The Dark Rock Pro 6 and Dark Rock 6 are a huge upgrade over Be Quiet's previous air coolers. Where it had previously struggled to keep up with our picks for the best air coolers, these new arrivals are amongst the top performers in my testing.

Be Quiet hasn't lost its eye for aesthetics, either. The all-black design of the Dark Rock 6 duo looks even more impressive out of the box than previous models. In that sense, Be Quiet has something of a unique selling point here: it's turned an imposing mass of aluminium into a pretty thing.

Yet there's an elephant in the room. Despite my appreciation for the upgraded performance, aesthetics, and easy installation, I just can't look past the price attached to these two coolers. Both are very expensive, at $110/$130 for the standard/Pro models, respectively. That's one helluva markup on some of the excellent air coolers we rank highly today, an added cost of around $60–$100. When air coolers are seen as the more affordable alternative, these prices just don't add up.

Specifications

The Dark Rock 6 comes with a Silent Wings 135 mm fan. That's a whole 15 mm larger than the one found on this cooler's predecessor, the Dark Rock 5. That's one clear benefit of the newer model: a big fan can push more air at lower RPM compared to a small fan. The 135 mm fan used here can spin up to 2000 rpm.

This is also a "custom-designed" fan for this cooler, rather than the off-the-shelf Silent Wings 4 found on the previous model. That said, from what I can gather, and I only have a smaller Silent Wings 4 for comparison, the main difference between this custom-designed fan and the Silent Wings 4 is a slightly smaller hub. I have measured the hub on both and they are roughly 5 mm apart—so that'd explain the 135 mm sizing on the newer custom models.

The Dark Rock 6 also comes with a semi-passive mode. There's a small switch hidden on the side of the fan shroud, marked 'P' and 'Q'. No prizes for what these both mean.

• Performance mode: runs the fans based on whatever you've set on your motherboard header—the cooler's single fan uses a 4-pin PWM connection.
• Quiet mode: overrides the fan header to reduce RPM at certain duty cycles, and switches it off entirely below 40%.

The Dark Rock Pro 6 adds another 120 mm fan into the mix. The two fans are connected together with a 7-pin connector. It also includes one extra heatpipe compared to the standard model, seven to six, which makes it that bit more capable, as you'll see in the thermals section below.

Thermals

The Dark Rock Pro 6 and Dark Rock 6 are very capable air coolers. Both manage to keep a Core i7 14700K at a reasonable temperature under load. The Dark Rock 6 generally performs similarly to the Arctic Freezer 36, if at times even outperforming our pick for the best budget air cooler, except at higher power draw. Meanwhile, the Dark Rock Pro 6 performs very well compared to the rest, if only falling short of the mighty Thermalright Peerless Assassin.

Thermal performance

The chart below shows the delta over ambient, accounting for any fluctuations in ambient temperature between tests

Baldur's Gate 3 @ 1.275 V | ΔTx264 @ 1.275 V | ΔTPrime95 @ 1.275 V | ΔTPrime95 @ 1.325 V | ΔTAmbient temperature

Max ΔT

Avg ΔT

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

34

28

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

34

30

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

37

33

Arctic Freezer 36

34

31

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

34

31

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

32

28

010203040

Baldur's Gate 3 @ 1.275 V | ΔT Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	34 Max ΔT, 28 Avg ΔT
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	34 Max ΔT, 30 Avg ΔT
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	37 Max ΔT, 33 Avg ΔT
Arctic Freezer 36	34 Max ΔT, 31 Avg ΔT
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	34 Max ΔT, 31 Avg ΔT
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	32 Max ΔT, 28 Avg ΔT

Max ΔT

Avg ΔT

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

43

33

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

43

34

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

48

38

Arctic Freezer 36

43

35

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

44

36

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

40

32

015304560

x264 @ 1.275 V | ΔT Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	43 Max ΔT, 33 Avg ΔT
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	43 Max ΔT, 34 Avg ΔT
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	48 Max ΔT, 38 Avg ΔT
Arctic Freezer 36	43 Max ΔT, 35 Avg ΔT
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	44 Max ΔT, 36 Avg ΔT
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	40 Max ΔT, 32 Avg ΔT

Max ΔT

Avg ΔT

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

43

41

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

43

39

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

50

47

Arctic Freezer 36

44

40

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

46

42

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

44

38

015304560

Prime95 @ 1.275 V | ΔT Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	43 Max ΔT, 41 Avg ΔT
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	43 Max ΔT, 39 Avg ΔT
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	50 Max ΔT, 47 Avg ΔT
Arctic Freezer 36	44 Max ΔT, 40 Avg ΔT
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	46 Max ΔT, 42 Avg ΔT
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	44 Max ΔT, 38 Avg ΔT

Max ΔT

Avg ΔT

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

62

54

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

63

58

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

70

65

Arctic Freezer 36

59

55

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

59

55

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

60

51

020406080

Prime95 @ 1.325 V | ΔT Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	62 Max ΔT, 54 Avg ΔT
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	63 Max ΔT, 58 Avg ΔT
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	70 Max ΔT, 65 Avg ΔT
Arctic Freezer 36	59 Max ΔT, 55 Avg ΔT
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	59 Max ΔT, 55 Avg ΔT
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	60 Max ΔT, 51 Avg ΔT

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

20

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

20

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

21

Arctic Freezer 36

27

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

23

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

22

07.51522.530

Ambient temperature Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	20
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	20
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	21
Arctic Freezer 36	27
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	23
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	22

They also both easily outperform the Dark Rock 5 (non-Pro) in my testing. That was, by far, the worst performer of the lot in my latest batch of testing, which shows just how significant a leap this new lineup has been by way of performance for Be Quiet.

Thermal performance

The chart below shows the CPU package temperature temperature as recorded in HWInfo

Baldur's Gate 3 @ 1.275 Vx264 @ 1.275 VPrime95 @ 1.275 VPrime95 @ 1.325 VPrime95 @ 1.4 VAmbient temperature

Max °C

Avg °C

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

54

48

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

54

50

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

58

54

Arctic Freezer 36

61

58

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

57

54

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

54

50

020406080

Baldur's Gate 3 @ 1.275 V Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	54 Max °C, 48 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	54 Max °C, 50 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	58 Max °C, 54 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36	61 Max °C, 58 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	57 Max °C, 54 Avg °C
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	54 Max °C, 50 Avg °C

Max °C

Avg °C

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

63

53

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

63

54

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

69

59

Arctic Freezer 36

70

62

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

67

59

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

62

54

020406080

x264 @ 1.275 V Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	63 Max °C, 53 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	63 Max °C, 54 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	69 Max °C, 59 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36	70 Max °C, 62 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	67 Max °C, 59 Avg °C
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	62 Max °C, 54 Avg °C

Max °C

Avg °C

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

63

61

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

63

59

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

71

68

Arctic Freezer 36

71

67

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

69

65

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

66

60

020406080

Prime95 @ 1.275 V Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	63 Max °C, 61 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	63 Max °C, 59 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	71 Max °C, 68 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36	71 Max °C, 67 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	69 Max °C, 65 Avg °C
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	66 Max °C, 60 Avg °C

Max °C

Avg °C

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

82

74

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

83

78

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

91

86

Arctic Freezer 36

86

82

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

82

78

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

82

73

0255075100

Prime95 @ 1.325 V Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	82 Max °C, 74 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	83 Max °C, 78 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	91 Max °C, 86 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36	86 Max °C, 82 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	82 Max °C, 78 Avg °C
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	82 Max °C, 73 Avg °C

Max °C

Avg °C

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

100

99

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

100

99

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

100

100

Arctic Freezer 36

100

99

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

100

99

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

100

82

0255075100

Prime95 @ 1.4 V Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	100 Max °C, 99 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	100 Max °C, 99 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	100 Max °C, 100 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36	100 Max °C, 99 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	100 Max °C, 99 Avg °C
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	100 Max °C, 82 Avg °C

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

20

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

20

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

21

Arctic Freezer 36

27

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

23

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

22

07.51522.530

Ambient temperature Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	20
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	20
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	21
Arctic Freezer 36	27
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	23
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	22

I test at a few different fixed voltages: 1.275 V, 1.325 V, and 1.4 V. This gives a decent idea of the sort of wattage each cooler can manage, which helps when sizing these up for use with other chips outside of Intel's power-hungry 14th Gen. The top level, 1.4 V, is a bit of a torture test, and most air coolers struggle to keep a chip from thermal throttling.

Aesthetics

Both coolers look great. Be Quiet has always made a good-looking air cooler, but it has tweaked a few smaller details on its latest models to offer a cleaner appearance. They're totally black, from head to toe, with only the small exception of the Be Quiet name etched onto a plate with a metallic finish—that's a little bigger on the Dark Rock Pro 6 to cover the extra fan.

They're much nicer units to look at than some of the cheaper units with bare aluminium on display. Similarly, with the fans totally covered, the newer models look a lot cleaner than their predecessors, which have one fan clear to see. So in terms of aesthetics, I think Be Quiet has made a marked improvement here with both models, even if the Pro is a bit of a lump.

Installation

Upon unboxing the Dark Rock 6, I noticed its packaging is entirely made of cardboard, an improvement over the foam previously used on the Dark Rock 5. Inside the cardboard accessories box are two mounting options: one for AMD, which covers AM5/AM4; and one for Intel, which covers LGA 1851/1700/1200/1150/1151/1155.

Be Quiet! also includes an extra long screwdriver in the box, as it has done with previous models, which comes in handy for what comes next.

Installation on Intel systems requires attaching four screws to the corners of the rear plate, held in place with small O-rings. That's the fiddly bit; the rest of the process is less so. Four thumbscrews affix to the threads on the rear plate, holding both sides to the motherboard. Onto this fit two metal brackets—being careful to note the correct orientation—held in place by four additional screws. The cooler has two more captive screws that line up with holes on the bracket, and the cooler can be tightened into place.

Installation on AMD systems is a little more straightforward. Remove the bracket included on most motherboards, replace it with the metal brackets included with the Dark Rock 6, then screw it all down with the two screws on the cooler.

Don't forget thermal paste—luckily, there's some in the box.

The whole process is more or less a match for the Dark Rock 5. The only major difference is the fan, which instead of using metal clips as per the Dark Rock 5, slides into place on the Dark Rock 6. It can also be adjusted to make room for RAM, though that's not really an issue on the Dark Rock 6, as it doesn't extend above the RAM anyway. The only downside with this sorta approach is that you can't just replace the fan with a third-party model without jury-rigging it—sometimes simplest is best.

Sound

In my testing with a TopTes TS-501B sound meter sat at 40 cm away from my open test bench, both the Be Quiet models performed reasonably well compared to the others that I've tested in the same setup. They're not the quietest by any measure—that still goes to the Freezer 36 using the older P12 fan—nor do they massively outperform the Dark Rock 5.

Noise levels

Fan noise | 40 cm away

@100% (dBA)

Noise floor (dBA)

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

48

35

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

49

35

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

49

35

Arctic Freezer 36

40

35

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

47

35

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

50

35

015304560

Fan noise | 40 cm away Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	48 @100% (dBA), 35 Noise floor (dBA)
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	49 @100% (dBA), 35 Noise floor (dBA)
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	49 @100% (dBA), 35 Noise floor (dBA)
Arctic Freezer 36	40 @100% (dBA), 35 Noise floor (dBA)
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	47 @100% (dBA), 35 Noise floor (dBA)
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	50 @100% (dBA), 35 Noise floor (dBA)

Fan noise as measured by sound meter | 40 cm away | open test bench

Though it should be said that no air cooler I've tested makes much of a ruckus compared to a large liquid cooler.

Value

The Dark Rock 6 costs $110. It's a little cheaper than the Dark Rock Pro 6, which includes two fans, at $130, but nevertheless that's a high price in today's market. The Thermalright Peerless Assassin is a fraction of the cost at $40, as are the Arctic Freezer 36 and Freezer 36-S, and all very capable coolers in their own right, as my tests show.

In terms of the Dark Rock 6, there's often only a couple of degrees between the Pro and standard models in testing, if anything. The dual fans are a benefit not enjoyed by the standard model, which will help keep temps down without needing a super aggressive fan curve. Beyond that, the standard model appears the better buy. Though I find it hard to justify either option versus a cheaper cooler—most of all the Thermalright Peerless Assassin.

