[SOLVED] Best RGB Air Cooler.

[Maikurosofuto]

I'm about to buy a Deepcool Assassin III, but before that, i'm trying to find a RGB equivalent, is there one? Or at least, close to the performance of the Assassin III. My RAM is quite tall (49 mm), so some coolers may be problematic to install or even Impossible. Only air coolers please.

CPU: i7 10700K (Still waiting for delivery)
Current cooler: Hyper 212 Black RGB (Push/Pull)
Case: NZXT 450

 

[Phaaze88]

There isn't one. There's a reason all the top end air coolers don't rock RGB fans.

Adding LEDs to fans increase their power draw, and when the manufacturers want to stay within a certain power limit, fan muscle gets sacrificed - on air coolers, the heatsink and fans are the strongest players to the unit's cooling ability.

 

[Maikurosofuto]

There isn't one. There's a reason all the top end air coolers don't rock RGB fans.

Adding LEDs to fans increase their power draw, and when the manufacturers want to stay within a certain power limit, fan muscle gets sacrificed - on air coolers, the heatsink and fans are the strongest players to the unit's cooling ability.

Besides the Assassin III and Noctua ones (Too expensive in my country), do you have any other recommendation?

 

[Phaaze88]

Thermalright Le Grand Macho RT
Scythe FUMA 2
be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4

 

[Karadjgne]

No. There really aren't any. Not in the size, capacity and capabilities you are looking at. Big or budget, can't have both.

Same for any cooler that comes with RGB/ARGB, you get looks or performance gotta sacrifice one to get the other.

There's a reason why Noctua is as successful in its designs as it is, it took them over 20 years of R&D testing to finally release a 200mm fan. Constant failures with chemical composition in the blades rigidity, flex at speed, audible tolerances without sacrificing the motor housing size.

When you figure exactly what the blades are made of, what they can do, the size of the motor housing, and then you want to turn them translucent or funky opaque white and add the pcb inside the motor housing for the leds, and add a ring of leds that'll change the flow patterns and tolerances Noctua demands be the best according to their own standards and you can easily surmise Noctua will Never be party to the RGB fad. It's simply not worth the expense or loss of performance, for a look.

It took Noctua how long to finally produce a Black fan? Yes, the dye used in the blade manufacturing process is also taken into chemical analysis, and the ugly brown (signiture Noctua color) is the result. Noctua literally couldn't change the color if they wanted to, that color is chemically important to the blade composition.

Looks, performance, budget. Have yet to find a fan that fits all 3 and comes out on top, most get all 3 decent at best, maybe ahead in 1 or 2, but not all 3.

 

[Phaaze88]

Wait... are you saying the brown & beige and Chromax fans are mechanically different somehow?

 

[Karadjgne]

No, I'm saying it took Noctua this long to finally get a chemically compatible composite for the fan blades that can use the black dye and not change the fans performance at all.

They scrapped untold amounts of plastics because there was too much flex, too rigid, too loud, changed airflow or static pressure by adding braces to softer, more rubbery compounds etc.

 

[Phaaze88]

Ah! Gotcha!

 

[Karadjgne]

Just as a side note, most companies rank their fans at somewhere between @ 50k-100k hours MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure). Noctua sits at 150k. They simply will not make a cooler/fan that isn't worth every penny of the price.