AiO roundup and overview of all tested all-in-one compact water coolers for the CPU and a look at what’s to come

If you take a look at the course of the articles published by me (Tim, not Igor!), You will quickly notice that my focus and the test-related feel-good corner here is on igor’sLAB for consumer cooling solutions and especially AiO water cooling . Yet. And not everyone can get their hands on a Erlkönig with unicorn rarity to test, let alone afford one after the official release. And someone also has to take care of the coolers for normal mortals, so the butter-and-bread stories, so to speak. So I.

So far, the following AiO tests have been published by me with a uniform platform at IgorsLab, which of course also make a direct comparison possible:

1. Noctua U12S chromax.black (reference air cooler)
2. Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML240L RGB
3. Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML240L V2 RGB
4. Xilence LiQuRizer LQ240RGB
5. Alseye MAX M240-T
6. EK Waterblocks EK-AIO 240 D-RGB
7. Corsair H150i RGB PRO XT
8. Fractal Design Celsius+ S36 Prisma

A complete overview with all coolers in direct comparison was missing so far (deliberately), but I am happy to provide this with this final article. The reason for this is, among other things, that some things will change or improve in future cooler reviews. I upgraded my test bench to a Ryzen 5 3600 CPU, and the old Asus B350-Plus was also retired. Voltage converters at a good 100 ° C without active cooling were not good for the board in the long stress tests.

In the future, the tested coolers will have to prove their skills against a modern chiplet design, which differs from the monolithic die of the Ryzen 1XXX / 2XXX and Intel CPUs, which is easier to cool. The following direct comparison of different coolers also shows how important it is to add another metric, the sound level, in the future. Coolers with fans, which are uncomfortably loud in addition to very high speeds, can “brute-force” their place at the top of the comparison.

At this point I improve in further reviews and add a comparison to other coolers with the same sound level in addition to the measured values ​​of the volume (dBA). If it can be implemented, there will also be an audio recording of the noise characteristics. Since the data is still interesting, I plotted the total of 14400 measurement data clearly in the bar chart.

One last time the well-known hardware: A Ryzen 5 1600X has to be cooled at 4.00 GHz with 1.40V, plus 16GB DDR4 G.Skill RipJaws 4 RAM on an Asus Prime B350-Plus. The Asus RoG Strix GTX 1060 6GB only runs for image output in zero fan mode and a BitFenix ​​Whisper M 450W serves as the power source. The whole thing is in the Thermaltake Core P3 Open Benchtable.

Comparison of all previously tested AiO coolers against the reference air cooler

As usual, the graphs show the average delta temperature of the CPU die relative to room temperature. The subjectively perceived volume can be found in detail in the respective reviews of the coolers. Let’s start with Aida64 for now:

Now let’s put a fat shovel of coal on it and stream what the system produces:

The graphics speak, I guess, for themselves, because the “sweet spot” for the RPM values ​​mentioned several times in the reviews is shown here again very nicely and clearly. The maximum speed of the fan usually only gives a little more cooling performance and is usually not worth the high background noise as a result. At this point I would like to thank you again for the always constructive criticism in the forum! If you have any other suggestions for improvement, this time is the perfect opportunity to share them in the comments!