SilverStone Hydrogon D120 Reivew

Introduction

Meet the Hydrogon D120, Siverstones flagship air cooler featuring two of their HYD120 Fans and a whole bunch of heat pipes. Let's see how this beast of an Air cooler can perform!

What's in the Box?

The SilverStone Hydrogon D120 ARGB is coming in the same type of box like most other coolers out there. Once everything is unboxed we will find the following items:

• SilverStone Hydrogon D120 + 2 Fans pre-installed
• Mounting Hardware Intel / AMD
• Screwdriver
• Thermal Paste

Below we summarized the most important specs:

Compatibility

One of the positive aspects about the Hydrogon is the fact that the cooler can be installed without removing the Fans even once, making the installation surprisingly enjoyable.

Additionally, we wanted to note that due to the right heatsink of the cooler being bent severely, the Hydrogon never protrudes over any ram slots, making the Hydrogon 100% Ram Compatible.

Down below we added the full compatibility list for both platforms.

Individual Components

Heatsink

With its 6 copper nickel-plated heat pipes, the Hydrogon tries to transport as much heat as possible to the upper side of the two heatsinks.

The Hydrogon being a dual tower cooler does not rely on any coloring but stays in the original Aluminum Heatsink colors.

Fans

The Fans used on the Hydrogon D120 are specifically mentioned once on its product page as being "HYD120 ARGB"- Fans. Although these fans are not available separately, SilverStone attached their spec sheet which reveals that the fans are pushing around 56.23CFM @ 1.98mm/H20 while spinning at 1850RPM.

In the center of the Fan, Silverstone added a couple of LEDs that are shining their light all across the milky-plastic.

To control the Fans, the HYD120 requires a PWM signal for power and a 3-Pin ARGB for the light show. Fortunately, SilverStone added a daisy-chain option to the end of the fan, allowing you to connect the fans to a single PWM and a single 3-Pin ARGB header.

Base

The base of the Hydrogon consists of one of the thickest nickel-plated bases we have seen until now. We're unsure if this actually changes anything, it was just noteworthy due to its ridiculous size.

Appearance

Due to the HYD120 ARGB Fans used on the SilverStone Hydrogon, the Cooler is perfectly able to start a real light show.

While all of the RGB is being emitted from the center of the fan, the Milky-Acrylic material used for the Wings is forwarding the light to the very edges while glowing in the color of your choosing.

With an all-aluminum heatsink in the iconic, yet nowadays slightly rare, silver color, the whole cooler produces a raw, industrial-styled look while keeping it 2022 rainbow unicorn RGB-isch. 

Benchmark

We benchmarked the SilverStone Hydrogon D120 on our usual testbench using a Ryzen 3900x.

While letting the Fans spin at 100% of their speed, the Hydrogon managed to keep the 3900x at 52°C. This places the Hydrogon just 1°C behind the Arctic Freezer 50.

After noise normalizing our results, the Hydrogon did not make it to the center of our list anymore. While the Hydrogon was able to keep the 3900x 1°C Cooler than an Arctic Freezer 34, as soon as we droped the target temperature, the Hydrogon lost over the whole spectrum placing it pretty poorly for a dual tower dual-fan cooler of this size.

Conclusion

Although the Hydrogon D120's build quality and max performance weren't disappointing at all, its noise-to-performance ratio wasn't convincing enough to create a positive review.

Additionally,  the installation procedure wasn't the most pleasant due to the huge cable mess created by the fans.

That being said, we believe that the overall issue of the Hydrogon D120 is its Fans. Looking back at their specs, we believe that there was significantly more performance to squeeze out of that dual tower cooler. Furthermore, considering their performance, we believe the fans are significantly too loud for what they are able to push. 

To top it off, we believe that the Fans should not both get 100% long cables, but should be combined into a single one using a PWM-Daisychain system.

Looking back at the whole review, we believe everything that wasn't good about the Hydrogon could be backtracked to its fans. Something that could be improved and re-released as a new unit.

Considering our opinion due to the fan and the fact that a cooler like the Arctic Freezer 34 eSports Duo is both more affordable and better performing, we would suggest looking at other coolers.