Hardline liquid cooling elevates the most elite gaming desktops above the rest. Not to be confused with sealed “all in one”-style liquid-cooling solutions, it requires custom engineering and skillful hand assembly. Towers we’ve reviewed with it routinely cost more than $5,000, which is why iBuyPower’s $1,999 Element CL Pro mid-tower seems like a dream come true. (Or perhaps too good to be true—iBuyPower told us that the pricing could change after its initial launch, depending on ongoing component costs.)
Whatever the ultimate price down the road, you get a hardline-liquid-cooled Intel Core i7 “Rocket Lake” processor and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card in a prebuilt, ready-to-ship configuration. Good looks, quiet operation, and excellent gaming performance make it a compelling high-end buy. Nevertheless, our top recommendation in this class remains another Rocket Lake-based desktop, the MSI Aegis RS. Though the MSI model lacks hardline liquid cooling, it too offers superb performance and quiet operation, bundling in many bleeding-edge extras for a suggested price that’s likely closer to what it will sell for. But if you’re after hardline liquid cooling without spending a bundle, the Element CL Pro promises to be a very good value in its class assuming the pricing stays stable.
Meet the Element CL Pro: The Latest Rocket Tech
The iBuyPower Element CL Pro seen here includes an eight-core Core i7-11700KF CPU (3.6GHz base, up to 5.0GHz boost), an 8GB GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card, 16GB of DDR4-3200 memory, and Windows 10 Home on a 1TB PCI Express (PCIe) 3.0 solid-state drive. The CPU is an 11th Generation Rocket Lake chip with no integrated graphics (indicated by the “KF”). Given the system’s Z590-based motherboard, it would have been nice to see a PCIe 4.0 drive.
iBuyPower says a model with Core i9-11900K power and 32GB of RAM will be available for $2,249. It also told us GeForce RTX 3080 versions will arrive later, along with custom configurations—these initial models are preconfigured and ready to ship.
As noted, the advertised pricing for these machines is below market value even without hardline liquid cooling. I priced a Maingear Vybe for $2,476 with a 240mm sealed CPU liquid cooler, which soared to $4,288 with hardline liquid cooling and a mandatory upgrade to a GeForce RTX 3080. The same happened when I configured a Digital Storm Lynx, which came to $4,065 configured like the Vybe. Among mainstream brands, the Alienware Aurora R12 (a refresh of the Aurora R11) ran $2,409 with sealed CPU liquid cooling.
It seems inevitable that the Element CL Pro models will sell out quickly at their initial pricing. Charging several hundred dollars more for a desktop of this caliber wouldn’t be unreasonable, though it would bring the iBuyPower close to the cost of GeForce RTX 3080 desktops using air or sealed liquid cooling. Hence, the Maingear and Digital Storm towers I configured mandated a top-end graphics card (at least an RTX 3080) for hardline liquid-cooling upgrades.
Hardline Liquid Cooling: A Closer Look
The “CL” in Element CL Pro stands for “custom loop,” another term for hardline liquid cooling. The tempered-glass front panel shows off the cooling system’s large reservoir. The white piece belongs to the integrated D5-compatible pump that circulates the liquid throughout the system.
The liquid flows through hard acrylic tubes to waterblocks on both the processor and graphics card. Return liquid flows into a large 360mm radiator on the tower’s right side, itself cooled by three 120mm RGB fans.
To offer the Element CL Pro at lower prices than typical hardline-liquid-cooled towers, the waterblocks are aluminum, not copper. In addition, the quick-connect tube fittings have innovative sliding connections on the waterblocks and reservoir to minimize assembly time.
These sliding mechanisms allow iBuyPower to use standard-length, pre-bent tubes that are not specific to a given motherboard or graphics-card model.
Easy Serviceability
The Element CL Pro measures 18.1 by 8.4 by 18.3 inches (HWD), right on target for a mid-tower. Its metal and tempered-glass construction has a high-quality, if not exactly standout, look and feel.
Easy interior access comes courtesy of a single thumbscrew that secures the tempered-glass left panel.
The interior looks the part of a gaming tower with its blackout theme and RGB components, though like the exterior, it doesn’t go out of its way to look ultra-elite. This tower is, after all, designed to be reasonably priced.
The motherboard is an Asrock Z590-C/ac ATX model. The port selection on its back panel is rather minimal for an ATX board. You get five USB Type-A ports (two version 3.2 Gen 1, one 3.2 Gen 2, and two legacy 2.0), one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, a legacy PS/2 port, and a trio of audio jacks (microphone, line-in, and line-out).
The HDMI port is disabled since this unit’s Core i7-11700KF processor lacks onboard graphics. The GeForce RTX 3070 offers one HDMI and three DisplayPort connectors. Note the two wireless antennas for the motherboard’s Intel 3168AC wireless card. It only supports Wi-Fi 5, not the newer Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 6E standards, though it does have Bluetooth.
The port selection on the top of the tower is also basic, with just headphone and microphone jacks and two USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports. A convenient removable dust filter covers a large portion of the top panel.
Back inside, the motherboard has two M.2 slots for PCIe 3.0/4.0 solid-state drives. A 1TB WD Blue SN550 drive occupies the uppermost slot, though it’s missing a heatsink. The motherboard also offers four DIMM slots for DDR4 memory; the supplied XPG modules (two 8GB DIMMs for a total of 16GB in dual-channel mode) have colorful RGB strips.
