Top Tier CPU Air Coolers Q3 2015: 9-Way Roundup Review
by E. Fylladitakis on July 6, 2015 8:00 AM ESTThe Logisys (DeepCool) Gamer Storm Assassin
Founded back in 1996, Deepcool (Logisys in the North American markets) is one of the oldest CPU cooler manufacturers. They are not a very well known brand name because they primarily focused on server and OEM coolers, not retail products. However, their recently launched "Gamer Storm" range comes to change that, with direct focus on retail products for advanced users. Deepcool provided us with their "Assassin" cooler for this review, the highest performance CPU cooler they currently market.
Deepcool supplies the Assassin in a very tall, large cardboard box with a relatively simple, dark artwork theme. Everything is exceptionally well packed inside the box, with everything protected inside secondary boxes and layers of polyethylene foam. The bundle consists of the hardware necessary for the mounting of the cooler, a fan power cable splitter and a Molex power adaptor, a tube of quality thermal grease, a metallic case badge and six wire clips for up to three cooling fans.
The Deepcool Gamer Storm Assassin is a very large and heavy dual tower cooler. It weighs more than 1.5 kg with both fans installed, making it one of the heaviest CPU coolers in existence. Each tower consists of fins forming a jagged saw tooth formation on one side and a complex geometric pattern formed of tetrahedrals and squares on the other side. Strangely, the towers are physically identical, yet they are reversed, meaning that one fan will be facing the jagged side of the fins and the other the complex tetrahedral-square pattern. This makes us unsure whether that strange pattern is for aesthetic purposes only or if it actually improves performance in any way. There are no openings for a screwdriver, therefore the center fan needs to be uninstalled during the installation/removal of the cooler. Furthermore, a Philips PH2 or a slotted 3.2 mm - 4 mm screwdriver with a shank longer than 150 mm is necessary. There is no tool provided in the box, therefore do make sure that you have an adequately long screwdriver available.
Deepcool provides two cooling fans alongside the Assassin, one 140 mm and one 120 mm fan. The 140 mm fan is to go in between the two towers, while the 120 mm fan on either side of the cooler. The company is obviously not using two 140 mm fans in order to provide some clearance to the RAM slots, which would be completely blocked if a 140 mm fan were to be mounted at the front side of the cooler.
The fans come from Deepcool's own UF range, have dual ball bearings and anti-vibration frame covers. A strange fact is that the 140 mm fan is faster than the 120 mm fan, with a maximum speed of 1400 RPM and 1200 RPM respectively. Deepcool is the only company that follows this approach, as the rest of the manufacturers with asymmetric fan setups seem to prefer the opposite, in order for both fans to have about equal airflow.
The base of the Assassin is very long, with eight 6 mm heatpipes running through it. This is another strange approach as there is no CPU long enough to make full contact with a base this long. It does not mean that the heatpipes near the edges of the base will be useless but it is unlikely that they will function at maximum efficiency. Both the copper base and the heatpipes of the Assassin are nickel plated, with the contact surface polished down to a perfect mirror finish.
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zodiacfml - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Someone should test for this. It is quite plausible as it will take time to increase the temperature of water/coolant in the system. Yet, for longer and continuous loads, surface area matters to dump heat in the environment which AIO coolers has less to a similarly priced Big Air cooler which shows in benchmarks.Navvie - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Pretty good.It'd be nice if there was a base line (say intel's current stock cooler) and an AIO water cooler to show the difference between a top tier air cooler and what many consider to be the next step.
One point, SPCR always test each cooler with a 'reference' fan, making it easier to compare the heatsink's efficiency. Can't help but feel you didn't complete the task you set out to by levelling the playing field with your simulated CPU heat source.
maximumGPU - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Great roundup! i for one still believe high end air a good alternative to water if you want dead silence.What i still can't understand is how can Nocuta get away with shipping the most expensive air cooler, likely to be used by enthusiasts who care about aesthetics, with the most hideous fan colours?
'nar - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Noctua colors are odd, but I think it forces you to consider performance more than aesthetics. They do look nice, but not "cool" - no pun in tended.Dead silence basically depends on how much heat you need to dissipate, temperature of ambient air, surface area of fins/radiator, air flow, and heat transfer capability of the cooler. Or more basically, how easily you can transfer heat from CPU to the air. Water increases the efficiency of heat transfer, so once you reach a certain power level they will overtake HSF's. They will never be as quite as a good HSF, at least not on low-power CPU's that arguably do not need anything but the stock cooler to begin with.
xthetenth - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Noctua gets away with those colors entirely because they're Noctua. Yes they're not pretty colors, but unlike nice bright/garish colors they are an unmistakable sign that they're the best or at least tied for best.piroroadkill - Wednesday, July 8, 2015 - link
Your keyboard seems to have a problem, you've typed "hideous" when clearly "fantastic" would be better. Noctua fans are neat.Beaver M. - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link
Well, serious people are more likely to buy Noctua anyway. And no serious user cares about what the fans look like, and even if they did, they would still take the Noctua, since you can CLEARLY see the extremely high quality they are just by looking at them. Windows in cases and other stupid bling bling is for the PC-ricer gang. They only choose after looks anyway, and dont care if their fans make noises from day one.PrinceGaz - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Excellent review of what seem to be very good HSFs throughout (but then again, you did ask them to send their best).A comparison with the stock Intel cooler as supplied with something like the 4790K would be nice, as that is what any expense on a third-party cooler must be compared against. How would the stock-cooler compare at 340W? I was very impressed with the degC/W figures for all those coolers; it almost makes 340W seem an amount of heat that can be dealt with, though I'm thinking it's crazy.
As well as the stock-cooler from a highish end CPU, one or two commonly used AIO liquid-coolers needs to be added to provided a second comparison point, as these high-end air-coolers are presumably expected to be near, possibly even better than a liquid AIO.
I love the fact you are using a properly designed heating rig, and your comprehensive review, but I came away thinking: they're good! But I've no idea how much better they are than the stock cooler, or how any of them would compare with the liquid AIOs also available, both in terms of cooling or noise.
Sivar - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
This is probably the best CPU cooler article I've read (and I read such articles when Anandtech when it was on Geocities).Excellent writing, useful measurements, and a cogent conclusion. Thank you, Emmanouil!
orangesky - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
SilentPcReview just posted a review of the new Scythe Ninja 4: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1462-page1.ht... The review includes some good comparison tables with many of the popular air & water coolers.Sounds like a pretty decent option, and probably the best Ninja since the original.