DEEPCOOL CASTLE 360RGB V2 comes with improved features over the V1, where the Anti-leak technology is worth noting. The cooler is considered a great rival against the CORSAIR and CoolerMaster 360 mm All-In-One coolers and provides extremely cool aesthetics. In this article, we will be looking at DEEPCOOL CASTLE 360RGB V2 in detail and uncover its hidden potential. The DEEPCOOL CASTLE-series is considered an excellent choice when it comes to aesthetics and the company provides a wide range of coolers in this series. In fact, there are already many revisions of the coolers and the latest coolers come with advanced features like Anti-Leak Pump, etc. In the EX-series coolers, the fans are black in colour but in the RGB-series, you get ARGB fans. These coolers are available in 120 mm, 240 mm, 280 mm, and 360 mm radiators.
Unboxing
When we look at the box of the cooler, it looks like it packs a pretty solid product inside. It feels pretty solid and heavy and at the front, you can see the picture of the cooler where the fans are not RGB lit, although they do support RGB lighting. Along with the picture, you can notice the GamerStorm logo and a big text stating “Anti-Leak Tech Inside”. Moreover, you can notice the RGB features of the cooler at the bottom area, which means that you will be able to synchronize the cooler’s RGB lighting with the RGB lighting of your PC components, such as motherboard, case, and other devices. The insides of the box are not as pleasant as the outside though. You get the components of the cooler tightly packed but we would have liked it more if the components would be packed with a foam packaging. The three fans are coupled together while the radiator, pump, and the accessories are separated by the packaging. The box contents are as follow:
Design & Closer Look
A 360 mm AIO cooler is always a big one and there is nothing different about this one too. However, the design features of this cooler are quite different. First of all, the addition of ARGB fans on the radiator is a big improvement and it greatly affects the looks of the cooler. Now, we talk about the pump of the cooler. First of all, the pump of the cooler has a mirror-like effect and it is much taller than most of the AIO coolers. Secondly, the circular shape of the pump looks a lot better than the square-shaped pumps we see from the other companies and this can be seen particularly with the AIO coolers from CORSAIR. In fact, CoolerMaster has also taken this matter seriously and now their AIO coolers also come with circular pumps. Now, after the computer starts, the mirror effect is replaced by the RGB lighting, the GamerStorm logo in the centre of the pump can be seen as well when the lights are lit. The upper part of the pump has this logo and it can be rotated as well so that you can adjust the looks according to the orientation of your casing. The base of the pump is made of copper and that is one of the reasons for the performance of the cooler. The pump is circular but the bottom copper area has a square-like shape. The thermal compound is already there on the base and you just need to install the pump on the IHS of the processor. The size of the base is pretty big too and there shouldn’t be much of an issue using it even on extreme series Intel processors. As for the pipes of the pump, these pipes can also be rotated so that you can make the perfect adjustments required to set up the cooler according to the case. Moreover, there was always this worry of the liquid-leak which could literally destroy the components inside the case. However, this cooler comes with the Anti-Leak technology, which we believe could bring revolution into the industry, as there are many cases of liquid leaks inside the cases causing a lot of destruction. Now, as for the radiator is concerned, 360mm radiators are pretty big and they usually don’t even fit in micro-ATX cases. Now, speaking about the material of the cooler, it must be noted that this is an aluminium radiator. Actually, the cooling capabilities of aluminium are lower than that of the copper, however, aluminium allows more fins for a specific size and this eventually results in better cooling altogether. Moreover, the aluminium radiators are a lot lighter than copper radiators, which is why they can be handled a lot easier. The thickness of the radiator is pretty good too, at 27 mm and you with the stock 25 mm fans, the total thickness becomes around 52 mm. Now, coming to the fans of the cooler, it comes with three CF120 fans, which are not just overwhelmingly gorgeous but also have excellent specifications. The fans come with a standard size of 120 mm x 120 mm x 25 mm while the RPM of the fans is 500 ~ 1800 RPM ± 10%. These fans speeds are only achievable with the cooler fans, as the retail CF120 fans only support up to 1500 RPM. This leads to an increase in the airflow by 13 CFM, with a total of 69.34 CFM each. Moreover, the fan air pressure of 2.42 mmAq is also significantly higher than the 1.63 mmAq rating of the retail fans. The fans, as you can see have a milky colour and with RGB lighting, the fins of the fan are lit in a unique way. As for the RGB lighting, it can be synced with the other components via ASUS AuraSync, MSI Mystic Lights, GIGABYTE RGB Fusion but we will strongly recommend you to test the built-in RGB lighting of the cooler because it seemed quite lively and exclusive.
