 rpm, changing it to max in the bios, it got up to just under 1900 rpm.
A really fantastic improvement on stock, and with hotter CPUs it will dissipate much more heat, handling CPUs with up to 250 watts of power draw. Enermax also supplied us a slew of Cluster Advance white fans for the whole case, these two front fans draw in the air from the thin grilled front intakes.
Switched on, I really like the dynamic with the bright lighting, although that is adjustable with the cooler switch we saw. From off, pressing the switch turns on Sparkle mode, pretty cool. Next is All-on, which is looks bright but isn’t overpowering for me. Flash mode is next. Vegas mode cycles through Sparkle, All-on and Flash. The mode changes around every 10 seconds or so. And we’re back to LEDs off.
Overall I had a pretty good experience with the Enermax ETS-T50 cooler, though there were a couple of issues, like the need for an extra long screwdriver that buyers may not have lying around. Also the main cooler screws have softer metal than they should, considering the force required to turn it increases as you progress due to the spring, and three slips almost made it impossible to finish.
Now this could have been alleviated by making it a large flat head design, or making it a textured thumb screw would fix this entirely. The other not so important issue is just the inclusion of a breathe mode instead of a flash, which would be much more suited to sitting beside you for the long term. Also, I wanted to have white stickers on the fan hubs to really white out the case completely.
Enermax ETS-T50’s an outstanding cooler
The Enermax ETS-T50 cpu cooler is an outstanding cooler which not only looks slick, but can also effectively cool all the top selling intel and amd chips.With a extremely good cooling ability, big sized radiator and unique white theme, the Enermax ETS-T50 cpu cooler scores a 9 on the meter. So many air coolers have bare fins, a few have black, and only this one has white, which also coats the fins against corrosion. Five heat pipes wick away generated heat up to the effective rad where it gets directed straight towards your rear exhaust.
Plus the LED pattern is cool and all on isn’t overpowering, especially as most cases have slightly tinted windows. I would have liked to have seen a breathe option instead of a flash mode on this model. It should just clear the first memory slot though memory with large heatsinks may be a super tight fit, and it -may- clear basic height ram in 8 DDR4 DIMM slots, though there’s no white motherboards like that at this time.
I’m also giving the Enermax ETS-T50 a Techspin Platinum award for it’s first-of-a-kind, beautiful design and amazing CPU cooling ability. This is certainly a market first and the sleeved cabling was appreciated. From here, Enermax should deck the next model out with RGB LEDs with syncing integration, along with software to control it and multiple fans, as white is really suited for reflecting colors and gives system builders more design options.
The cooler main screws need to get an update to stronger material and easier to attach, so hopefully they can address this. Given this, should you buy it, even if it’s the first fully white air cooled option for white builds? Yes, at the 60 dollar price point, 48 on sale, you can’t beat it for its cooling potential and making a stunning centerpiece in your case. It’s very quiet, has attractive nicely bright LEDs, and overall, very well built. If you pick one up, shopping through our affiliate links will help us here with no extra cost to you. And follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at techspinreview.
Even at full load on my i3-8100 it was barely audible, with the glass off and it sitting next to me. At full speed you can hear it but it’s not noisy at all. Leave me your comments on what you think of this cooler in the comments below. For me I think the Enermax ETS-T50 will make an excellent part of an all white build, and am super excited for the next step of this project, so stay tuned.
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