Ultimately, it comes down to the cost/benefit of an air cooler. Even as someone who will happily eschew liquid for air in my own build, the draw for many will be cost, size, and compatibility. The Dark Rock 6 doesn't offer much by way of affordability—costing more than a couple of the best liquid coolers—and it's not much of a fit for an awkward-sized Mini-ITX or unusual Micro-ATX chassis. As such, I struggle to see where it fits in the market.

Both of the new Dark Rock 6 models are better than the older Dark Rock 5, and by some margin, but for considerably more money. The Dark Rock Pro 5 is $85 and the Dark Rock 5 is $65 (noted as expensive in our review), making for an increase of 52% and 69%, respectively, for the latest series.

Amidst a sea of other companies' AI-related tech, Noctua graced us with some new, bona fide PC hardware at this year's Computex. In addition to a particularly exciting pumpless liquid cooler, the company also unveiled its first regular AIO cooler in collaboration with Asetek. And as of today, it's now available to buy.

It's called the NL-LC1 and is based on the Asetek Emma V2 platform. The fans are, of course, Noctua's, but in addition to this, the beige-and-brown company has created a pump cover that's designed to absorb noise and keep things nice and quiet. As someone with an occasionally rather noisy AIO pump, I can definitely imagine the benefit.

"Leveraging a three-layer acoustic soundproofing structure and the tuned-mass damper effect, the NL-PNA1 reduces both air-borne noise and structure-borne vibrations, which can yield significant improvements in pump acoustics."

Sounds complicated, but looking at the diagram, it just looks like a lot of very specifically tailored foam. Noctua is a dab hand at spending a ton of time tailoring things to get acoustics just right, so I don't doubt they've done the job here, though we'll have to see and hear it in person to be sure (TechPowerUp is pretty impressed with it, but we'll have our own first-hand thoughts up on the cooler before long).

This pump cover comes with a magnetically attaching metal faceplate by default, but that can be swapped with a mini fan (sold separately) if more cooling is required.

The radiator fans are the NF-A12x25 G2 and NF-A14x25 G2. The former is, we reckon, the best PC fan on the market, so you won't hear any complaints here. It outperforms all other fans we've tested in balancing stellar airflow with low noise levels.

When combined with the AIO, these fans apparently "utilise a speed-offset to avoid undesirable harmonics phenomena such as periodic humming or vibration build-up due to beat frequencies."

So, what's the downside? Well, the 360 mm version costs $250, the 240 mm one costs $220, and if you need a 420 mm version, that will cost you $280.

Those are some very steep prices, even compared to some other high-end AIOs like the Be Quiet! Light Loop. Let's just hope those quietening design choices really are as effective as we'd hope.

Apart from adding new fans in unexpected places, experimenting with pump-less tech, or getting increasingly clever with mirrors and holograms, there's little you can do to spice up an AIO cooler. The basic tech, after all, is pretty settled. That doesn't stop some manufacturers from trying to add a little spice in whatever way they can, though, such as this new prototype that Hyte has been showing off at Computex.

The main feature of note is that the shroud around the radiator fans is transparent. That means you can see through to the fins on the radiator, and it might just add a little more flair to your build if you're going for a transparent/translucent theme. The cap on the pump also looks nice—you can't tell from the still photo, but that RGB spins around, which looks great because the pump is lit up all over.

We weren't given a name for the cooler, given it's just a prototype, but we were told that Hyte is aiming to have it start at $100. And although I'm not certain whether that would be for a triple-fan version pictured or a two-fan 240 mm one, I'd lean towards the former, given that's what they're actually showing off.

The appeal, then, will be the combo of its price tag and aesthetic. For reference, the Cooler Master MasterLiquid Core II—the best budget liquid cooler—has an MSRP of $100, though it's currently selling for $120 at Amazon.

You can certainly get an AIO for cheaper, but for bang for your buck, $100 is about right. Of course, with this one from Hyte, much will come down to how it actually performs. We've had kind of mixed experiences with previous ones from Hyte, so it'll really have to be judged on an individual basis.

The main question one might have about this cooler at this early prototype stage, though, is just how beneficial that transparent shroud is going to be given it's underneath a big radiator, meaning that's all you'll be seeing through it if you happen to look at it head-on. And from the side—which will most likely be how you're viewing it—you might not get a view of much past the RGB fans.

Though maybe that's the point, to see the RGB fans lit up side-on. I suppose we'll just have to wait and see how that looks in practice, in an actual system.

With all-in-one liquid CPU coolers now so commonplace in gaming PCs, you might think there's nothing left for manufacturers to innovate with. But if the concept device that Cooler Master showcased at Computex is anything to go by, then we'll almost certainly see a raft of copy-cat designs on the market very soon, especially when Intel's Nova Lake chips make an appearance.

The idea behind it all is actually quite simple, but Cooler Master's execution looks really good: Take a 'standard' AIO cooler and slap a big fan on the pump/CPU block. When you look at the pictures, you'll realise that I'm not doing it any justice by describing it that way, but that's essentially what it is.

Here's what Cooler Master's PR manager, Brett Buren, told us about its G11M concept at the Computex stand: "[It's] kind of a hybrid between an air cooler and an AIO. So this is currently using our Atmos 2 radiator with the Master Fan A Gold. These are all aluminum fans, but there's a gold colorway."

Of course, a fan on the pump block isn't a new idea, and Arctic use it to great success with its Freezer III series. However, that system is used exclusively to provide a bit more airflow over the motherboard's VRMs; Cooler Master's design is more about chilling the water in the loop just a little bit more and filling the space inside a case, just as a traditional air cooler does.

"What's special about this part is there's basically an air cooler on top of the water block itself, so the water is being cooled in two places, one directly on top of the pump and one in the radiator," Buren told us. "Yeah, we had some comments like people were pointing out sometimes when you have an AIO, it looks kind of empty in your case."

I really like the look of it, so much so that if this is what the final design for the G11M looks like, I'll definitely be in line to pick one up. But there's another reason why I'm so interested in it: Cooler Master is targeting 400 W of thermal capacity for the device.

With the very biggest and best AIO coolers you can buy right now topping out at around the 350 W mark, depending on the fan speed, that's a fair increase in capacity. But aren't AMD and Intel's latest CPUs much lower than that? Yes, they are, but with Intel apparently planning to release a 52-core Nova Lake processor at some point in the near future, 400 W of cooling is likely to be a must.

Whatever happens on the processor front, I just want the sheer presence of Cooler Master's G11M glowering over everything else in my PC.

Cooler Master is bringing back the blower-style GPU shroud with its new MasterFlow accessory. It's designed to sit atop of a graphics card and redirect the hot exhaust that is often pewed towards the CPU outside of the case instead.

If you've been building PCs for a little while now, you'll be familiar with the blower-style shroud. It used to be a mainstay of reference cards, such as Nvidia's GTX 10-series, but has been ditched in favour of more effective dual- or triple-fan setups, often with a heatsink exposed on both sides of the card.

Blower-style fans would push hot air outside of the case, via the expansion slots. Whereas modern GPU designs are more effective at cooling the GPU, they often send the hot air upwards towards the CPU, thus increasing temps. So Cooler Master had an idea:

"What we wanted to do is help to eliminate hot air from the GPU going into the CPU area," says Cooler Master representative Brett Buren at Cooler Master HQ in Taiwan.

"Obviously, with a lot of new GPUs, like 5080s and 5090s, they have a passage on the back of the GPU to let hot air escape. But the downside of that is that it interferes with the CPU."

"So with a simple blower fan attachment, we're able to isolate that hot air and get it out of the case before it interacts with anything."

The Master Flow rest atop of a graphics card, in what is often an unused expansion slot, and collects the hot exhaust air. A small radial fan inside blows the air towards the slot, and reportedly this offers a big benefit for CPU temps: around a four to six degree improvement.

I picked it up at the event and it has some adjustment for a range of GPU sizes—sliding back and forth for a range of lengths.

For now, Cooler Master is planning to use the MasterFlow in its own prebuilt systems. I'm hoping to see this one land on the shelves for consumers, however, as it feels like it could come in useful for systems running at the very edge of acceptable thermals.

With thermal demands skyrocketing in recent years, Cooler Master has come up with an idea for a cooler than can handle the heat. It's called the Project AIO Liquid Cooling Solution, and it's able to deal with up to 2000 W.

It's hard to miss the new prototype at Cooler Master HQ in Taiwan. The huge four-fan radiator required for the unit takes up the entire backside of its larger gaming and workstation cases. Four 180 mm fans, the same size as those found on its upcoming Silencio 600 case, whirring as a solid wall of airflow.

Cooler Master says this larger fan size can reduce noise levels by 20%.

From the name alone, the 360 Hyper Radiator sounds like nothing more than a standard 360 mm unit, but it's actually 360 x 360. As far as I can tell, it's a single unit, which with the fans has a high thermal capacity of up to 2000 W.

Some flexi tubing is used to connect to the large blocks that connect to both CPU and GPU. So this single cooling solution will be up to the job of cooling both at the same time. With this sort of headroom, it can manage a high core count CPU and an RTX 5090, or two, without any issue.

Though it's called an AIO, it looks to be more of a DIY liquid cooling setup. Though perhaps the final product will be pre-assembled and filled.

It's just a mockup today and I don't have details on when it might arrive in the market. Cooler Master does seem intent on bringing the product to workstations, at least, but whether it makes the leap to gaming, I don't know.

Project AIO was displayed within a Cosmos PC case at the event, which suggests that it is compatible with at least one of Cooler Master's consumer cases.

It's fair to say that the overall theme at this year's Computex seems to be 'forget the economy, spend big' when it comes to new PC hardware. Fortunately, not every company is thinking along these lines, and when it comes to keeping your CPU and your wallet even cooler, Arctic has got you covered.

Simply called the Freezer 61, the new air cooler has a neat feature that should make it stand out in the vast sea of models on the market. While it's 'just' another twin heatsink and fan combo, with six heatpipes running through the copper base plate, the two fans aren't quite identical and for a good reason.

One is an Arctic P12 Pro Reverse, whereas the fan nestled between the two heatsinks is a P14 Pro Reverse. Why? The smaller fan helps to ensure that the cooler doesn't clash with the memory sticks installed in your motherboard's DIMM slots. Both fans are reverse models, for aesthetic reasons, but given that we highly rate the standard P12 Pro, these will do the job very nicely, no matter how they're orientated.

Large and lumpy CPU coolers can be a problem to fit in some rigs. For example, I use a Thermalright PA120SE on one of my test PCs, but no matter what memory sticks are fitted in that system, the height of the DIMMs means that I have to push the front fan 'up'. That reduces the airflow through the heatsink a touch, something which shouldn't be an issue with the Freezer 61.

The non-RGB version just comes in black, but if you prefer a fully white aesthetic for your gaming PC, then you'll be pleased to see that this is an option with the RGB version of the Freezer 61.

Finally, the truly best part: Arctic's new CPU coolers start at around 50 euros ($58), and while you can spend less than that on an air system, the deal is sweetened here by the inclusion of Arctic's premier MX7 thermal paste and a six-year warranty. The company already makes the best AIO coolers around, so we'll be sure to let you know how the Freezer 61 fares when we get our hands on it.

Asus might be sticking 24 carat gold into its mice to celebrate its 20th anniversary and Gigabyte is slapping satellite-grade metals onto its motherboards for its own anniversary, but it's a diamond anniversary for MSI as it's jamming smooshed up diamonds into its next-gen GPU cooling solutions.

The next-gen graphics card cooler MSI had on-show at Computex today is a concept design for what the cards of tomorrow (or rather 2027 at the earliest) could look like. The new cooling feature set is estimated to cut maybe four degrees centigrade off the peak temperatures of a high-end GPU, but every little counts.

Those new features in short:

• Full metal fan blades
• Rifled heat pipes
• Diamond-composite thermal pads
• Diamond-copper composite contact plate

Switching from the plastic fan blades of its existing coolers means saying goodbye to potential warping of the blades at high speeds, allowing for a more rigid structure, which should reportedly increasing cooling efficiency.

And they feel really cool to the touch, too, though I wouldn't want to get a finger caught in one of them.

Maybe more interesting is the rifled barrels of the heatpipes MSI is using on this new design. Inside the pipes there is a spiral structure which increases the contact area inside them, allowing for greater thermal transfer as opposed to the regular design.

