The DeepCool Captain 240 EX RGB AIO Cooler Review: Pump it Up, Without the Noise
by E. Fylladitakis on December 14, 2017 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- AIO
- Deepcool
- Cooler
Testing Results, Low Fan Speed
Using a PWM voltage regulator, we reduced the speed of the fans manually down to their minimum rated speed, which is ≈500 RPM. The pump was also connected on the same power source, functioning properly at this low speed setting.
The thermal performance of the DEEPCOOL Captain EX 240 RGB with its pump and fans driven down to their minimum speed is mediocre, with an average thermal resistance of 0.1126 °C/W. Many similarly sized kits that we have previously tested were below 0.1 °C/W, albeit most are significantly louder implementations. As always, thermal performance only tells half the story when we are testing coolers, we need to have a look at the noise figures before jumping to conclusions.
| Core Temperature, Constant Thermal Load (Low Fan Speed) |
The sound pressure reading that the Captain EX 240 RGB gives under these operating conditions is only 32.4 dB(A), one of the lowest that we have ever seen. One needs to place an ear literally next to the radiator in order to discern the airflow noise, and the pump is entirely silent. Assuming a typical setup where the cooler will be installed inside a computer case sitting on or under a desk, it would be essentially impossible to discern any noise coming from the Captain EX 240 RGB while it operates under these speed settings. Most mechanical hard disk drives are louder.
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croc - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link
I have an NHD-15 heat sink and I also have a corsair h80i v2. (my case, a silverstone FT1 does not easily support radiators larget than 120mm) My CPU is an older 3930K six core that warms up nicely... Of course I do not have all the nice test bench stuff that Anandtech has, so my results are quite a bit more touchy-feely. By just a whisker the NHD-15 is both a tad quieter and a tad cooler.... I also like the fact that I know that outside of the fans there are no moving parts to fail.I am sure that my limitations are the 120 mm radiator, and I am also pretty well convinced that within a given sized radiator, there will be a very narrow range of test results across the range of AIO kits. But I keep looking...
LordanSS - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link
Thank you, Mr. Fylladitakis for your review.Since the advent of AIO liquid cooling kits my personal builds have changed a good bit. Have a H100i on my main build for a few years now, and my old and trusty second machine has a Hyper 212 EVO on it.
I've had bad experiences with heavy air coolers in the past, so I tend to stay away from them these days. My cases have positive pressure and the H100i works well as an exhaust mounted at the top.
To each their own. I know several people that frequent this website are still fond of air cooling, and in many situations it's still a very good and efficient option but in the end I'd say it depends on what kind of build you have in mind.
snarfbot - Sunday, December 17, 2017 - link
how long are these coolers being run at load?deadlockedworld - Wednesday, April 11, 2018 - link
For all the commentary about the bench -- this deepcool is not in the Anandtech bench section. ...