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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MartenKL - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
I would of course like to see the testbed updated to have fan/s controlled by thermals, ie something like ASUS Fan Expert. Set for a target temperature and loads in the more realistic range of 15-150 watts. And of course when reducing voltage it should be via PWM and not simply reducing static voltage. The results should then be presented in temperature variance and noise levels/profile.MrSpadge - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
Good suggestions. I hate those charts with "full fan voltage" and "fan voltage reduced to ..". What I really care about is "how silent can the cooler be for a given temperature / cooling performance?" And "which one cools better at similar noise level".It doesn't help much to see a strong fan with inbearable noise in those charts. Even if someone is interested in such solutions - wouldn't his question rather be "which heatsink performs best with this high-speed fan"? Which would again be something he couldn't answer from this data.
I know making noise based comparisons is difficult. But the raw sound pressure could be accompanied by some subjective remarks regarding the noise spectrum.
Cookiespy - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
It would be interesting to see how the stock coolers compare to this high performance cooler. I wouldn't pay $80-100 just to see 5degrees improvement.Eidigean - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
Chips big enough to need these coolers, such as Socket 2011, do not come with stock coolers.meacupla - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
The stock heatsink cools great and is pretty silent with stock settings in a case with decent airflow, end of story.These kinds of $80 heatsinks are what you want when you overclock, but with the same or lower noise levels.
If you don't overclock, then a $20~25 heatsink can do a 5~20C improvement and keep the computer quieter at the same time too.
Eidigean - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
What are you, a shill for Intel? The Intel stock heatsinks are the absolute worst. Check out the graphs from this Anandtech article:http://www.anandtech.com/show/6830/cpu-air-cooler-...
Dead last in performance AND noise. Stock heatsink was greater than 30 degrees C hotter, and 20 decibels louder.
meacupla - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
It says right there in the system specs used to test those coolers..."Intel Core i7-2700K overclocked to 4.4GHz @ 1.4V"
I'm surprised the stock intel heatsink was able to complete the tests.
meacupla - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
no wait, look, it says the stock heatsink and a low profile heatsink failed on an overclocked i7.Like I said, stock intel heatsink, especially the one with a copper core, works great at stock speeds.
Azurael - Friday, July 17, 2015 - link
I don't know if the stock HSFs have changed since Sandy Bridge, but my 2500k would hit 98+ degrees and throttle under AVX loads with the pathetic little stock thing whilst sounding like a small tornado had developed inside my case (how is it that a 95w CPU comes with an HSF half the size of the ones they used to ship with 65w C2Ds?!)Whichever cheap tower cooler I replaced it with does the job just fine, though. It's been running like a champ at 4.5GHz for near enough 4 years now. (I think it's a Xigmatek SD1283 - I haven't even taken the side off my machine for over a year, those heady days of tinkering and yearly upgrades long since passed.)
bug77 - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
What, no mention of the weight of each cooler? I think that's a rather important aspect.