Then we come to the diamonds. Mixed inside both the heatpads sitting atop the expensive memory modules and the base plate of the cooling array itself, is a diamond powder designed to increase the thermal conductivity within both components. In the baseplate it's a diamond-copper composite and you can see in the images that it looks kinda dirty by comparison with the standard all-copper version. But it also sometimes sparkles in the light. And cools a bit better, apparently.

Now, as I said, these new features will only drop the temps by an approximate four degrees, but you've got to think that switching in more expensive materials and introducing more intricate manufacturing is only going to do one thing to the manufacturing price of associated cooling shrouds, and therefore to the price of the associate cards.

But this is a concept design in lieu of actual new GPUs to drool over, so while that RTX 5090 there does look pretty, you're not going to be able to buy one even if you did have the cash. Best just wait for the RTX 6090, eh?

In this episode of 'I wonder what they'll attach to a liquid cooler next', we're looking at one I spotted at Computex 2026 from Tryx that offers a holographic effect.

It's called the Tryx Holo. The radiator isn't anything special; it's sleek with three fans and some subtle RGB lighting. Though peer into the window atop of the pump unit and this liquid cooler's party trick is obvious. There's a tiny guy in there.

I'm not really sure what the character is that I'm looking at—some sort of ghost with a big nose—but it does have a slight holographic appearance to it. It's using a transparent screen with some mirrors to deliver some sorta holographic effect. I'd say calling it a hologram is going too far, but it is something.

Tryx calls it the "world's first holographic liquid cooler", which I suppose is a fair claim, as I've not seen anything else like it. Though admittedly I do think a hologram visible from all angles would be a lot more impactful. As it stands, this one is really best viewed straight on, which inside a case, and not on display outside of a PC case, might be tough.

I don't have a price tag for this one yet, but reportedly it was listed on Tryx's Chinese website for around 999 yuan, which is $147. Though these things don't often directly correlate to pricing elsewhere on the planet, somewhere around the $150-$200 mark, likely on the higher end, seems as good a guess as any should this be released elsewhere.

As for the actual cooler under all that frosting, it's actually made by Asetek. I'm not sure of the exact platform but it should fall in line with a lot of coolers on the market today by way of performance.

Noctua has returned to Computex in Taiwan with a new and improved version of its pumpless liquid cooler. This time, the company says it's able to compete with a standard all-in-one cooler for temps.

"We had that demo last year on a 9800X3D," Noctua's Jakob Dellinger says, calling back to this thermosiphon prototype from 2025.

"That was roughly 100 watt heat load. This year we're running 230 watt on a 9950X3D, and we're neck and neck performance wise with a AIO water cooler."

Noctua's prototype works through evaporation. Rather than pumping hot liquid away from the CPU, the liquid heats up, evaporates, then the vapour travels up towards the radiator. In which, it condenses back to liquid and flows back down to the evaporator.

There's a careful balancing act to get this thermosiphon principle working as intended, but Dellinger reckons they've got it pretty much squared away.

Noctua had the two-phase thermosiphon set-up at the show, with a 9950X3D tearing away at 230 watts—a considerable thermal load to dissipate for any cooler. The screen below noted the temperature of the chip: 81.4 °C, or thereabouts.

Next to this, Noctua's upcoming all-in-one cooler, the NL-LC1, which is built on Asetek's Emma V2 platform and set to launch this June. Noctua provides its top fans and a specially-designed pump cover to reduce noise with what is otherwise a traditional AIO design. The screen below this cooler noted a temperature of 79.4 °C.

Dellinger says if they dropped the pump to quiet mode on the standard AIO, the thermosiphon would come out ahead.

So, pretty close. Or neck and neck, as Dellinger would say. The thermosiphon has the benefit of no annoying pump noise, though the three fans on the radiator mean it's not completely silent, either.

The thermosiphon design has seen a major improvement, too. What was previously very clearly a prototype unit with rough edges, the latest prototype looks pretty close to the real deal. It still comes with a bolted on fill port and it's not quite at production level, but I've seen a lot worse.

"It's a bit like Darth Vader's mask, you don't want to look underneath," Dellinger jokes.

"We're still at lab stage. The next big challenge is going to be to make sure that we can reach this performance level, not just on a prototype, but consistently in mass production."

Dellinger explains the many improvements the company has made over the past year, which include a new microlayer to remove vapour blankets, which insulate the hot surface and reduce the cooler's effectiveness; and tweaks to optimise the flow of liquid and vapour through the system.

It's all about controlling the circulation and balance of liquid and vapour in the loop, Dellinger says. He also spoke in of "evaporating meniscuses", which starts to sound a little sci-fi to me, but apparently it's textbook knowledge for a cooling company.

I'll drop the technical slides below if you're interested.

I ask Dellinger if there's a maximum wattage that this sort if thing could deal with, and I'm told since the heat powers the system, it's only really a question of balancing the loop for larger heat loads. At smaller sizes, things get trickier, but even air cooling with heatpipes would suffice at a lower TDP.

"We're really focused on 360 mm, because getting good performance on 240 mm is a real challenge."

Noctua is playing a long game here. The thermosiphon isn't expected until at least Q3 2027, but that feels like a pretty loose estimate to me.

Noctua seems more optimistic of this prototype materialising into something real, at least. The company says it has made, "excellent progress towards performance goals and mass production." It also says it's gone from "from one evaporator design per month to four per day."

Noctua has announced a long-term partnership with Carbice, "a U.S.-based expert in vertically-aligned carbon nanotube thermal interface materials." Noctua revealed during this year's Computex that it will become the exclusive retail distributor of Carbice's carbon nanotube thermal pads.

A dedicated cooling pad for AMD Ryzen processors, the NT-CP1 AM5/4, will be the first Carbice product available to buy from Noctua from September 2026. The Austrian cooling company will also collaborate with Carbice on "future product development" as well. This strategic partnership is what Noctua were teasing last week, rather than a hairy fan as Jacob theorised.

It's been a minute since we last wrote about Carbice's carbon nanotube CPU cooling tech. Thermal paste is still a fine way to keep your processor cool, but after hearing one too many horror stories about gooped-up CPU sockets, I can't help but get in my own head about applying it my-clumsy-self. Carbice offers a pad that is instead "mess-free, maintenance-free," and will hopefully keep your processor's sockets clear. Carbice's Ice Pad will also be bundled with the soon to be re-launched Ryzen 7 5800X3D.

"Carbice's unique, innovative TIM technology has already proven to be a game changer in applications that demand ultimate reliability such as satellites, aerospace or critical infrastructure," Noctua CEO Roland Mossig said of the partnership, "We're confident that the superior long-term performance, ease-of-use and dependability of Carbice pads will be equally attractive for PC enthusiasts, so we're excited to bring them to this market space and to collaborate with Carbice on future R&D."

The full announcement goes into a bit more detail about Carbice's carbon nanotube tech. Apparently, "thanks to the pads' robust mechanics and carbon nanotubes that incrementally conform to surface microstructures," the thermal performance of this bit of kit actually improves over time (whereas traditional thermal paste can crack and delaminate).

Carbice's products are also unusual in the field of cooling pads. The press explains, "Unlike other carbon or graphite-based thermal pads that can be brittle, slippery and electrically conductive, Carbice pads are reinforced by an aluminium backbone that’s sandwiched between the carbon nanotube forests, and the entire surface is protected by a nanoscale polymer coating. This unique structure makes them highly robust, tacky enough to stay in place during installation and effortless to remove."

As keen as I am to get my hands on one of Carbice's CPU pads come September, Noctua have notably not yet revealed pricing information. I'm willing to bet that a steady hand and a tube of thermal paste will continue to be the most affordable CPU cooling solution for a while yet.

Noctua's NF-A12x25 G2 is our pick for the best PC fan for good reason. It delivers great airflow, no matter what RPM you run it at, and it's quiet to boot. If the only thing stopping you from picking some up until now was its love-it-or-hate-it colourway, I've got good news for you.

On the Noctua site right now, you can spot the 'Chromax Black' model in one or two PWM models, though you have to get the beige/brown color if you want the low-speed LS-PWM model.

As Noctua points out on the website, there's no need for it to change its award-winning formula here. The black fans operate exactly like the standard ones, complete with a Progressive Bend impeller design, a Centrifugal Turbulator, Sterrox liquid-crystal polymer impeller, and more tech that I barely understand. The bottom line is that these fans are mighty good. We know that from testing them.

Thanks in part to a genuinely tiny gap between the fan blades and their housing, we noticed these little fans have "absurdly impressive performance, even at low RPM". We spotted in our testing that it's not the quickest of the fans we've tried, but it's among the best-performing anyway.

Unfortunately, though, this new colorway does not do away with one of the biggest downsides of choosing Noctua—the price. On Amazon, the black model is the exact same price as the beige one, at $35. At that price, you can almost get entire sets of PC fans for just a single G2 model, and given you might want to put upwards of five in a case, that's an awful lot of cash.

Still, if you want the absolute best PC fans right now, and don't really like Noctua's classic color theming, the black variant certainly gives you more customisation room. You can even pick up the 140mm NF-A14x25 GW in black, too.

Noctua says its colored variants are quite difficult to build, recently arguing it's "less like painting a wooden fence...And more like changing the color of a carbon-fibre Formula 1 part". That's because it needs to min-max tip clearance and carefully analyse what the coloring pigment could do to performance.

If you want a white and black build, or perhaps a sleek all-black one, I do think the old colors would perhaps mess with the aesthetics a little, even if the black model isn't quite as iconic in my eyes.

Hey, it's mryeester again. We've covered this particular YouTuber's attempts to build an infinite ice-based CPU cooler, and edible thermal paste. The PC prankster has upped their game this time, though, as they've now figured out a way to cool a CPU with dry ice, regular ice's even cooler cousin.

Sort of. Anyway, it turns out this would be a terrible idea if you simply placed the dry ice atop a top-mounted AIO, as it melts through the radiator vents and down to your precious components. Mryeester has gained some HP sponsorship, though, and the Omen Max 45L test machine they've been using has a handy "Cryo Chamber" cooling system.

Essentially, the AIO radiator and fan setup is isolated from the rest of the system in its own section, away from the rest of the components, with vents on top and a large gap below it. I think you can probably see where this is going.

I've skipped to the main point of interest in the video above, as mryeester spends a rather large amount of time demonstrating all the features of the HP machine. Hey, we've all got to make our money somewhere, right?

Sticking dry ice directly on top of the AIO resulted in some pretty cool effects, as the fans were set to exhaust upwards, creating ghostly vapour trails. Temperature-wise, though, the CPU figure dropped to 37 °C, which was the same as the temps recorded using regular ice. Still, it's a marked improvement over the 43 °C idle temperatures recorded at stock.

Placing the dry ice in the handy chamber below, however, meant that the AIO pulled ice-cold air up through its vents, lowering temps down to a chilly 34 °C at idle and beating the standard ice-cooled score by a few degrees.

So, does this mean higher fps results for gaming, as the CPU can now clock itself to the moon as a result of this esoteric cooling solution? Kinda. Not really. A little bit, perhaps.

Mryeester recorded a 157 fps result in the Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark at stock, and 159 fps using the dry ice—which, as they point out, could essentially be a rounding error. Chilling down a desktop CPU by a few degrees really isn't going to make a massive difference to gaming performance, unless it was heavily thermally limited to begin with.

Ah well. We've all had our fun, and HP's Cryo Chamber has had a chance to prove itself in a very, err, unusual use case. Also, don't play with dry ice, kids. It's a mryeester thing, and they've got all the right oven mitts.

If there's a-love-it-or-hate-it aesthetic for PC components, I'd say it's probably Noctua's traditionally beige fans. The company also makes black versions, but they often arrive far later than their pale brown counterparts. There are a lot of very good reasons for that, apparently, and the company has released a breakdown explaining the delay.

In essence, it comes down to Noctua's famously tight production tolerances, a key factor in why its fans usually perform so well. The company also likes an analogy, so try this one on for size:

"In a nutshell, the reason is that this is less like painting a wooden fence, which is easy, and more like changing the colour of a carbon-fibre Formula 1 part, which requires re-calculating the weight, strength and aerodynamics."

PC fans are usually made out of injection moulded plastic, and Noctua's are no exception. However, the company appears to take the delicate balance involved in the process more seriously than most, as it min-maxes tip clearance to prevent unwanted leak flows through the gap between the impeller and the frame.

"The flow rate, cooling time, and pressure must be perfectly balanced to ensure the plastic crystallises, cools correctly, and holds its structural integrity and dimensional precision," says the Noctua. "When you introduce a new variable, like colouring pigments, that delicate balance is disrupted."

