Cooling

It’s great to see as expected thermal performance from the GELID Rev. 5 Tranquillo as it does exactly what it says on the box, a no-frills cooler that offers 150w TDP of cooling performance! Remember though, that being said, an overclocked CPU often has a lot more than the stock TDP listed on the websites, with our Intel i5 13600k having a max boost TDP of 181w, at 100% fan speed then, the cooler outdid itself and managed to cool it, at a couple of degrees below TJ max. So anything below an Intel 13600k and this cooler will do you just fine!

So, the Thermaltake SWAFAN EX 12 and 14 RGB PC fan kits perform well in the cooling department and have a decent software package designed around them that is simple and easy to use. It’s fair to say that these are some of the nicest looking and brightest RGB fans money can buy.

Thermaltake is well known for their radiator fan kits with the SWANFAN and TOUGHFAN range, and for a short time now I've been saying that they need to complement these with airflow fans that you can use as a case fan. Today they've answered my prayers with the CT120 & CT140 ARGB (and non-ARGB) dual fan kits.

It’s great to see decent thermal performance results from the LT720! It offers good cooling performance out of the box, trading blows with other 360mm AIOs. It looks great with its black aesthetic and comes with three decent FK120 4-pin PWM fans we've seen with other DeepCool coolers.

It's great to see amazing thermal performance results from the AK620 Zero Dark! It offers excellent cooling performance out of the box, topping our charts on all counts! It looks decent enough with a black aesthetic, and comes with two 120mm fans pre-installed out of the box.

Deepcool, and you (more importantly) will be pleased to hear that the AK400 Zero Dark Plus performed really well! It offers decent cooling performance out of the box, looks decent enough, and comes with two 120mm fans pre-installed out of the box. Especially when you factor in our 10700k CPU outputs 205w of heat under full load at 5.0GHz.

The build quality is solid, with a strong matt black plastic on the TOUGHFAN 12 that contrasts the LED diffusers perfectly. The LEDs are some of the brightest we’ve ever seen and light up the entire diffuser. They really do look premium installed in the test bench.

Anyone who has ever heard of Noctua will expect the NH-D12L to perform well and it did! It offers excellent cooling performance out of the box, and is better, as expected, with the second fan attached. It sits firmly between the U12A and the U14S which both have bigger heatsinks.

The price to performance with the i35 A-RGB is about expected once you factor in the A-RGB included and we struggle to find another £37.99 cooler that can offer the same features. In terms of cooling, we don't recommend it if you plan on anything more than a mild CPU overclock, it's still more than capable of cooling non-K and K Intel CPU SKUs to their max turbo frequencies.

The i13X is also a fairly attractive CPU cooler largely thanks to the black fan housing that extends over the top of the heatsink covering the bulk of the fins and copper heatpipes, and with a huge 6-year warranty on offer, thanks to the quality dynamic bearing fan used it's hard to not recommend this to anyone looking for a budget CPU cooler.