The pump that comes with this kit is somewhat unfamiliar to me, it’s a Hydor L20. This pump can push 185GPH (700 l/h) of water which means this pump has a higher flow rate than an Eheim 1048. This pump is very small with the dimensions of 3.5″x2″x3″ which is about half the size of the Eheim 1048. This is a huge benefit to those of you out there who have a small case and need a small pump. This pump will work both inline and while submerged so you can design your watercooling setup how you want to. This pump uses a ceramic shaft to power the blades which is good because it will conduct less heat than a metal one. With this pump being so small you would think it would have to take a lot of power to run it but it only needs 11w to operate.
Inside the box included with the pump is a manual and a bag with two fittings and four suction cup feet. The manual for the pump provides a good amount of information on how to sit it up and what it is capable of. The fittings that come inside the bag are pretty standard but I am curious to see if the blue compression fittings will fit over the tubing at all. We will see how this all works out later in the review.
As I said before the pump is very small, I put the tube of Arctic Silver Ceramique next to it and they are almost the same length. The pump comes with a 3 prong plug, some new Eheim pumps are able to be powered by a Molex from the power supply; this feature would have been nice to see on this pump as well. The back of the pump has a sticker with the specs of the unit and the model number. The cord is well sealed off from the inside of the pump so that if you decide to run it submerged it will not short.
The front of the Hydor pump has a blue control knob which allows you to adjust the flow rate of the water. This will not be used though because I will be setting up my system inline. Later I will show you how to setup the pump so that you can run your system inline as well. The top of the pump can easily be installed with the fitting provided and will not need any modification.
The pump comes with rubber suction feet that you can install to the bottom of the pump which is a great idea. One of the problems I had with the Eheim pumps is that they vibrate against your case unless you put some sort of dampening underneath them. With these suction cups there will probably not be any vibration noise, not to mention the fact that it will stay where you put it.