The level of precision is such that, according to the company, it's "essentially at the absolute limit" of what injection moulding can consistently reproduce. The carbon black colour pigments used in its black models have smaller particle sizes than the beige and brown versions, which means the melt viscosity, heat absorption, and crystallisation behaviour of the polymers are altered.

This potentially means starting from scratch with new moulds for a black model, and perhaps even entirely new tooling to tune the fans to meet Noctua's standards. The company also subjects its new models to long-term high-temperature tests that take a minimum of six months. Add all that together, and you end up with a significant delay.

Or even a change of plans entirely. Noctua put a white version of its fans on hold in 2024, and decided to shift focus to its G2 models instead. And if all this sounds like overengineering to you, consider this: two of our best PC fan picks are Noctua models, including the best overall, the NF-A12x25 G2, and we recommend them for a very good reason.

I used to think Noctua's fan tech was a bit overhyped until I stuck one in as a rear exhaust fan in my rig. It moves a huge amount of air very quietly, and seems lightyears ahead of the one I had before. So, I can say from personal experience that all this attention to detail really does make a difference.

I wish Noctua's models were a bit cheaper overall, but seeing the level of precision involved? Yeah, I get why you're paying extra. Summer's coming, and perhaps a few more Noctua air-movers might make it into my machine before the weather turns. If my wallet can take the strain, anyway.

Noctua has released 3D CAD models of many of its fan designs, which is good news if you're 3D printing a project that plans to make use of them. You won't be able to print a straight-up clone, though, as the company has deliberately modified some of the crucial details, like the fan impeller geometries.

Noctua says the CAD models are provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis, with no warranties or guarantees, and that the models have been released "solely for reference, visualisation, and integration purposes."

Further to this, Noctua has clarified on X that people can "gladly" print the models, but that certain key details have been changed to protect its intellectual property. "Due to these modifications, these models will not perform well when printed," the company states.

Noctua also says the 3D models may not be used for "the manufacture, reproduction, or commercialisation of the products they represent," and this seems to be the crux of the matter. While hobbyists might do well to learn from everything Noctua does in its fan design, competing companies would likely look at a fully-accurate file with great interest.

In a further reply discussing the building of fans, Noctua also says that: "Printing your own fan impeller and frame are one thing, building the motor and bearing as well as assembling everything with the required precision is another."

Given that its latest NF-A14x25 G2 fan design took nearly a decade to develop, and that the fan/shroud tolerances are incredibly tight as part of the design (with a liquid-crystal polymer material used to achieve it), knocking up one of those would be... well, you'd likely need more than a CAD file, anyway.

Still, the 3D models are still likely to be of great use for those creating their own projects around the dimensions of Noctua hardware. And given that two Noctua models make for some of the top picks in our best PC fans guide, it's no surprise that the company wants to hold on to some aspects of its IP to prevent mass-produced imitations.

I've often wondered why gaming chairs aren't more like luxury car seats. I mean, some are, but they usually end up being "racing" models that are about as comfortable as being poked with a polyurethane-covered stick.

Surely it'd be simple enough to take a comfy car seat design, strap a piston and wheel combo to the bottom of it alongside some armrests, and then charge what you like. Oh look, here comes Toyota with exactly that.

The Crown Seat Desk Chair [PDF] is, as the name suggests, marketed as more of a desk chair than a gaming throne (via Tom's Hardware). Still, I know a good gaming chair when I see one. Look at those lovingly-crafted bolsters, designed to keep you centred on the action when things get hectic. The quality stitching. The headrest that looks ready to be tilted back for an after-game nap. Mmmm.

It's based on the car seat from, you guessed it, a Toyota Crown, and comes with powered adjustability settings, built-in electric heating and cooling, and a USB Type-C charging port hidden in the seatbelt buckle. Oh yes, I nearly forgot—it seems some elements have been retained from the actual car seat itself. A nice touch, but I bet you'd find yourself banging into it constantly if you bought one.

And therein lies two further problems. One, Toyota Boshoku, the company's seating and interior components specialist, is only producing 70 of them. And two, it's a Japan exclusive model, with a price tag that equates to around $3,500.

Ah, it was going so well, wasn't it? I tried looking for pre-owned Toyota Crown car seats and discovered some decent (although fabric-covered) examples starting for around $385, so hope is not lost. You could always make one a project, although good luck creating something as tidy-looking as the real thing.

Damn you, unobtainable gaming chair of my dreams. You elude me once more, but here's hoping this isn't the last we see of comfy car seats converted for desk-based usage. Just work on the pricing for me, would ya?

I recently watched The Magic Faraway Tree, in which Andrew Garfield plays a dad with dreams about making homegrown tomato sauce in the country. I was particularly charmed by a scene in which Garfield generates enough electricity for his tween daughter to enjoy a shonky video call via pedalling a busted-up bike alone. Well, one YouTube creator has leveraged this thrifty approach to energy generation in a whole new way.

"Every year you're spending thousands and thousands of watt-hours to simply power the fan that cools your CPU," YouTube creator mryeester began in a recent video, "Which got me thinking, what if we could manually cool our computer with human grit and determination?" Opting to manually turn his CPU fan via the revolution of his bike wheels, you should probably add 'buckets of sweat' to that equation too.

So, how do you go about connecting a bike to a CPU fan? Mryeester first replaced his bike's back tire with a V-belt, attached a sheath to the CPU fan, and then connected that to the bike via said belt. Simple, right? Weeell, let's just say you won't see this tinkerer's experiment in our best CPU coolers guide.

For starters, ensuring the V-belt doesn't hit any other PC components as it rotates is a challenge. The YouTuber decided to tilt his entire PC and open up the top to give more direct access to the CPU fan without smacking any other hardware guts.

Personally, I'm left wondering why mounting the 3D printed sheath indirectly to the CPU fan via, say, a short pole that could offer some clearance outside of the PC case isn't explored—feel free to tell me in the comments why that's a terrible idea. Is it to do with physics and tension? I feel like it's to do with physics and tension.

After getting his CPU down to 39 °C, the glued-in-place sheath promptly popped off the fan cover, highlighting at least one point of failure in this human-powered CPU cooling contraption. The other, obviously, is the simple fact that even the fittest human can't pedal forever. Add to that manually turning your CPU fan would only save you about three bucks a year at most, and it's an idea that hardly seems worth refining.

Undeterred, mryeester jumped back into testing, this time booting up CS2 to see if he could pedal long enough to get in some kills. Despite some expectedly wobbly aiming and added resistance from the V-belt, he got a handful of kills in before becoming a puddle. When it comes to working up a sweat, though, I think I'll follow our James' suit and stick with the VR headset.

Occasionally, I encounter a story that speaks volumes in a single image. It tells of human strife, endeavour, and an unwavering commitment to triumph in the face of adversity. This is one of those images.

My dear colleague Jacob Fox directed me to the r/pcmasterrace subreddit this morning, so that I may behold what he too has seen. And it's this Mac mini, with what I will call an "unorthodox" cooling setup.

I can't afford AC, so built this DIY watercooler for my mac mini, temprature dropped from 74°c to 49°c from r/pcmasterrace

At the risk of ruining the subtle beauty of what Reddit user kartikgsniderj has created, I'll attempt to explain what I see. I think what we're looking at here is a Mac that's been given a heavy ridge of packing tape around the outer chassis to act as a water cooling tray.

This, as the thread title reveals, is a cooling system—and apparently an effective one, too. As our redditor can't afford air conditioning, they "basically sprinkle water drops on top of tissue paper," to cool their machine, which is then presumably collected in the packing tape "tray", so as not to ruin the electrical components underneath.

Temp reductions of 74 °C to 49 °C are nothing to sniff at, though, and evaporative cooling is a thing. And I've been known to break out the packing tape in times of emergency, as well as enduring hot summers without the pleasure of air conditioning.

Still, I fear for the day this setup experiences an inevitable accident. The moment when that fragile tape lets go at a crucial junction, allowing water to drip into the vents and ports beyond.

There's a chunky power supply in there, too, you know. For goodness sake, do not attempt this in your own home. Water and mains power absolutely do not mix, and while the ingenuity here is notable, it's still a very, very bad idea.

Obviously, gaming is a huge reason why I love all things PC hardware. However, my other love is folks doing completely improbable or impractical things with their gaming PC. As such, please give a warm welcome to a truly unique PC build the creator is considering dubbing 'Seraphim'.

The build in question features an extremely extra, though apparently fully functional fan array which looks not unlike the aforementioned, many-winged angel. That's coupled with many criss-crossing pipes of a water cooling system that is already giving me The Fear. It all took about four years to put together in the end.

Final boss of watercooling! from r/pcmasterrace

Creator Yam_Founder explains that the project was born out of a personal dislike of "the current state of boxy copy and paste cases on the market that are hard to work in and hard to modify."

"So I decided to build an extremely overkill case that is designed to make regular maintenance easier," Yam_Founder says. "Also I love welding and building stuff, so why not show off a bit."

'Overkill' is definitely the word. But while I can understand not wanting yet another black box as part of your gaming setup, I'm sceptical of the claim that this build is comparatively simpler to maintain (though my personal plumbing skill set is non-existent). The Redditor explains the almost organ-esque build is easier to take apart than it looks.

"Every part that [needs] regular maintenance can be removed as one solid part," Yam_Founder writes, going on to later elaborate, "Each part of the PC is separated into 'Zones' which can be isolated from the rest of the loop and drained if a part needs to be cleaned or replaced."

As for all of those radiators in the back, they're there for both substance and style. Yam_Founder explains they're especially useful for passive cooling, adding, "The amount of radiator surface area means the fans can be off or on low power most of the time so no sound, except from the D5 pumps."

That's right, this thing more or less quietly looms in the corner of whatever room it's placed in—but let's fight off that shadow with an equally terrifying thought: what would happen if this complex-looking cooling system were to spring a leak?

For a start, it turns out the Redditor's day job is as a welder for a cryogenics company, and they have "a decade of experience hunting down very small leaks on MUCH more complex piping systems." Their tried and true leak-hunting process involves 1-3 psi of pressure, a wee bit of dish soap, and then keeping your eyes peeled for any big bubbles over time.

If you are especially taken by this majestic creation, you'll be pleased to hear that Yam_Founder is open to creating custom cases for others. If you're still stuck on the 'but why?' of the whole endeavour, I'll leave you with this comment from the creator: "I just love buildin'—sometimes [I don't know] what I'm building, I just like buildin'!"

Last month, YouTuber Major Hardware, otherwise known as James, created "The Fanjattan Project", a single fan made up of many tiny fans. Now, they're back with the same basic idea but much, much larger, with a huge fan named the Superdome. And fan maker Noctua even agreed to help out.

The idea was to make a side panel out of 15 Noctua 120 mm fans, but after mocking it up, they realised it would cost over $500, which is "pretty high for just a bunch of fans for a weird little project."

Major Hardware reached out to Noctua to ask if it would send the necessary fans out, and "they said yes without any questions." Notably, Noctua also provided materials for 3D printing, which means Major Hardware could more accurately mimic Noctua's aesthetic.

Taking a 3D model of the Lian Li O11 Dynamic XL side case, they made a large dome on top of a huge fan, which would then house all of the Noctua tech. They then 3D printed their design, and stuck the fans in. Once in their housing, the fans were glued down and ready to start spinning.

The cable management of adding 15 fans together proved to be a struggle, with Major Hardware urging people not to "really pay that much attention" to all those wires. "It's a little bit of a disaster," they say. "I used a lot of Y connectors, and that was pretty much it."

Though two fans didn't work to begin with, Major Hardware discovered they had merely forgotten to plug them in.

They state that the mega fan is "Honestly, pretty quiet… It's not loud at all. My computer that's running right now just on the desktop is louder than these".

They also note that the standard A12X25 fan pulls in 6.1 watts of energy, where the Fanhattan Project pulls in 8.1 watts, and the Superdome needs 27.6 watts. The good news is that Major Hardware reports it's actually a strong cooling solution. "It started as a meme, but I think I might actually leave this on my PC because of how well the thermals were."

James does, however, caveat this somewhat. They say that the top and bottom radiators are both exhaust in their rig, to show off the RGB in their fans, and the PC tends to get pretty hot in games. James says their rig isn't as efficient as it could be, which goes some way to explain the difference the Superdome makes.

