Cooler Master Seidon 120V V3 Plus Review

Cooler Master Seidon 120V V3 Plus Review

Manufacturer: Cooler Master
UK price (as reviewed): £44.99 (inc VAT)
US price (as reviewed): Currently unavailable

While Cooler Master's Seidon coolers got the company into a bit of legal trouble with Asetek for patent infringement a few years back, it's still present in markets outside of the USA and operates as the firm's entry-level series of all-in-one liquid coolers. The Seidon 120V V3 Plus is the latest member to join the family and has hit shelves for £45 including VAT.

Less than 30mm thick, the slimline 120mm aluminium radiator is clad all in black as usual and will fit in many cases without fuss. The flip side to this is that cooling potential will be limited by its relative lack of size and thus surface area.


Cooler Master has opted for thin FEP tubing, a choice apparently made for durability – it claims the tubing has minimum moisture loss, high thermal stability and high pressure tolerance. What we can safely say is that the tubes are very flexible, secured well at both ends and highly resistant to kinking – they may not look as neat as rubber tubes but they certainly function well.

The pump unit is basic and plain looking but solid overall. A simple 3-pin header at the end of a flat black cable provides power, and there's no extra pizazz beyond a singular red LED that shines out from just above the Cooler Master logo when the unit is powered on.


In the box is a pair of 120mm XtraFlo fans, each with seven red blades that have a rather odd shape. The fans are made from fairly flimsy, translucent plastic, with this latter quality helping to boost the effect of the red LEDs embedded in them. Having two fans allows you to run a push-pull setup for maximum airflow, and this is how we've tested, but if you're short on space you can drop down to only one. There is no anti-vibration material for when you secure the fans to the radiator, and annoyingly there's also no splitter cable – both fans support PWM but you'll need your own splitter cable or two separate fan headers to run them, and that's not including the third that you'll need for the pump.


While the cooler is simple in design, installation isn't without issues. A universal metal backplate is supplied and once you've identified the correct orientation and holes for your socket you push the mounting screws through the backplate and secure them with plastic clips – so far, so good. After this, the Intel or AMD mounting arms (as appropriate) clip onto the top of the pump unit, which is another easy step.

The trouble comes, however, when you try to align the mounting arm holes with the mounting screws sprouting from the backplate and secure the two together. To align them in a standard tower case, you need to hold the backplate in place and use your other hand to align the mounting arms. This leaves you with precisely zero hands with which to grab the nuts required to finish the job. Trying to keep everything aligned with one hand is a real struggle – the backplate may half fall out, or you'll knock the mounting arms off the pump unit. If you've someone on hand to help out, it's a breeze, but on your own it can lead to some real frustration.


Thankfully, LGA2011(-v3) users, at least, won't have any trouble since the mounting screws go directly into the socket and you don't need to worry about keeping a backplate in place. Another small saving grace is that the thermal paste is supplied in a handy tube applicator rather than a messy sachet.