DeepCool Castle 360EX A-RGB White Review

1. DeepCool Castle 360EX A-RGB WH2. Test Results3. Closing Thoughts4. View All Pages

DeepCool’s Castle 360EX all-in-one liquid cooler has already seen plenty of time on the market. But now, we have a revision that has been updated to include addressable RGB lighting alongside the clean, pure white colour scheme. With this latest revision, DeepCool retains the infinity mirror display on the pump, we get triple CF120 series PWM fans, and price tag is competitive at just under £115. Let’s take a closer look at this eye-catching, all-white 360mm AIO.

Video Timestamps

00:00 Introduction
00:56 Unboxing
01:31 A Closer look
01:53 ‘Anti Leak’ Technology & braided tubes
02:28 In house pump / coldplate / pump block
03:14 Powering the pump / Fans
04:35 RGB system (connections)
05:08 Warranty
05:46 Installation
06:41 Test hardware configuration
07:23 Test results
11:10 Luke's Closing Thoughts

Mounting hardware and accessories are provided for all Intel and AMD platforms, including LGA 1700 and Threadripper. You get some cables for handling the fans and their RGB lighting connections.

DeepCool also includes a manual LED lighting control box, but this clearly defeats the point of an addressable RGB cooler. So we expect this to stay firmly in the box while the motherboard header takes care of lighting.

DeepCool uses a conventional 27mm-thick aluminium radiator and the fins fill out roughly the entire volume of the radiator housing. That housing and its fins are coloured in a sleek, clean white to ensure consistency. There is a fill/drain port near the tubes, but this is for warranty purposes, not user maintenance.

Perhaps more important is the inclusion of DeepCool’s Anti-Leak technology on the radiator. This is via the EPDM pressure relief bag that contracts to create a void when pressure rises to relieve the pressure inside the radiator. In theory, this helps to reduce the risk of leakage, which is a clear positive.

The 465mm-long braided tubes have a decent degree of flexibility to them. They also maintain the clean white appearance of the rest of the cooler, though the white material will certainly get dirty quickly if it is touched by fingers regularly. Alongside the flexibility of the tubes, there is also a good degree of adjustment at the entry points to the block.

DeepCool’s in-house pump/coldplate design helps the vendor avoid any patent issues with Asetek or the likes. The copper cold plate is a sizable area thus making it sufficient for large heatspreader coverage on Ryzen or Intel HEDT.

‘25% more skived fins on the copper cold plate’ is advertised on the DeepCool webpage. Though 25% more than what, is not exactly clear. Realistically, DeepCool is saying that the copper plate has a large enough surface area to allow for appropriate heat dissipation.

Physically, the pump-block unit is massive; it measures in at 86x75x71 mm. This is clearly not an ITX-friendly pump-block design. The overall design is cylindrical and maintains the consistent white colour scheme.

DeepCool deploys the eye-catching infinity mirror display that features the brand name. The top cover can be removed so that the name plate can be rotated in 90-degree intervals to allow for correct alignment of the orientation, irrespective of one’s installation preference.

There is also eye-catching ARGB LED lighting that shines through the infinity mirror display, as well as in a ring around the pump block unit. The dual-chamber pump itself is 3-pin 12V DC-powered by a 3-phase motor. It runs at a speed rating of 2550 RPM.

The trio of DeepCool’s CF120 A-RGB PWM fans feature an all-white housing alongside translucent blades. This maintains the white theme of the entire AIO and allows the 12 LED on each fan to shine brightly through the blades.

The Hydro Bearing 120mm fans are rated at 500-1800 RPM via the 4-pin PWM connector. The low-speed limit of 500 RPM is likely fine for most usage. It’s not as good as the lower bottom limits we see from some more expensive competing options, but it is fine for the price point.

ARGB lighting is handled by the proprietary connector that inserts into the DeepCool-supplied break-out cable. Motherboard A-RGB control is the go-to mode, and this is very much preferable over third-party software in my opinion.

Kudos to DeepCool for (sensibly) using white colouring for the fan and LED connection cables. This – once again – helps to maintain the overall white appearance. A pair of connectors emanate from the pump-block unit and each of the 120mm fans. These are for power/speed control and RGB lighting.

I’m perfectly fine with this number of cables as only the two from the pump-block unit are difficult to hide. However, I do not like that DeepCool is using proprietary connectors for its LED lighting interface. This necessitates the use of an adapter from the motherboard’s standard RGB or A-RGB header.

Warranty is clearly an area where DeepCool’s offering is weak. Even at the roughly £115 current selling price, 3 years of coverage is poor for a 360mm AIO. We’d typically expect to see 5 years or better at this segment of the market. So that’s one thing to bear in mind.

Installation is a multi-step process, but it is not difficult. You first screw the appropriate brackets onto the bottom of the pump-block unit. The default AM4 backplate is held in position with four of DeepCool’s thumbscrew stand-offs. The pump-block unit then sits on these stand-offs and is screwed into position.

Then the radiator and fans can be installed, the cables connected, and the DeepCool logo inside the infinity mirror display rotated as desired. There are a lot of cables with the ARGB approach via a break-out connector, but they are easy to hide round the back of the motherboard tray.