Without the Superdome, in a handful of games of Battlefield 6, Major Hardware reported temps around 86.3 °C. With the Superdome side panel in place, those figures came all the way down to 66.9 °C.

Major Hardware notes that there's no dust shielding, so dust in the room will naturally find its way into the rig, but "given I exhaust from both fans anyway, and I just let normal air just passively come in the back, I get a lot of dust anyhow".

Given how well it works, James has put the blueprints of the Superdome online for you to download. All you will need to build your own is a Lian Li case, a 3D printer, and 15 Noctua fans. Simple, ey?

Say it ain't so, a product in the custom PC industry space right now that's dare I say "cheap", "affordable", "coming down in price". Unbelievably, yes, that is the case. This is Thermaltake's TH360 V3 Ultra ARGB Sync all-in-one liquid cooler. And despite the ridiculously funky name, it's surprisingly impressive all things considered. That's mostly because of the price.

Let me be clear, this thing isn't going to blow the bloody doors off of our best CPU coolers buying guide, on quality alone, or by introducing some radical new design element. No sir, but what it does do is dramatically drop the price of LCD display AIOs by a hell of a lot.

This is possibly the cheapest 360 mm I've seen with a display ("possibly" doing a lot of heavy lifting there, to stop the comments section from rinsing me. It's cheap, ok, real cheap). At $140 US and £125, what you get for the money is utterly staggering.

Thermaltake's built this thing with a 360 mm aluminum radiator (pretty much the de facto norm when it comes to AIOs these days) with a "high-quality pump" (Thermaltake's words, not mine) and a single 360 mm single-frame ARGB fan setup all baked in as standard to minimize cable clutter.

The display itself, completely detachable from the pump block, isn't particularly fancy. Just a TFT-LCD model, but it does come with a 720x720 resolution on a 3.95-inch display and is entirely customizable within Thermaltake's multitude of software. More on that in a bit.

You also get 460 mm tubes (the longest I've seen in my testing), and a copper cold plate attached to a block that's compatible with enough Intel CPU sockets to break our humble table CSS, probably; in fact, it's easier to list what it's not compatible with (anything below LGA1150 and above LGA2066, oh and 1567 because screw that guy).

And again, it's just the price of it that's so mind-bogglingly savage. Just take a look at a few of the true LCD displays on the market. The Kraken Elite 360 RGB is $320, the Tryx Panorama SE is $280, the Kraken Plus is $220. Like those are more than double in most cases, and, yes, ok some are OLED curved models I'll admit. That said, we can't ignore the big bumbling RAM error in the room, and that's the warranty on this thing.

Three years in the US, two years in the UK. Given the industry standard is at least six years on the pump alone for almost all of the TH360 V3's competitors, that's a painful cutback, particularly for us pommes living in ol' blighty. Given the cost of practically everything else in the industry at the minute, I think it's fair to say, most folk's upgrade plans are now spanning half-decades, rather than the one to two year cycle they used to, so seeing that warranty so minimal is a little unnerving.

And then there's the pump; in short, there's no detail on what it actually is. Thermaltake has it listed as "high performance," but that's it. To our knowledge, it's not an Asetek model (again likely to keep cost down), but the pump speed is rather limited, suggesting the internal spec is probably quite cut-back in contrast to other models on the market.

Benchmarks: Temperature

Delta over ambient (Celsius) for CPU package temp with a Core i7 14700K in various benchmarks

Metro Exodus EE (5 runs) | 1080p | Ultra | ΔTBaldur's Gate 3 | 1080p | Ultra | ΔTCinebench R23 | Multi | 10 min| ΔTx264 | ΔTCinebench R23 | Multi | 10-minute | 14700K @ 120 W PL1 + PL2 | ΔTAmbient temperature

Delta over ambient (max °C)

Delta over ambient (avg °C)

Thermaltake TH360 V3 Ultra ARGB Sync

49

26

Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync

54

32

MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360

51

39

Corsair iCUE Link Titan 360 RX LCD

45

37

Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB

43

30

015304560

Metro Exodus EE (5 runs) | 1080p | Ultra | ΔT Data

Product	Value
Thermaltake TH360 V3 Ultra ARGB Sync	49 Delta over ambient (max °C), 26 Delta over ambient (avg °C)
Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync	54 Delta over ambient (max °C), 32 Delta over ambient (avg °C)
MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360	51 Delta over ambient (max °C), 39 Delta over ambient (avg °C)
Corsair iCUE Link Titan 360 RX LCD	45 Delta over ambient (max °C), 37 Delta over ambient (avg °C)
Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB	43 Delta over ambient (max °C), 30 Delta over ambient (avg °C)

Delta over ambient (max °C)

Delta over ambient (avg °C)

Thermaltake TH360 V3 Ultra ARGB Sync

45

40

Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync

51

39

MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360

56

48

Corsair iCUE Link Titan 360 RX LCD

53

43

Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB

47

39

015304560

Baldur's Gate 3 | 1080p | Ultra | ΔT Data

Product	Value
Thermaltake TH360 V3 Ultra ARGB Sync	45 Delta over ambient (max °C), 40 Delta over ambient (avg °C)
Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync	51 Delta over ambient (max °C), 39 Delta over ambient (avg °C)
MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360	56 Delta over ambient (max °C), 48 Delta over ambient (avg °C)
Corsair iCUE Link Titan 360 RX LCD	53 Delta over ambient (max °C), 43 Delta over ambient (avg °C)
Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB	47 Delta over ambient (max °C), 39 Delta over ambient (avg °C)

Delta over ambient (max °C)

Delta over ambient (avg °C)

Thermaltake TH360 V3 Ultra ARGB Sync

60

56

Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync

65

60

MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360

72

66

Corsair iCUE Link Titan 360 RX LCD

67

62

Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB

63

57

020406080

Cinebench R23 | Multi | 10 min| ΔT Data

Product	Value
Thermaltake TH360 V3 Ultra ARGB Sync	60 Delta over ambient (max °C), 56 Delta over ambient (avg °C)
Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync	65 Delta over ambient (max °C), 60 Delta over ambient (avg °C)
MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360	72 Delta over ambient (max °C), 66 Delta over ambient (avg °C)
Corsair iCUE Link Titan 360 RX LCD	67 Delta over ambient (max °C), 62 Delta over ambient (avg °C)
Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB	63 Delta over ambient (max °C), 57 Delta over ambient (avg °C)

Delta over ambient (max °C)

Delta over ambient (avg °C)

Thermaltake TH360 V3 Ultra ARGB Sync

71

56

Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync

77

57

MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360

75

65

Corsair iCUE Link Titan 360 RX LCD

74

61

Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB

68

56

020406080

x264 | ΔT Data

Product	Value
Thermaltake TH360 V3 Ultra ARGB Sync	71 Delta over ambient (max °C), 56 Delta over ambient (avg °C)
Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync	77 Delta over ambient (max °C), 57 Delta over ambient (avg °C)
MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360	75 Delta over ambient (max °C), 65 Delta over ambient (avg °C)
Corsair iCUE Link Titan 360 RX LCD	74 Delta over ambient (max °C), 61 Delta over ambient (avg °C)
Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB	68 Delta over ambient (max °C), 56 Delta over ambient (avg °C)

Delta over ambient (max °C)

Delta over ambient (avg °C)

Thermaltake TH360 V3 Ultra ARGB Sync

36

27

Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync

47

30

MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360

51

30

Corsair iCUE Link Titan 360 RX LCD

41

28

Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB

43

22

015304560

Cinebench R23 | Multi | 10-minute | 14700K @ 120 W PL1 + PL2 | ΔT Data

Product	Value
Thermaltake TH360 V3 Ultra ARGB Sync	36 Delta over ambient (max °C), 27 Delta over ambient (avg °C)
Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync	47 Delta over ambient (max °C), 30 Delta over ambient (avg °C)
MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360	51 Delta over ambient (max °C), 30 Delta over ambient (avg °C)
Corsair iCUE Link Titan 360 RX LCD	41 Delta over ambient (max °C), 28 Delta over ambient (avg °C)
Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB	43 Delta over ambient (max °C), 22 Delta over ambient (avg °C)

Thermaltake TH360 V3 Ultra ARGB Sync

26

Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync

18

MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360

25

Corsair iCUE Link Titan 360 RX LCD

22

Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB

25

07.51522.530

°C

Ambient temperature Data

Product	Value
Thermaltake TH360 V3 Ultra ARGB Sync	26
Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync	18
MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360	25
Corsair iCUE Link Titan 360 RX LCD	22
Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB	25

Test bench: Intel Core i7 14700K | Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 FE | G.Skill Trident Z5 DDR5-6000 | open chassis | Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero | Gigabyte Aorus 1200W Platinum

Fortunately, in my time testing, that reduced RPM doesn't seem to be hurting that much in terms of overall performance. With an ambient temperature of 26 degrees Celsius, it performed admirably across our testing suite, with record temperatures in CineBench R23 (86 degrees) and an impressive 71 degrees in Baldur's Gate 3, too.

There's one caveat to that, and that's the noise. The V3 Ultra is incredibly loud. By my readings, those fans clocked in at an astonishing 63.4 dB at full whack, that's a full 8.4 dB louder than the likes of the Kraken Plus 360 RGB (now the second loudest cooler I've tested so far).

It doesn't disappoint on the looks front either, the display is crisp and punchy, the tubing braided (anyone else getting nostalgia for the old school PVC tubing, now we're getting older?), and the ARGB fans crisp and clean too. The single-frame design and one set of cables to manage makes things seriously easy to handle too.

Thermaltake's software is a pretty mixed bag overall. Confusingly, there's two, neither of which are found in the downloads section of the TH360 V3 Ultra's product page. You've got the TT RGB Plus 3.0 software, which is buried in the features section, and the TT LCD Screen software (technically for the Minecube, but it also works).

The MineCube version is pretty barebones but allows you to build a completely custom display, with all manner of stats monitoring, font control and backgrounds. RGB Plus, on the other hand, is more plug-and-play; you get a set number of stat setups, backgrounds are automated, there's some carousel modes, and clocks, and that's about it, barring some AI background generation oddness integrated in there too.

So then. Thermaltake TH360 V3 Ultra ARGB Sync. Big, bold, versatile, potent, and insanely affordable compared to the competition. But, with some caveats. If you go into this purchase with that in mind, and don't expect this to outlast the AI boom, then you're going to have a good time.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you ate thermal paste? I'm not sure, but I can advise you that you really, really shouldn't. YouTuber mryeester looks to have been having similar thoughts, as they've endeavoured to create the world's first truly edible thermal paste—and the secret ingredient is gold.

Gold is known for being an excellent conductor of heat, and being in position of a surprising amount of 24-carat gold leaf, mryeester picked it out as the edible thermal transfer element. Yes, you can eat it, as you'll find if you go to a very fancy restaurant. You'll also likely find a large bill at the end of the evening, as the stuff isn't cheap.

However, simply placing gold leaf atop a CPU heatspreader isn't really a solution, as it ignores the reason we use thermal paste on our coolers in the first place. A traditional paste fills in the microscopic gaps of air between the chip surface and the cooling plate, improving thermal conduction considerably, which is why it's the go-to for system builders everywhere.

So, a liquid bonding agent was required, and mryeester picked out everyone's favorite bee-based product, honey. The other candidates were mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, and toothpaste, if you were wondering. Yes, this is going to get messy.

Our intrepid chef then proceeded to mix the gold and honey together on top of the chip, which was a bold move given that the former is highly conductive. Still, the end result was a shiny golden blend with plenty of the 24-carat stuff glistening inside, for maximum thermal conduction.

Squidging the mixture on top of a test chip with a small air cooler, mryeester recorded a surprisingly low 53 °C peak thermal figure from the un-named CPU, even at sustained 100% load.

Next up, a proper gaming PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D inside. That's one of the fastest gaming CPUs money can buy, and a $500 thoroughbred race horse of a chip. Gulp. Using a conventional air cooler (with conventional thermal paste), mryeester recorded a peak temp of 70 °C while playing a match of Counter Strike 2.

That's well below the thermal limit, but what could the honey and gold mixture offer instead?

Well, less of a mess, as mryeester was quite rightly concerned about getting too much honey on their very expensive chip and motherboard CPU socket. However, the volume used was still much more than what I'd ever recommend applying to a chip with the equivalent paste. Pea-sized amounts, folks. Pea-sized amounts.

