Deepcool Castle 280EX

[HEXUS]

Tall on cooling, short on refinement.

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[edmundhonda]

I genuinely don't know what you can learn from a cooler test without either temperatures or noise levels normalised. It runs cool but loud. Would it be louder than an H115i at the same temperature? Maybe!

[QuorTek]

this is more like it.. does it actually cool stuff down... it is what I am looking for then I don'
t care how much noise or whatever as long as it is within a good field...

[DR]

I genuinely don't know what you can learn from a cooler test without either temperatures or noise levels normalised. It runs cool but loud. Would it be louder than an H115i at the same temperature? Maybe!

Have you actually read this?

https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cooli...-280ex/?page=3

[Roobubba]

I remain confused by the ever-increasing popularity of these. They're almost always louder than good air coolers (because you have the fans *and* the pump), and they rarely outperform them. Back in the Prolimatech Megahalems days (I'm still rocking that bad boy on a second machine), and with my current Noctua NH-D14, I basically never hear the CPU cooler over the case fans or GPU fans, and that's with heavily overclocked chips that have been running at OC for 5 and ~8 years now! What's the point of all-in-one water cooling?

[evs]

Air vs AIO? Well AIO's often look prettier than a giant lump of finned metal jutting from the middle of your motherboard. For some the weight is a worry also for a long period.
Really it just horses for courses, some have particular aesthetics in mind, some have budgetary constraints and so on.

Short story time : I have a machine which recently rust spotted and leaked on the AIO 280mm radiator - it had been running 14 hours a day every day 7 years so I'll go easy on it. I switched to an air cooler which is just as quiet and similar temperatures. It doesn't look as 'pretty' but hey was much cheaper than a new AIO on older hardware.

On the other hand the MSI 980Ti it's still rocking I changed the trifan cooler it came with to an NZXT Kraken last year and I never hear it now plus even in 25-30 degree ambient heat and it running 100% load it never gets above 60 degrees, fan wise you used to easily hear that at higher temperatures from a few feet away.

End of the day on a CPU a decent air cooler or AIO is always going to be better than a bad air cooler or AIO so pick what you like and what suits you best.

[ByteMyAscii]

I remain confused by the ever-increasing popularity of these. They're almost always louder than good air coolers (because you have the fans *and* the pump), and they rarely outperform them. Back in the Prolimatech Megahalems days (I'm still rocking that bad boy on a second machine), and with my current Noctua NH-D14, I basically never hear the CPU cooler over the case fans or GPU fans, and that's with heavily overclocked chips that have been running at OC for 5 and ~8 years now! What's the point of all-in-one water cooling?

Aesthetics, and in part misleading association with water cooling being "better" outright.
Yes, water cooling has higher thermal capacity, and therefore better for soaking more sustained workloads.
But on strict value for money, and for most people, air is going to be not only good enough, but a cheaper, quieter, and easier maintained option.

And back to this article, I don't like the almost petty concern about the height.
Asetek hold a patent on the traditional AIO pump design, and so companies not willing to pay for their pumps tend to resort to multi-chamber designs like this.
If we want competition in this market, we need AIOs which are bigger in size, or expiration of that patent so that the basic design can be iterated on in the same form factor.

I will agree on the ugly bracket though, which for a product too often sold on its looks is a letdown.

[Xlucine]

I dunno about you guys, but having BIOS control over fan speed sounds much better than having to use extra bloatware on my PC. Adjusting fan speed with coolant temp would be nice (and AIOs with onboard fan control ought to do this), but there's no standard for it and PWM-based control according to component temp works well enough

I remain confused by the ever-increasing popularity of these. They're almost always louder than good air coolers (because you have the fans *and* the pump), and they rarely outperform them. Back in the Prolimatech Megahalems days (I'm still rocking that bad boy on a second machine), and with my current Noctua NH-D14, I basically never hear the CPU cooler over the case fans or GPU fans, and that's with heavily overclocked chips that have been running at OC for 5 and ~8 years now! What's the point of all-in-one water cooling?

Watercooling handles higher heat loads better - this is clearly shown in the review, check out the corsair H115i results. It's cooler and dramatically quieter under overclocked load.

[half_empty_soul]

well going to BIOS everytime you want to make changes to fan curve? one big waste of time

[Xlucine]

well going to BIOS everytime you want to make changes to fan curve? one big waste of time

If it's handled by the BIOS then you can adjust it in windows with the utilities that come with your board, and you'll want them installed for easy BIOS flashing and the like. CPU coolers shouldn't need software installed to run them

[half_empty_soul]

still waiting for Deepcool Castle 360 RGB v2 review .......

[indiross01]

not sure about that...