After plenty of success with their cases, case fans and power supplies, it’s only natural for Fractal Design to extend into even more cooling solutions. The new Kelvin series has its work cut-out in the field of all-in-one liquid coolers because a number of critically acclaimed products are already well-established.

Fractal Design has done a great job in ensuring the bundle for the S24 covers all eventualities – this cooler can accommodate multiple sockets from Intel and AMD and comes with a full tubed of thermal paste. Build quality is also something which resonates throughout this product, to all components.



Performance is likely to be the topic most enthusiasts will be seeking out and certainly for the stock performance the Kelvin S24 did a reasonable job. Comparing it to other 240mm liquid coolers, the S24 does drop behind the pack somewhat and there are a number of air coolers which cost half the price but offer similar performance. The bonus with opting for a closed loop solution like S24 over an air cooler is that there is much more space around the CPU socket to avoid obstructions for components such as tall memory modules. Throughout our testing we applied a significant overclock to the CPU but unfortunately S24 dropped further back in the cooling league and struggled to affectively cool the chip.

We appreciate this is Fractal Design’s first attempt at designing such a product but we feel they could make some improvements – streamlining the installation process is certainly something we’d like to see. Breaking out of tradition they have included screws which require allen keys to tighten, which only adds frustration when trying to balance and lineup the radiator, fans, screw holes. Furthermore, there are no retention screws pre-fixed. Springs, screws, washers all have to be aligned to the brackets.

At a cost of £89 GBP / $120 USD the Kelvin S24 is placed accurately among other 240mm coolers but the competition is rather fierce.

The Kelvin S24 is a good first attempt at water cooling for Fractal Design, but it isn’t without its flaws.