Question Best 360mm or 420mm AIO CPU Cooler.

[lukemurtagh1995]

Hello,

I am looking to get the Fractal Design Meshify S2 and I want to upgrade my Noctua NH-D15. It is fantastic at cooling my i7-9700k when overclocked to 4.7 GHz but I really like the look of AIOs. If I were to get an AIO what would be everyone's recommendations? I'm new to water-cooling so I don't know a good AIO from a bad AIO.

Thanks!

 

[AdmiralDonut]

I own an Alphacool Eisbaer 360LT. It's under €120, it's refillable, you can expand the loop to include GPU's, and unlike every other AIO on the market, the cooler plate and the radiator are both made of copper which means you don't need to worry about the inevitable copper+aluminium corrosion you get with all the other AIO's on the market. The only things it doesn't have, are RGB lighting on the block, or a bunch of crap software to install to run the fans and pump. Everything runs off the motherboard control software instead.

 

[lukemurtagh1995]

Thanks for the reply and recommendation. It has a nice, sturdy look to it and it certainly seems like one of the best-made coolers out there.

For the sake of comparison what do you think of more mainstream coolers like the NZXT Kraken X72 or the CoolerMaster AIOs?

 

[AdmiralDonut]

I've owned coolers from both companies, and I was not particularly impressed. The issue I have with them is that they use copper cooling plates, but aluminium radiators. Small particles of metal from both parts of the cooler will, over the months and years, interact with each other on a chemical level, causing corrosion and reduced performance.

Couple that with the fact that they are both closed-loop coolers, meaning you can't open them up, clean them out, and refill them, and you're basically spending well in excess of $140 for something that will likely not last more than 3 years, and whose performance will degrade within the first year.

 

[lukemurtagh1995]

Okay, good points all. The two other companies I’ve heard mentioned in the same breath (or typed sentence) is Swiftech and EK. Are their AIOs on the same level as AlphaCool’s? Not that I dislike the AlphaCool, I’m simply trying to consider every option.

 

[Konzetsu]

I'm kind of in the same boat, and have been looking for a bit. what's to consider with Alphacool is that its off the shelf watercooling parts set up as an aio, and that they are pretty big on the watercooling market, meaning you can expand/modify the system in the future.
same can be said for EK waterblocks, but they went an other way and released watercooling kits that are pure ALU; block, radiator and fittings. which makes it very affordable (whilst still being a high end system with separate reservoir & pump), trouble then is that you're locked to alu parts for the system.
I'm currently trying to decide which expandable AIO to get, its hard... or i might just get a nxzt for that smexy block... over the time of 3-6 years the corrosion buildup is pretty negligible for sealed AIO's provided they use the correct sauce in their stuff.

so, to boil it down, anyone know of brands making AIO's from off the shelf parts /expandable aio's?