Testing Methodology & Specs
The testing of air coolers greatly depends on the case used in the testing, however, when the AIO coolers, there is not much of a difference between various cases, unless the path for the airflow of the radiator fans is blocked. For reference, we have used NZXT H700i casing in combination with Intel Core i9-9900K at 4.7 GHz on all cores. For the DEEPCOOL CASTLE 360RGB V2, we performed the acoustic tests first and then performed the thermal tests. For acoustic tests, we set the microphone 20 cm away from the side panel of the case, facing upwards. Then we set the fan speed of the cooler at 20%, 30%, 50%, 75%, and 100%. For each of these fan speeds, we noted the respective noise readings on the microphone. As for the thermal readings, we ran CPUz stress test and calculated the thermal readings for each of these fan speeds. The reason for selecting the CPUz stress test was that it puts a fairly practical load on the processor, while some other applications like AIDA 64 Extreme put an extreme load on the processor. With AIDA 64 Extreme, the thermals were going 10-15 degrees higher.
CPU: Intel Coire i9-9900KMotherboard: ASUS ROG Strix Z390-ECooler: DEEPCOOL Castle 360 RGB AIORAM: Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO 32GB DDR4 3200MHz C16GPU: MSI RTX 2080 Gaming X TrioStorage: Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB NVMe M.2 SSD
Acoustic Performance
The acoustic performance of the cooler is quite similar to most of the other AIO coolers. At low fan speeds, the cooler is not so noisy, especially up to 50% fan speeds. However, above 50% fan speeds, there is a big change in the microphone readings and the readings go as high as 50.2 dBA. We will advise you to set the fan speeds close to 50% if you don’t want to be irritated by the noise of the fans. The acoustic performance of the cooler can definitely be improved if you use custom fans on the radiator, especially the likes of fans Noctua uses on its coolers.
Thermal Performance
The cooling performance of the cooler seemed quite unexpected to us. The temperatures of the processor were going past 80 degrees with ease. Actually, the problem is not with the cooler but, in fact, the problem is with the processor. Intel Core i9-9900K is not a very efficient processor when it comes to thermals and since all cores were running at 4.7 GHz, with voltages close to 1.37, these temperatures were imminant. With low fan speeds, the temperatures even crossed the 90-degree mark, although there was no thermal throttling with the CPUz stress test. Even with the AIDA 64 Extreme stability test, there was minimal thermal throttling, which means that the cooler does a fine job at handling such high-end processors.
Conclusion
All-in-all, DEEPCOOL CASTLE 360RGB V2 seems like a cooler from the future and with its awesome performance and staggering looks, you can enjoy the performance of your system at no costs. The cooler does a fine job at handling even a power-hungry overclocked processor like Core i9-9900K and definitely you can couple it with the latest Ryzen 3rd generation processors. The radiator seems like a solid thing and is great at handling the excess heat of the system in combination with ARGB CF120 fans. As for the fans, they are able to spin at high RPM too and yet they are not the noisiest fans. With the pump featuring anti-leak technology, there is a big problem solved, although one cannot be too sure about it. Price at the time of the review: US N.A. / UK £129.99
Air Cooler vs Water Cooler: Which One is Better and Why?be quiet! Pure Loop 240mm AIO CPU Cooler ReviewNoctua NH-U9S chromax.black Single Tower CPU Cooler ReviewNoctua NH-D15 chromax.black CPU Cooler Review
