Cooling

The Thermaltake Riing Quad 12s perform well in the cooling department, have a decent pair of programs designed around them that are simple enough and easy to use. It's fair to say that these are, in our opinion, the nicest looking and brightest RGB LED fans money can buy you and the fact that there are so many LEDs and options on how they work together are very extensive.

Thermal paste is an essential 'component' for ensuring efficient and optimal thermal heat transfer between a heat sink and a processor. So what's the best thermal paste or compound to use in 2022?

Anyone who has ever heard of Noctua will expect the NH-U12A chromax.black to perform well and it did! It offers some of the best cooling potential on the market today, and easily trades blows with similarly priced top-tier AIOs.

The TOUGHLIQUID Ultra 360 is one of the best 360mm AIOs we've seen on the channel to date. With premium build quality, a nice LCD display, quiet pump and some of the best static-pressure fans on the market it's on to a winner.

So, the Thermaltake SWAFAN 14 and 12 kit performs well in the cooling department, has 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 LED fans money can buy. Let's not forget that the new flagship product can change the fan blades to control the direction of the airflow. This also has the added benefit of not having to remove the fan at all, the blade is easily removable, which also removes having to potentially remove radiators making life just a little bit easier.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.