We are using Noctua NT-H1 thermal paste for cooler testing. Using the same thermal paste for all coolers would ensure standardization. Delta temperatures are reported on the graphs. The testing is done on an open-air bench system. Once inside the chassis, the temperatures are expected to rise and would largely depend upon the optimal airflow inside the chassis. Higher fan speed percentage does means you sacrifice less performance to hit 40dBA. Whereas low fan speed percentage in our chart means you have higher headroom to ramp up the fans when required. The chassis fans are disabled, all case panels are on, and the sound meter is placed 12 inches from the side of the Fractal chassis’ glass side panel – roughly where a desk user will be sat. Evidently, though, there is an argument that the AIOs are simply forcing their way to the top of the chart with higher-speed and louder fan solutions. We will have to wait until our 40dBA testing to see how the situation changes.

The AS500 Plus White is a single tower air cooler built for maximum RAM clearance with high performance. It is time to take a look at the main unit. Here is what Deepcool has to say about their new cooler, “The AS500 CPU Air Cooler balances optimal performance and compatibility in a slim single tower design. The solid copper base features five 6mm heat pipes that run along with a high fin density heat sink for quality heat dissipation while its minimal 48mm depth also ensures full compatibility with taller RAM modules. The high-performance TF140S FDB fan with PWM support offers to fine-tune control for quiet cooling and long-lasting reliability. Get a complete air cooling solution that provides excellent cooling performance and compatibility in the AS500.” DeepCool AS500 Plus Looking Amazing in that White Color. Notably, this method is very difficult if installing the cooler inside of chassis as the proximity to top fans and motherboard VRM heatsink provides access woes. Once clipped into position, though, the mount is secure. The MA624 has excellent low-noise fans to thank for its ability to complete this test. With minimal reduction in fan speed required to hit the 40dBA target, Cooler Master’s performance barely flinches and therefore still manages to come in just around the 100C level.The cooler is an ARGB-lit model and has no custom software needed so you can control it with any 3-pin ARGB host e.g. your motherboard, a GPU which has ARGB pins or a 3rd-party controller. Test Setup and Methodology DeepCool AS500 PLUS WH CPU Cooler Review AIO still rules this chart and Cougar’s budget 240mm AIO also deserves a shout-out. But preferential heatpipe orientation delivers the goods for DeepCool. And IceGiant still puts in a solid showing despite being hampered by low fan speeds and a thermal load that is less than ideal for its thermosiphon technology. The left and right sides of the heatsink are identical in layout. The fins have a joint assembly here. The middle section has an inset and the sides have raised surfaces. This is where the heads of the fan clips are rested on. The width of the heatsink on the sides is 49mm. DeepCool AS500 Plus Heatsink

Arctic’s Freezer 50 requires too high a fan speed reduction in this test meaning that maintaining 100C or below was not achievable. Meet Nauman Siddique, a highly experienced computer science graduate with more than 15 years of knowledge in technology. Nauman is an expert in the field known for his deep understanding of computer hardware. In this segment we see the behavior of temperature as affected by the type of work the CPU is doing. The chart shows us the frequency the CPU is running at along with the power and temperature reading. The darker the color in the chart, the more consistent it is in that value range. The frequency is denoted by the blue line and is read according to the right vertical axis. The left vertical axis denote power and temperatures. The fan configuration is the three included Fractal Dynamic X2 GP-14 fans spinning at full 1000 RPM speed. In addition to the two 140mm front-mounted fans, and single 140mm rear exhaust, we added a be quiet! Pure Wings 2 1000 RPM 140mm fan as roof exhaust for air cooler testing. The aim here was to keep consistency with the airflow path of the liquid coolers which are always roof mounted. The 120 MP fans feature 7 white blades for an aesthetically pleasing appearance but do not have any form of RGB lighting. Performance of the fans is 500-2200 RPM using a 4-pin PWM connector. Phanteks smartly pre-routes the short fan cables allowing them to be daisy-chained to one another. This is superb as it only requires one motherboard fan header (plus another for the pump) and it eases the cable management burden.

