NZXT Kraken G10 GPU Bracket Review

Sometimes an idea is just so good, you wonder why the heck it took so long before anyone thought it up and transformed it to reality.

NZXT’s new Kraken G10 GPU Bracket is one of these.  As a concept it’s brilliant:  It allows you to use an AIO (all-in-one) CPU water cooling system – the market is now flooded with them – on a graphics card.  However, as good as any idea is, you only get a measure of its true worth after seeing it in action in the real world.

NZXT was very kind to have provided Techgage a sample of not just its Kraken G10 GPU Bracket for review, but also one of its X40 AIO CPU coolers as well.  Because of this, we have 100% guaranteed compatibility between the Kraken G10 and the AIO CPU cooler.  Having said this, the Kraken G10’s compatibility list is huge, encompassing a wide variety of GPUs from both AMD and NVIDIA as well as other Asetek-sourced AIO CPU cooler solutions providers.

We’re very grateful that NZXT provided us with both pieces of equipment because, well, yours truly has never bought or used an AIO H2O CPU cooler.  I like old-school, custom-built water cooling for my own machines.  But it will be interesting to see just how well NZXT’s hardware does against both stock cooling as well as a custom-built water cooling solution.

But before we get into all that, let’s have a look at the Kraken G10 GPU Bracket.

That’s what the Kraken G10 looks like when installed onto a GPU, in this case an EVGA GeForce GTX 680 (reference design).  Not a bad-looking piece of kit once it’s all put together, no?

Let’s have a look at how things look right after we’ve taken all the bits out of the box, then.

Inside are the steel Kraken G10 bracket itself; a 92mm NZXT fan; a backplate; a bag of mounting hardware; a bunch of zipties (to keep your hoses tidy – good touch, NZXT!); and an instruction manual.

So, yes, it’s a very basic package.  It’s all you need to install your Asetek-sourced AIO water cooler onto your GPU, and nothing more.

As previously mentioned, our video card guinea pig is a reference model NVIDIA GTX 680 from EVGA.  Except for commenting on how easy (or not) it is to do it, I won’t cover the installation phase of NZXT’s cooling equipment in this review as that is beyond this article’s scope.

And here is NZXT’s X40 AIO CPU cooler.

Now that we’ve had a look at every part of this hardware party, let’s go on to some testing and thoughts on performance.