The other side of the tower has two 2.5-inch drive bays, both of which are empty. This tower’s lack of 3.5-inch bays is a mild turn-off.
The bottom-mounted 650-watt power supply provides ample electricity for the components in this unit. Its non-modular design means that its unused cables must be bundled alongside it. The wiring could be neater, though at least everything is zip-tied and secured.
Removing the dust filter for the liquid cooling radiator is a simple affair from this side of the tower. Conveniently, another slide-out dust filter covers the entire bottom of the tower.
Testing the Element CL Pro: Doing It the Hardline Way
Let’s get benching. I compared the Element CL Pro with four other mid-tower gaming rigs for our benchmark charts. You can see their basic specs in the table below. (See more about how we test desktops.)
The Alienware Aurora R10 Ryzen Edition is the only contender with an AMD CPU, specifically an eight-core Ryzen 7 5800X. The HP Omen 30L is also unique in that it’s the only system sporting a 10-core processor, an older Core i9-10900K that will make a revealing comparison against the iBuyPower’s eight-core Rocket Lake Core i7. Last is the smaller Dell XPS Desktop Special Edition, which shares a GeForce RTX 3070 with the Element CL Pro.
Storage, Media, and CPU Tests
The Element CL Pro failed to complete UL’s PCMark 10 overall performance assessment or PCMark 8’s storage subtest. This occasionally happens with new, high-end hardware; the HP and MSI systems also flunked those tests. The components in this tower, however, leave little doubt that it would have scored highly.
That leaves us to begin with a pair of CPU-crunching benchmarks. Cinebench R15 stresses all available cores and threads while rendering a complex image, while in our Handbrake video editing test, we see how long it takes to transcode a 12-minute clip of 4K video down to 1080p.
The Handbrake results were predictably close for all these towers since we round times to the minute. In Cinebench, the Element CL Pro placed just behind the AMD-powered Alienware. It outpaced the older Core i7 of the Dell XPS Desktop Special Edition by about 16 percent, a great generation-on-generation gain.
The final test in this section is photo editing. We use an early 2018 release of Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud to apply 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG image, timing each operation and adding up the total. This test is not as CPU-focused as Cinebench or Handbrake, bringing the performance of the storage subsystem, memory, and GPU into play.
The iBuyPower posted one of the quickest times in this test we’ve ever seen, so enough said. The high boost clock speeds on the Core i7 and Core i9 Rocket Lake chips give them an edge in this “bursty,” start-and-stop test.
Graphics and Gaming Tests
Our first two tests in this section are gaming simulations. In UL’s 3DMark, we run two DirectX 11 benchmarks, Sky Diver (lightweight, capable of running on integrated graphics) and Fire Strike (more demanding, for high-end gaming PCs). Another test, Unigine Corp.’s Superposition, uses a different rendering engine to produce a complex 3D scene.
The more CPU-sensitive 3DMark tests allowed the Element CL Pro to nose ahead of the Dell, though they were evenly matched as expected in the GPU-focused Superposition test. The other towers showed significantly better numbers in both benchmarks thanks to their more powerful graphics cards.
Let’s see if real game results match the synthetic scores. We run the built-in benchmarks of Far Cry 5 (DirectX 11) and Rise of the Tomb Raider (DirectX 12) at three different display resolutions.
These results largely mirror Superposition—the iBuyPower’s stronger CPU didn’t give it much, if any, advantage over the Dell, an indication that these games are largely GPU-bound. The Element CL Pro’s averages of 71fps or better at 4K resolution suggest that it has performance to spare for any type of gaming.
As for thermals, the Element CL Pro was quiet throughout testing. Its four 120mm fans aren’t silent, but the liquid cooling pump was inaudible from a few feet away. I liked that the fans changed their rotation speed subtly rather than abruptly. The overall noise level is appropriate for a living room or other quiet environment. The RGB lighting can be turned off via the Asrock Polychrome Sync app should you want to sleep with the tower turned on in your bedroom.
The hardline liquid cooling did a great job of keeping CPU and GPU temperatures in check. A 20-loop 3DMark Fire Strike stress test saw the Core i7-11700K reach a chilly 50 degrees C and the GeForce RTX 3070 just 63 degrees C, both far below their rated maximums and much lower than air cooling could hope to accomplish.
Verdict: Bite, If It’s Priced Right
iBuyPower has a winner on its hands if it can keep the Element CL Pro anywhere close to its announced initial pricing. Hardline liquid cooling is rarely seen outside of costly, exotic gaming towers, so this one is poised to change the status quo.
Waiting for the promised GeForce RTX 3080 version may be worthwhile since it should offer the most relative value. As is, our RTX 3070 review unit is a bargain at its announced $1,999, though if that price creeps more than a few hundred higher it’ll encroach on RTX 3080 tower territory, a main reason the MSI Aegis RS remains our top pick among high-end, mid-tower gaming rigs. Nevertheless, the Element CL Pro is a tantalizing opportunity to get a hardline-liquid-cooled tower for not much more than a traditional one, if the stars align on pricing and availability. If you’re in the market for a system this muscular, keep an eye on it…but not for too long.