Time for a taste test. Mmm, delicious, apparently. Gold doesn't really taste of anything, whereas honey tastes of golden fields and your imaginary childhood. Or mine, at the very least.

Large air cooler dutifully installed, a last-minute panic was averted due to the PSU switch being left off during installation. Hands up how many of us have done that? Yep, me too. Still, the PC was up and running in no time, and reported peak gaming temperatures of.... 77-78 °C.

That's a fair bit toastier than the regular thermal paste, but still well within reasonable limits for a 9850X3D. At no point did the chip thermal throttle and limit performance, although as mryeester admits, that was over a 10-minute CS 2 session.

Longer playtime (or a more CPU-demanding game) would likely lead to worse and worse results, not least because non-pure honey is a (somewhat) perishable product, and will likely change in consistency over heat cycles and time.

So, what have we learned? Well, that proper thermal paste makes a significant difference to CPU temperatures, I guess. However, it's a genuine surprise to see that a relatively unsuitable product (even with gold's thermally conductive properties) doesn't appear to impair the CPU temps by all that much, and you could lick it off to clean up the mess afterwards.

Only joking. Don't lick your PC components, folks. Actually, don't do any of this. It's for YouTube entertainment value and dubious science experiments only. Keep the honey for the kitchen, and do yourself a favour and spend $10 on some proper thermal paste for your next build. It's likely a whole lot cheaper than a pack of gold leaf, anyway.

Have you ever thought, 'There aren't enough fans in my fan?' That's what I can only assume is the thought process of YouTuber Major Hardware, who has replaced one Noctua fan with 15 mini ones.

The inspiration for this project is a tiny 'flying UFO' toy that their kids were playing with. Major Hardware says, " While watching it go around, I noticed that these little tiny fans do produce quite a bit of wind. They're very loud, but... they produce quite a bit of air flow."

Major Hardware found a similar 5V motor to the one in the UFO, bought a big pack of them to plug into a sequence of Noctua colored 30 mm fans, and found that 15 would offer a similar surface area to the 110 mm one they own.

From here, they used the base of the Noctua NF-A12x25 in a 3D model, and fit a plastic dome over the top to slot the fans in. They broke a motor mount in the first model, causing cracks due to a lack of an antivibration pad in the base. This is just a handful of problems that popped up in the first attempt. The joys of DIY.

The second model fixes those issues, and also routes the motor wires around the base, so as not to interrupt airflow. Major Hardware compares it to the Manhattan Project, but the top comment astutely re-names it "The Fanhattan Project".

Major Hardware does try to make The Fanhattan Project close to Noctua's in look, saying "this fan is basically a meme of the A12x25". Once turned on, though, it really sings. Or, perhaps more accurately, screams. "It's moving quite a bit more air than I expected. It sounds like a bunch of angry bees."

If you're wondering how loud exactly, Major Hardware's fan registers 73 decibels, with nearly no peaks or troughs. That's reasonably close to the sound of a dishwasher or vacuum cleaner. However, sound isn't the only thing you'd test when setting up a fan.

In a testing suite, with an old Intel Core i7 7700K running for twenty minutes, the standard Noctua fan saw the CPU reach a temperature of 69.5 °C, where the Fanhattan Project got 69 ° C in the same tests. That's technically better, but only fractionally so, and, as pointed out by Major Hardware, "pretty much within the margin of error".

Still, if you can DIY your own biblically accurate Noctua fan and not get worse results, you're winning in my book—just excuse all the noise.

Why have a screen on your liquid cooler? I often find myself asking that question when reviewing the latest all-in-one liquid coolers. Unlike some components, there's no shortage of LCD screens today, and you have the pick of the lot when it comes to sizes and styles. Though for the Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync, that wouldn't be an appropriate question. Instead, I should ask myself: Why have one screen when I can have four?

The Minecube comes with four 3.95-inch LCD panels mounted into a cube that sits atop of the pump unit. A cube has six sides, of course; one side is left intentionally blank with some venting, and another is where you mount the screens to the top of the pump.

Before we get onto the screens, let's cover the rest of this cooler. A copper cold plate sits beneath the cube with a fairly standard design and mounting solution. So familiar, I'd take a guess as to this cooler being from Asetek. It supports both AMD and Intel sockets; up to AM5 on the former, LGA1954 on the latter, which is actually for as-of-yet unannounced Nova Lake processors. It doesn't say that on the website, only on the box. Though, of course, it'll also work with any reasonably modern Intel processor.

The pump unit has a 50 mm fan built-in. An odd configuration, wherein the fan is drawing air through vents at the bottom of the cube via a handful of vents, in a way that's sure to restrict the airflow to some degree. Though any amount of airflow will be better than none. This tiny fan and pump have a noticeable whirr when you place your ear up close. However, even with both running at max speed (3,300–3500 rpm), they're not massively audible from further away.

There are three fans mounted to the 360 x 120 x 27 mm radiator. These are covered in RGB lighting, including the blades and the circumference of the fan, and controllable via a proprietary magnetic connector on one end, but a standard 4-pin fan header and 5 V lighting header on the other. So how you choose to set them up or adjust speeds is down to your choice of motherboard and compatible software.

Moreover, these fans are reversible, but they're not reversed right away. Out of the box, these are regular fans better suited to pushing air through the radiator and out of your case (ideally mounted above your motherboard). However, there are three alternative, reversed fan blades in the box. You just slide the old ones off, replace, and voila, reverse fans. Now they're better suited to using on the side of a motherboard, especially in a fish tank-style case. There's even a bit of grease included to apply after replacing the blades a few times to keep them spinning for a good while longer.

Though the static pressure and airflow are ever-so-slightly reduced with the reverse blades installed. We're talking 57.11 CFM to 56.26 CFM and 2.39 mm-H2O to 2.02 mm-H2O, which is not going to lead to any considerable change. The fans run up to 2,000 rpm at maximum speed, which is what I've run them at for testing purposes, and it must be said they are a bit on the loud side. I've only tested a handful of coolers with my newly-updated sound meter but this was a couple decibels above the MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360 at similar speeds. Though I am running these at max and they're much less noticeable all-round on even default fan curves.

With 460 mm long tubes, the Minecube offers great compatibility with a range of case designs. Those long tubes are pretty key to allow for a range of orientations for the cube itself, too. In my case (literally), an open test bench that requires longer than average tubes to even install a cooler, the Minecube sits comfortably with the tubes at the bottom of the unit, allowing me to stick the blank screen facing the GPU and all the more interesting stuff facing outwards.

Interesting stuff like a range of animations, which appear to move between each panel of the cube; system information; and custom images or gifs. For the most part, those are provided by Thermaltake in the TT LCD Screen Software, though you can add your own or customise a screen to add your own data points, visualisations and text. To be fair to Thermaltake, the customisation is deeper than I had first expected, with a range of options for each screen meaning you can show a lot of useful info right there, including pump speed, power draw, clock speed, temperature, storage space, memory usage, and more. You just have to eke all of that out of a slightly awkward UI.

You have to choose data points and move symbols, text, and icons around to get something similar to the presets, which you're better off tweaking to your liking than starting totally fresh if you're short on time. Though with time on your side, you are able to create a wonderfully customised screen. Now to do that another three times…

I did manage to get together a pretty useful set of screens, showing RAM usage, temperatures, and even live charts showing CPU and GPU speeds. There's definitely some utility here, and plenty of real estate across the four screens—provided you're the type to peer into your case to check on stats. I have to admit, I'm not, and I can only see two of the four screens at any given time—three when I'm standing—so all that real estate feels a little wasted.

I had to do a few hard resets of both cooler and software during my time with it, too, which hasn't been a major hassle but felt a little underwhelming knowing the cost of this cooler. The Minecube 360 Ultra costs $350/£280—it's not cheap.

So, it really comes down to how much you feel you can get out of the cuboid visuals here. If you're looking for something punchy to round off your themed build, you could do well with the Minecube and its customisation options. Slap some custom imagery on there and it could look pretty decent. TN panels aren't the ideal choice but these are viewable at an angle and without much discolouration.

Though, you might get more wow factor from Tryx's Stage 360 with two IPS panels for less—half the panels but a decent saving at $210/£200.

You are getting a lot more screen than, say, the NZXT Kraken Elite 360 RGB (2024), and for similar money. Though the NZXT has the benefit of a smarter cable solution, hiding the cables away in the tubing. Whereas the Minecube has four cables erupting from the pump unit (two fan headers, SATA power, USB 2.0) and more from the fans. It's nowhere near as clean cut, which matters here when you're paying for aesthetics more than performance.

Though speaking of performance, the Minecube is pretty great. I've said for a while that liquid cooler performance has more or less levelled out for the most part, with only a big parity between the extremely expensive models and the extremely cheap ones, but the Minecube is able to keep the demanding Core i7 14700K cool. It's up there with the best liquid coolers.

Liquid cooler benchmarks - Thermaltake Minecube Ultra 360 ARGB Sync

Test bench: Core i7 14700K | RTX 4070

Baldur's Gate 3 | 1080p | UltraMetro Exodus EE | 1080p | UltraCinebench R23 | Multithread | 10 minCinebench R23 | Multithread | 10 min | 120 W PL1 + PL2Fan noiseMax. fan speedPump noiseTime to lowest CPU package tempx264Ambient temperature

Max (°C)

Avg (°C)

Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync

69

57

Tryx Panorama SE ARGB 360

78

68

Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB

72

64

MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360

81

73

0255075100

Baldur's Gate 3 | 1080p | Ultra Data

Product	Value
Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync	69 Max (°C), 57 Avg (°C)
Tryx Panorama SE ARGB 360	78 Max (°C), 68 Avg (°C)
Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB	72 Max (°C), 64 Avg (°C)
MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360	81 Max (°C), 73 Avg (°C)

Max (°C)

Avg (°C)

Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync

72

50

Tryx Panorama SE ARGB 360

79

60

Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB

68

55

MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360

76

64

020406080

Metro Exodus EE | 1080p | Ultra Data

Product	Value
Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync	72 Max (°C), 50 Avg (°C)
Tryx Panorama SE ARGB 360	79 Max (°C), 60 Avg (°C)
Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB	68 Max (°C), 55 Avg (°C)
MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360	76 Max (°C), 64 Avg (°C)

Max °C

Avg °C

Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync

83

78

Tryx Panorama SE ARGB 360

93

90

Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB

88

82

MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360

97

91

0255075100

Cinebench R23 | Multithread | 10 min Data

Product	Value
Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync	83 Max °C, 78 Avg °C
Tryx Panorama SE ARGB 360	93 Max °C, 90 Avg °C
Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB	88 Max °C, 82 Avg °C
MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360	97 Max °C, 91 Avg °C

Max °C

Avg °C

Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync

65

48

Tryx Panorama SE ARGB 360

68

56

Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB

68

47

MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360

76

55

020406080

Cinebench R23 | Multithread | 10 min | 120 W PL1 + PL2 Data

Product	Value
Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync	65 Max °C, 48 Avg °C
Tryx Panorama SE ARGB 360	68 Max °C, 56 Avg °C
Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB	68 Max °C, 47 Avg °C
MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360	76 Max °C, 55 Avg °C

Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync

62

Tryx Panorama SE ARGB 360

51

Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB

58

MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360

60

020406080

Decibel

Fan noise Data

Product	Value
Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync	62
Tryx Panorama SE ARGB 360	51
Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB	58
MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360	60

Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync

2000

Tryx Panorama SE ARGB 360

1820

Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB

3000

MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360

2050

07501,5002,2503,000

RPM

Max. fan speed Data

Product	Value
Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync	2000
Tryx Panorama SE ARGB 360	1820
Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB	3000
MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360	2050

Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync

46

Tryx Panorama SE ARGB 360

27

Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB

33

MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360

44

015304560

Decibel

Pump noise Data

Product	Value
Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync	46
Tryx Panorama SE ARGB 360	27
Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB	33
MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360	44

Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync

80

Tryx Panorama SE ARGB 360

104

Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB

120

MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360

193

050100150200

Seconds

Time to lowest CPU package temp Data

Product	Value
Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync	80
Tryx Panorama SE ARGB 360	104
Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB	120
MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360	193

Max °C

Avg °C

Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync

94.9

75

Tryx Panorama SE ARGB 360

98

87

Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB

93

81

MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360

100

90

0255075100

x264 Data

Product	Value
Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync	94.9 Max °C, 75 Avg °C
Tryx Panorama SE ARGB 360	98 Max °C, 87 Avg °C
Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB	93 Max °C, 81 Avg °C
MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360	100 Max °C, 90 Avg °C

Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync

18

Tryx Panorama SE ARGB 360

28

Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB

25

MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360

25

07.51522.530

°C

Ambient temperature Data

Product	Value
Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync	18
Tryx Panorama SE ARGB 360	28
Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB	25
MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360	25

Above: Testing will be impacted by ambient temperature fluctuations to some degree, as I'm afraid I do not have access to a temperature-controlled environment. The Minecube, being tested in winter, will be a benefactor in this instance.