Test Setup and Methodology

Even with around 5 or 6 degrees added to their temperature results, the Phanteks and SKILL 360mm AIOs still top the chart. Phanteks’ Asetek design unit is still better, but the G.SKILL cooler keeps below the 90C level thus resulting in a good enough outcome. AIOs look to be optimised well for dealing with this task. While air coolers can also put in solid showings if they are of the type that works optimally with AMD’s chiplet layout. Our chassis of choice is the Fractal Design Meshify 2 case that Leo reviewed and scored very highly. We like this chassis thanks to its high airflow optimisation and well-vented front and top panels. Deepcool has included 2x TF-140S fans in white color having a dimension of 140x140x25mm. The fans are secured using metal fan clips. The maximum rated speed on this fan is 1200 RPM with a maximum airflow rating of 70.81 CFM and a 1.16 mmAq air pressure rating. The overall sound level rating is up to 31.5 dBA and these fans are using Fluid Dynamic Bearings.

Not every run of the stress test may yield the same result. This could well be due to many factors like mounting pressure, thermal paste application, varying ambient temperature. Not to mention the silicon differences even among the same category of the chips. Hence, it is pertinent to mention the testing methodology along with the specifics. The first result that really surprised us was the DeepCool AS500 Plus. With Noctua NH-D15 matching levels of performance, this single-tower, cost-effective air cooler with preferential noise levels is punching well above its weight. This looks to be an inherent benefit of the single tower cooler design versus the restrictions placed on dual tower coolers. Now that we are done with DeepCool AS500 Plus Review – let’s talk more. We have earlier tested the Deepcool AS500. DeepCool has released the Plus version of this cooler where they provide a second fan for push/pull configuration. That just did not stop there as the company went on and released the beautiful White edition of the AS500 Plus cooler. I was quite excited about testing DeepCool AS500 Plus cooler and using it in the white builds. DeepCool hooked us with a review sample and we got to spin it for the performance evaluation.

G.SKILL highlights higher radiator density as one of the Enki’s key features. The horizontal radiator pipes are spaced approximately 6mm apart which is denser than the competing AIO coolers we are looking at in this test. To power air through this dense fin array are 3 120mm, 9-bladed fans that operate at up to 2100 RPM using a 4-pin PWM connector. The IceGiant ProSiphon Elite is a 240mm-width class air-type CPU cooler that weighs in at a whopping 1440g on its own or 2kg with the four Arctic P12 PWM 300-2300 RPM fans installed. The unit is a gravity-driven, two-phase cooling solution that leverages thermosiphon technology instead of conventional heatpipes. The Asetek-design Phanteks 360mm unit tops our chart with an impressive performance result of around 80C actual load temperature. G.SKILL’s 360mm unit is a few degrees behind, but this is slightly disappointing given its higher noise output at 100% fan speed. The overall performance benefits of Asetek’s premium system design for Phanteks are a factor here. As a tech tester, insightful reviewer, and skilled hardware editor, Nauman carefully breaks down important parts like motherboards, graphics cards, processors, PC cases, CPU coolers, and more. Overall, a reasonably straightforward installation process, but the attachment method for the central fan could do with improvement.

The overall dimension of the assembled cooler is 142x102x164mm (LxWxH). The dimension of the heat sink is 140x49x159mm (LxWxH). The net weight of the cooler is 1198 gm. DeepCool AS500 Plus Upper Side Deepcool uses their silent TF140S fans on the AS500 which surprisingly gave the Noctua NH-U12A a a good competition in terms of performance. As 140mm fans, pushing them to max 1200RPM doesn’t cause much noise increase. Our board does tune the fans to rev up only at 700RPM at lighter loads with heavier loads at 800RPM for the AMD test. For Intel, it average 1000RPM under load, topping out 1200RPM for the AVX test which was still dead silent. DeepCool AS500 PLUS WH CPU Cooler Review We decided to test using a chassis as we feel that this is most representative of real-world use cases. It does have some unwanted influences on the test data, as does open-air test bench testing. But we feel that this is a worthwhile trade-off for real-world chassis performance of the coolers. Given their high-airflow, loud fans, it is not all that surprising to see the AIO liquid coolers performing very well in this high heat load test.

Conclusion

Thankfully, the side-mounted tubes just missed the VRM heatsink on both our Gigabyte and MSI B550 motherboards.