Test System:

• Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X
• Overclocked Settings: 4.45GHz all-core @ 1.312V (UEFI), Medium LLC – around 1.3V delivered
• Motherboard: Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master
• Memory: 32GB (2x16GB) Corsair Vengeance LPX 3600MHz 16-18-18-36 DDR4 @ 1.35V
• Graphics Card: Gigabyte RTX 2060 Super 0dB Mode
• Chassis: Fractal Design Meshify 2
• Chassis Fans: 2x140mm 1000 RPM Fractal Front Intake, 1x140mm 1000 RPM Fractal Rear Exhaust, 1x140mm 1000 RPM be quiet! Pure Wings 2 Roof Exhaust (for air cooler testing)
• Power Supply: Seasonic Prime TX-1000
• Operating System: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

Testing Methodology:

• For testing, we use a 30-minute looped run of Cinebench R23 and record the steady-state CPU temperature at the end of the test. This ensures that the CPU has had ample time to warm up and reach steady state under all of the coolers.
• Ambient is maintained around 22-24 degrees Celsius. Where there is variation beyond this temperature range, we add in extra repeated tests to ensure consistency.
• We also test each cooler with at least two fresh installs (typically three) to mitigate the likelihood of a dodgy mount spoiling results.

Test Results:

Acoustics

Let’s start off with noise performance at 100% fan speed. This is important for getting an indication of where our performance expectations should lie based on noise output.

Registering at 52 dBA using our recording method, the DeepCool Castle 360EX A-RGB is one of the loudest coolers that we have tested. That’s with its triple CF120 fans at full 1800 RPM speed and the pump running at 2550 RPM.

Given that higher speed fan combinations on competing coolers are often lower noise in our chart, the acoustic efficiency of DeepCool’s chosen fans looks very questionable. I guess there is the saving grace of a strong 500-1800 RPM PWM control curve, though.

In order to get the unit running at 40dBA, we had to restrict the CF120 fans down to 45% duty cycle which translated into 1060 RPM running speed. The pump was maintained at 2550 RPM.

This is a large proportion of the PWM duty cycle to restrict, but it highlights the relative noise inefficiency of DeepCool’s chosen fans on this budget cooler.

Thermal Performance

Performance-wise, though, we see reasonable results from this cost-effective 360mm all-in-one. A delta temperature recording of 58C puts the DeepCool unit’s performance in-line with that of a similarly-priced triple-fan competitor from Fractal. And the Castle 360EX A-RGB White’s performance is only a touch behind that of some higher-cost Asetek units.

So at least we are seeing early signs of the heavy noise output delivering competent cooling performance.

Even when locked to 40dBA noise output, the Castle 360EX A-RGB maintains its solid level of cooling performance. A 63C delta puts DeepCool’s 360mm unit in line with the performance of a couple of Asetek-based alternatives. But the better noise efficiency of the fans on Fractal’s Lumen S36 RGB allow that cooler to open up a slight lead over DeepCool.

As always, it is critical to note that small difference in the displayed delta temperatures are not as important for our PBO testing because the clock speed and cooling power achieved are more important metrics.

With the CPU running in PBO mode, we once again see DeepCool’s 100% fan speed unit matching the performance of the Fractal Lumen S36 RGB competitor.

This is a good thing, though, as that Fractal cooler proved very well balanced in our review and sells for around the same price as the Castle 360EX A-RGB White. So DeepCool has clearly found a good market void with the performance and price of the cooler we are testing in this review.

225W of package power is a solid result for a reasonably priced 360mm AIO. Only the (more expensive) triple-fan big boys can marginally outperform DeepCool’s 100% fan speed performance here.

Interestingly, the Castle 360EX A-RGB White does very well when it comes to VRM cooling performance at full fan speed. This is likely an outcome of the specific fan airflow profile with respect to our motherboard’s VRM design. But it is a clear positive for the DeepCool unit’s result in our testing, nevertheless.

The 40dBA noise-locked performance is very weak on the VRM temperature front, though. This is because DeepCool has to give up so much speed for the relatively noise inefficient fans to hit 40dBA.

If we summarise the Castle 360EX A-RGB White CPU cooler, DeepCool has taken one of its tried-and-tested AIO base units and uprated the styling for white-themed aficionados. The quality of the colouring throughout is positive and consistent. And the A-RGB lighting works well, particularly with the motherboard vendor control preference.

Performance is perfectly fine and is about where we would expect for a budget 360mm AIO. The noise levels were certainly high at full fan speed and I guess the 2550 RPM pump being DC controlled does limit noise output manageability. But when locked to 40dBA output, the CF120 fans and accompanying pump unit were capable of maintaining solid levels of cooling proficiency.

While I like the A-RGB lighting implementation, I’m not a fan of proprietary connectors. This adds a proprietary A-RGB splitter into the mix and just seems unnecessary when 5V A-RGB and 12V RGB connections on modern motherboards are ubiquitous.

With that said, I will cut DeepCool some slack on the cable front as the superb infinity mirror implementation looks awesome. And the attention to detail of making the logo rotatable is very smart.

Overall, the DeepCool Castle 360EX A-RGB White is a competent CPU cooler with well-deployed white aesthetics, a good addressable RGB lighting setup, and solid cooling performance. The value for money is perfectly reasonable at around £113 in the UK currently. So, if you aren’t bothered by the poor three-year warranty and high maximum noise output, this looks like a solid option for your white-themed build.

The DeepCool Castle 360EX A-RGB WH sells for £112.99 at Amazon UK.

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Pros:

• Good cooling performance
• Superb aesthetic design with strong build quality
• Gorgeous Infinity Mirror pump block cover
• Well-implemented A-RGB LED lighting
• Very affordable price point

Cons:

• Fans are not very noise efficient
• A-RGB break-out cable approach is questionable
• Only 3 years warranty

KitGuru says: Awesome aesthetics and a solid cooling potential, DeepCool does a lot of things well with the Castle 360EX A-RGB White edition.

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