So, it's a tough one to judge for me. I'm personally not a fan of the whole cuboid schtick, but what it does, it does well. Performance is there and there's a good level of customisation underneath the janky application. It's just the price that gives me pause. I couldn't justify that sorta spend on cooler aesthetics… could you?

YouTuber, extreme overclocker, and Thermal Grizzly CEO Der8auer has been keeping themselves busy of late, testing the pressure resistance of water block cooling windows. Traditionally, these are made of a durable acrylic that can easily withstand far more pressure than a conventional liquid cooling system can provide, but Thermal Grizzly has been experimenting with glass windowed versions.

And by experimenting, I mean hooking them up to a hand pump in a water bath and ramping up the pressure until they go bang. Important work is being done here, folks. Important work.

Both acrylic and glass windowed blocks were placed inside a grey plastic crate, submerged in water, and then pumped to within an inch of their lives to see what sort of internal pressure they could withstand before cracking into pretty (but useless) patterns.

Der8auer explains that the test could also be performed in the open air, but risks an explosion of glass/acrylic that would be... well, bad news for everyone involved.

First up was a traditional GPU water block with a PMMA (acrylic) window. Attached to a pump mechanism and submerged safely below the surface, the block was filled with water with the opposing plug open, so as to force out any air bubbles. Once the water block was plugged, creating a closed system, an extra piece of acrylic was placed on top of the tank to prevent any unforeseen accidents.

Ramping up the pressure, the acrylic window cracked between eight to nine bars of pressure, although did not burst into fragments. This is way beyond the pressure a normal water cooling block would reach under usual usage, and rather impressively, the acrylic was able to be removed in a single piece.

As the camera wasn't on the block at the exact time it failed, Der8auer repeated the experiment, and this time cracked a corner of the window at nine bars of pressure.

Switching over to a glass-windowed version, the test was performed with the same methodology once more. The glass shattered in a much more densely-cracked pattern at around five bars of pressure. This was an expected result, as acrylic is a much more flexible and pressure-resistant material than glass, which is more brittle.

Finally, a CPU water block with a much smaller glass window was subjected to the torture test. This managed an impressive 10 bars of pressure before failure.

Your average water cooling block is subjected to far less than 0.5 bars of pressure under load, so a five bar fracturing result is still more than good enough by most standards. And, as der8auer points out, at these sorts of pressures, it's far more likely that a hose, pump, or clamp would fail before the windows did, glass or otherwise.

"Honestly, we're just also having a lot of fun playing around with these things. I absolutely enjoy that," says Der8auer. No kidding. Can I get an invite to the next "blowing hardware up" party, please? I'll bring snacks, I promise.

YouTuber Jakkuh (previously a member of Linus Tech Tips) has spent two months designing a high-spec gaming PC kitted with an RTX 5090 and $1,300 worth of RAM to test out titanium liquid cooling, and the idea came from their love of cars.

In their latest video, Jakkuh talks about looking at car exhausts on eBay, only to spot one with bent titanium tubing. This inspired them to buy six meters of the stuff to wrap around a gaming rig.

Jakkuh calls it 'the fastest computer I've ever had', and it's kitted with an impressive list of components:

• AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D
• RTX 5090 (with Optimus RTX 5090 PNY water block)
• 96 GB of G.Skill Trident Z5 NEDO DDR5 memory
• 4 TB of Sabrent Rocket 5 Gen5 storage
• Seasonic Prime TX 1600 W power supply

Before actually bending the tubing, Jakkuh made a 3D model of the PC with all of the other hardware in it, in order to create an accurate model to create the distro plate, which then pumps water around the build to keep it cool.

They opted to bend their own tubes with a $140 tubing bender, instead of using a $30,000 mandrel bender, which tends to get used in industrial bending. To account for that difference, Jakkuh custom printed a vice to use in their own bender to avoid clamping too hard on a single point, and ended up filling the tubing with sand, so the bend doesn't damage the tubing.

In case you're wondering why the build took so long, Jakkuh spent a week working on the distro plate, and they had multiple packages go missing throughout the process. Jakkuh also realised early on that two water blocks had water flows that were the opposite of each other, so they had to build a custom diagonal channel to send the two flows past each other.

This is all before they realised the acrylic they bought was .3 inches smaller than the distro plate they designed. Most of the video is Jakkuh talking about the various mistakes and hiccups made throughout building the PC, which maps onto my experience doing anything new with a gaming PC.

Jakkuh calls the rig "probably the worst build of my entire life. The most difficult, most annoying computer I have ever had to build. And I don't even know if it leaks yet."

It turns out the build does in fact work, and doesn't leak. Jakkuh says, "Other than the pump sounding like death, it's pumping".

In fairness, it looks absolutely gorgeous in the Havn HS 420 fishtank case, the grey titanium accenting the whites and blacks of the rig itself. And CPU temps, while idle, sit around 40 °C. In Overwatch (no longer called Overwatch 2), the rig reaches 500 fps, and CPU temps sit consistently under 75°C, with GPU temps sitting below 50°C.

"Titanium tubing. Questionable. Would I do it again? Most definitely not", says Jakkuh.

This is before mentioning that titanium tubing, paired with copper, will accelerate copper corrosion. This means that the internals that use copper can take damage over time, with plain water running through them. You can put anti-corrosive agents in water coolers, which should slow down that process, but Jakkuh appears to simply pour in water from their own bottle in the video.

As one commenter points out, "If you check a "Galvanic Reaction Chart" I think having titanium tubing will make the copper internals of each component to corrode more. Don't really know if this is a problem but take it into account". Jakkuh's response? "YOLO."

When I wrote my review of Arctic's Freezer 36, I was inundated with comments telling me to test the Thermalright Peerless Assassin. Subsequently, two of my colleagues recommended the very same cooler as one of their favourite purchases in recent years. So, I bought one, and in this review I'll cover why my colleagues, and the internet at large, are correct. This thing rules.

I purchased the Peerless Assassin 120 SE V2, a version of the cooler with six heatpipes, for £26. It's currently $33 on Amazon US. Thermalright has around 40,000 variants of any one cooler, all with names using a combination of around ten words, and spanning nine pages on its website. I opted for one of the cheapest available at the time, but if you wanted something prettier, there are many more to choose from.

It arrived in a nondescript brown cardboard box, which slightly tempered my expectations for the cooler within. Though I shouldn't have judge a cooler by its box here; it's a mighty impressive unit once you remove it from the packaging. It's much larger than the other budget options I've reviewed recently, including the Arctic Freezer 36 and Cooler Master Hyper 212 Pro.

It's a dual-tower cooler, one more than most in this price range, and comes with two 120 mm fans. These are basic units with a not-so-basic name, TL-C12C-X28 V2, and use a fluid dynamic bearing (FDB).

The longevity of any fan bearing can be pretty variable depending on how well they're made. I've not run these for any suitable length of time to comment on their lifespan. Though, presuming they last a couple years at the very least, replacing them with something similar wouldn't cost much at all.

The heatsink is fairly basic with six heatpipes and a small cutout on the outer edge to reduce any chance of compatibility issues with memory kits. The version I have is bare metal, though there are smarter options available. Personally, I don't mind the bare metal look, especially as Thermalright has included two black covers for the top of each heatsink to help it blend in a little through a windowed side panel.

Installation is easy enough. On Intel systems, like the LGA1700 system I've tested it on, a rear bracket is mounted to the motherboard and then, on the other side, four spacers and screws hold two metal brackets in place. The cooler sits atop these brackets with two spring-fitted captive screws to lock it firmly into place. You can mess with the orientation pretty easily and it supports a few generations: 1700/1150/1151/1200/1851.

It's more or less the same install process on AM5/AM4 with fewer steps and different brackets.

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

Game and synthetic benchmarks | measured in HWInfo

Cinebench R23 | Multithread | 10 min | 120 W PL1 + PL2Baldur's Gate 3 | 1080p | UltraMetro Exodus EE | 1080p | UltraCinebench R23 | Multithread | 10 minx264Time to lowest CPU package tempAmbient temperature

Max °C

Avg °C

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE V2

72

51

Arctic Freezer 36

71

55

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

71

56

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Pro

77

59

020406080

Cinebench R23 | Multithread | 10 min | 120 W PL1 + PL2 Data

Product	Value
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE V2	72 Max °C, 51 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36	71 Max °C, 55 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	71 Max °C, 56 Avg °C
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Pro	77 Max °C, 59 Avg °C

Max °C

Avg °C

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE V2

87

69

Arctic Freezer 36

88

72

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

84

76

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Pro

93

85

0255075100

Baldur's Gate 3 | 1080p | Ultra Data

Product	Value
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE V2	87 Max °C, 69 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36	88 Max °C, 72 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	84 Max °C, 76 Avg °C
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Pro	93 Max °C, 85 Avg °C

Max °C

Avg °C

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE V2

74

62

Arctic Freezer 36

78

59

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

76

60

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Pro

86

71

0255075100

Metro Exodus EE | 1080p | Ultra Data

Product	Value
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE V2	74 Max °C, 62 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36	78 Max °C, 59 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	76 Max °C, 60 Avg °C
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Pro	86 Max °C, 71 Avg °C

Max °C

Avg °C

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE V2

92

86

Arctic Freezer 36

100

95

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

100

98

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Pro

100

99

0255075100

Cinebench R23 | Multithread | 10 min Data

Product	Value
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE V2	92 Max °C, 86 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36	100 Max °C, 95 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	100 Max °C, 98 Avg °C
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Pro	100 Max °C, 99 Avg °C

Max °C

Avg °C

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE V2

99

85

Arctic Freezer 36

100

88

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

100

95

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Pro

100

96

0255075100

x264 Data

Product	Value
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE V2	99 Max °C, 85 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36	100 Max °C, 88 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	100 Max °C, 95 Avg °C
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Pro	100 Max °C, 96 Avg °C

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE V2

119

Arctic Freezer 36

138

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

155

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Pro

118

050100150200

Seconds

Time to lowest CPU package temp Data

Product	Value
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE V2	119
Arctic Freezer 36	138
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	155
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Pro	118

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE V2

22

Arctic Freezer 36

23

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

22

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Pro

23

07.51522.530

°C

Ambient temperature Data

Product	Value
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE V2	22
Arctic Freezer 36	23
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	22
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Pro	23

The Thermalright really shines in testing. It keeps a Core i7 14700K totally under control in games and is on a level-pegging with the best air coolers I've tested to date. Like any air cooler in combination with this power-hungry chip, it can struggle to keep a lid on temperatures in demanding benchmarks like X264 or Cinebench but it fairs better than most. With a more reasonable 120 W power limit in place on the 14700K, mimicking the power load of more modern processors, the Peerless Assassin is practically frosty.

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

Fan noise | measured 15 cm away | Toptes TS-501B sound level

Fan noise

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE V2

58

Arctic Freezer 36

51

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

47

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Pro

52

015304560

Decibel

Fan noise Data

Product	Value
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE V2	58
Arctic Freezer 36	51
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	47
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Pro	52

In terms of price/performance, then, it's pretty untouchable. Though it is noisier than some competing units. The Freezer 36 remains a solid pick for that reason, offering similar temperatures (with some leniency for fluctuations in ambient temperatures during testing) and quieter operation. Though it's a little pricier at $37 at time of writing.

At this price, and providing you have space for it, the Thermalright Peerless Assassin is superb choice for keeping costs down with a fresh build.

I asked my colleagues if they could sum up their feelings on the Peerless Assassin in a single word: Andy said it was "big", "mighty" and "chungus", and then "bigmightychungus"; and Nick said it was "peerless (for the money)". Despite their inability to count, I think their feedback speaks volumes about the Peerless Assassin. It's great, and you don't need anything more than it offers for many of today's popular CPUs.

If you've been dying to get your hands on the Noctua Pulsar Feinmann since its announcement, I have bad news for you: You will be waiting a little longer. If, instead, you care about its range of all-in-one liquid coolers, I have good news.

Noctua recently took to its roadmap website (archive from September 2025) to adjust the planned release of some upcoming gear. Notably, the Pulsar Feinman Noctua edition and NF-A12X25 G2 chromax.black have moved from the first quarter (Q1) of 2026 to Q2, and the Antec Flux Pro Noctua edition is now the only product set for release in Q1.

The Pulsar Feinmann Noctua Edition, being a neat mouse with a fan in it, intrigued us last year, and a potential launch in Q2 means it will be here in time for the hottest months of the year.

From Q2 estimations in the last roadmap, the 140 mm desk fan, USB fan controller and Seasonic Prime PX HPD Noctua edition have all moved back to Q3 this year. If the desk fan is anything like the 120 mm NV-FS1, it will be pricey and very cool. I can't help but feel like there's a missed opportunity in not launching in the height of the summer, though.

However, perhaps the best news in this roadmap update is that the all-in-one liquid cooler is still on track for its Q2 launch estimation. Aiming for its 2026 launch for a while now, we had the chance to see the all-in-one liquid cooling system back in May last year, and it seems like it's a very quiet water pump.

It is being made in collaboration with Asetek and said to be offered in 420, 360, and 240 mm radiator formats. The shroud of the pump head seems to have a hunk of noise-absorbing material, and Noctua reckons it is almost 6 decibels quieter than a standard pump. It's not quite the thermosiphon system we've been waiting for, but a quieter pump will certainly help, deep into nights full of gaming.

It's worth noting that this roadmap update isn't an official delay in a traditional capacity. Noctua's roadmap site is a step for broader transparency around the company's plans and not a firm release date confirmation. Last September, Noctua also updated its roadmap, delaying a few things and confirming release windows for others. As it says at the top of the page, "Please note that this schedule is subject to change."

Noctua is a company known for holding onto its gear until it's perfect, so an informal delay is not always a sign of something bad for the company. Still, if it means delaying everything to get that all-in-one liquid cooler on schedule, I might just take it that trade.

CES might be filled with algorithms and server racks but it's good to see some companies keeping the 'Consumer' in Consumer Electronics Show. Be Quiet! is one of them, announcing new power supplies and coolers.

Following on from the Dark Rock 5, the Dark Rock 6 and Dark Rock Pro 6 have a new angular look and semi-passive modes.

The Dark Rock 6 comes with six heat pipes and a single 135 mm Silent Wings fan. Meanwhile, the Pro is on a whole other level with none fewer than seven heat pipes. How about that? It also has two Silent Wings fans of unspecified size—though I'd guess from the images provided that they're also 135 mm.

Both coolers offer a sleek all-black appearance, with a shroud covering the top and sides of the heatsink. That's the sorta attention to detail we've seen on other Be Quiet! air coolers in the past, although generally they have been dearer than competitors (Arctic Freezer 36 or Thermalright Peerless Assassin) for the extra flair.

A new all-in-one cooler is the star of the show, according to its creator. The Light Loop IO LCD, and yes, LCD denotes it having a screen on it. A 2.1-inch IPS display. It's bright at 500 nits, and able to show the usual laundry list of system info. Plus, the RGB surround is softly lit for a genuinely decent appearance. In terms of the more important stuff: it offers three Light Wings LX PWM fans, a specially designed plate design, and a self-proclaimed state-of-the-art pump. All controllable via the IO Center app.

The Light Loop IO LCD comes in either 360 or 240 mm size and black or white colours. Unfortunately, I've no idea what the price will be yet.

Onto my favourite component in any build, the PSU! There are two new options here: Power Zone 2 1200 W and Pure Power 13 M 1200 W. The former is platinum rated by Cybenetics and 80 Plus, and the latter 80 Plus Gold. Both offer support for ATX 3.1/PCIe 5.1.

So, there you have it. Some actual PC components at CES. There have been a few other announcements of note, too: Asus has a handful of ROG products made in collaboration with Kojima, and a case with holographic fans, and there are new dual-slot graphics cards from PNY and a seriously chunky 5090 from Gigabyte.

We've got most of the big stuff covered with our Gear of the Year awards. Though even I'll admit we're missing award categories for cases and coolers. There are many deserving of a nomination, from the excellent Havn BF 360 to the return of a legend, the Corsair Air 5400. But I had to go with my gut.

One product stands out to me in a sea of increasingly expensive components. It's the Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro, and here's why.

I first caught sight of the Liquid Freezer III Pro at Computex, Taiwan's biggest tech show. I arrived at Arctic's booth in a bit of a mess, having essentially jogged between appointments most of the morning in the stuffy weather. I spent an undue amount of time admiring the new Liquid Freezer Pro, if only for a brief respite as the cool air from its fans reached my face.

It wouldn't be easy to improve upon the original Liquid Freezer III. Our Nick rated the original model so highly that he awarded it our no.1 spot in our best liquid cooler buying guide. It also cost pennies compared to other all-in-one coolers offering similar performance. But Arctic was going to give it a go, anyway.

The Pro improves on the previous Liquid Freezer III in a couple of ways, namely improved pump control, greater fin density, and new, faster fans.

I've reviewed the Arctic Freezer III Pro 360 since then. It shows its true colours in testing. It keeps even the most power-hungry processors at a decent temperature (looking at you, 14th Gen), and makes light work with less demanding chips, such as the Ryzen 9000-series. What's more, the P12 Pro fans are excellent—rated to a massive 6.9 mmH20 static pressure. While loud at their 3000 rpm top speed, and beaten by Noctua's latest at slower speeds, you can tune them down and still reap most of the benefits.

Most of all, the Liquid Freezer III Pro earns my recommendation because it does something quite extraordinary in this day and age. It launched at more or less the same price as its predecessor; the thing it improves upon in almost every way.

The Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 will set you back, as of time of writing, just $90. If you want some RGB lighting to go with that, it's another $9. Both options have been cheaper for considerable lengths of time, but you can hardly argue with that price. There's little else that can touch it in terms of bang for your buck—though I did have a soft spot for the Cooler Master MasterLiquid Core II 360 for $60 over Black Friday.

When it feels like companies are taking customers for a ride and wringing every last penny from our bank accounts, Arctic had the opportunity of a generation with the Liquid Freezer III Pro to do the same. But it didn't. No mention of 'macro-economic headwinds'. No talk of tariffs. Just a great product, improving on what came before, and for a superb price. That's why the Liquid Freezer III Pro beat the other products to earn my personal pick for Gear of the Year.

If you want to find out who wins in the PC Gamer Hardware Awards, we'll be publishing all the winners on New Year's Eve.

There are close to 9,000 data centres currently in operation across the globe—and a sizable chunk of that has been built in climates far too hot for all of that hardware to run efficiently. That's definitely not great news when some estimate the number of data centres will triple by 2030.

According to a report from Rest of World, the optimal temperature range for a data centre lies between 18 °C and 27 °C (or 64.4 °F and 80.6 °F). However, of the 8,808 data centres in operation, 7,000 have been built in places that typically experience a climate outside of this range. Furthermore, 600 (or about 10% of all data centres) have been built in places that regularly breach that temperate 27 °C ceiling (via Tom's Hardware).

Data centres are already power hungry, collectively hoovering up 1.5% of the world's total electricity consumption (or 415 terawatt hours) in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency. However, add to that a cooling system that's having to fight against the everyday climate it finds itself in, and that potentially adds up to an even greater strain on the local grid.

For one example, Rest of World highlights India, where around a third of its 213 data centres have been built in areas far too hot. Some of these data centres then have to contend with a local power grid that was already unstable, with the added strain of cooling demands potentially raising the risk of outages.

Many data centres currently deploy air-cooling mechanisms, though alternate methods are being explored. PS Lee bills himself as an 'expert in Sustainable AI Data Center Cooling' and is currently overseeing the Sustainable Tropical Data Centre Testbed in Singapore, a country with 1.4 gigawatts of data centre capacity and average temperatures of 33 °C (or 91 °F). Lee told Rest of World that "the old model of unconstrained, air-cooled growth is simply unsustainable,” and that his team is currently exploring direct-to-chip cooling. The hope is that this, alongside immersion cooling, could reduce energy use by up to 40%.

Lee predicts direct-to-chip and immersion cooling "will become standard features rather than exotic add-ons" in the next five years. He also predicts commercial deployment of large-scale seawater cooling—not unlike the 'AI Atlantis' off the coast of Hainan Island Province, China—will become both feasible and wider spread over the next decade. However, even if all of this comes to pass, newer data centres will be first in line, leaving plenty of older builds to either wait for a costly retrofit or obsolescence—bottom line, cooling will still be a concern.

With an earlier IEA report claiming AI power demands could quadruple over the next few years, it's hard not to feel a bit of time pressure in solving an equation that doesn't always add up. Alongside alternate cooling methods, alternate sources of power could also be pursued, with AI company Lambda already operating a data centre powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. It's worth noting that this example may be difficult to scale due to the hydrogen delivery infrastructure being nowhere near the behemoth that, say, gas is.

Renewable energy has its own drawbacks for powering datacentres specifically (namely, you'd need massive, expensive batteries to make it at all viable). As such, there's been a lot of interest in nuclear power—which comes with baggage that would take more paragraphs to explain than I have to spare. Long story short, when it comes to meeting data centre power demands, the math is simply not math-ing.

These are rancid times for building a new gaming PC or upgrading a current one. Especially so if you're really unlucky and you've had a RAM stick fail on you. Memory prices are doing their best to make my favourite hobby an utter misery, but every now and then, I stumble across something that makes me smile again. Like Jonsbo's four-screen AIO CPU cooler.

It's not a new model, as the China-based company actually launched its TF3-360SCB back in July, but I was browsing through some Japanese PC hardware news, which brought it to my attention.

With Asetek's 20-year patent on AIO coolers expiring earlier this year, the market has seen a flood of new models, all at vastly reduced prices. That's been good for us PC builders. However, for cooling companies, it's become increasingly harder to make something that stands out from the crowd.

Enter stage left, the Jonsbo TF3-360SCB, which (to quote the great Marge Simpson) I think is just neat. You get the obligatory LCD screen in the pump head/CPU mount, but also three extra displays along the edge of the fan block that mounts to the radiator.

And speaking of the fans, I also think it's neat that they're a single unit. Sure, it's a pain to replace when one of them fails, but for sheer looks and ease of installation, having three 120 mm fans altogether in a single unit is a nice touch.

It looks pretty classy in steel-like grey, rather than outright black, though there's a white option if you prefer to have a polar bear PC. While I'm not a huge fan of RGB and other gamer bling in my main rig, I reckon the Jonsbo cooler would be pretty useful in my test PCs.

Each display could be set to display a key metric while I'm benchmarking away. I know I can do this in other ways, but this just seems...well...neat. Plus, I'm far too attached to the name 'Jonsbo'. I keep saying it in my head, but I think I'm just burned out from having to stare at the apocalyptic rise of RAM prices.

As far as I can tell, the Jonsbo TF3-360SCB isn't available in the US or UK yet, and it may never make its way over the waters. If it does, though, I might try to get my hands on one, if only so I can yell at my PC Gamer hardware colleagues: "Look at my Jonsbo!"

Asetek, the company that invented the closed-loop liquid cooler for CPUs, has received an offer it can't refuse from CQXA Holdings, a subsidiary of Chinese electronic group Suzhou Chunqi, to fully take over the company.

If successful, CQXA would pay 1.72 Danish Krone (around $0.27) per share to make up a total of 547.4 million Danish Krone ($85 million). When this was announced on November 25, 2025, shares from Asetek were valued at 0.82 Danish Krone, which means this offer represents a 110% increase on the price of shares alone.

Asetek has been in a bit of a weird spot this year as a major watercooling patent expired in May, losing a key advantage it had in regards to liquid cooling.

The day after the buyout announcement was made, Asetek's share price went up to 1.6 Danish Krone per share, almost doubling the value overnight. In the days following this announcement, share prices have stayed consistent.

Asetek's full report says, "Based on a thorough assessment, the board of directors of Asetek has concluded that the offer represents an attractive proposal to Asetek's shareholders and has unanimously decided that it intends to recommend that Asetek shareholders accept the offer when made."

Three major shareholders, who represent 33.4% of Asetek's share capital and voting rights, have also agreed to accept the offer and tender shares. The report makes it clear that there is an intent to accept this takeover offer, and CQXA must publish an offer document approved by the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority by December 23.

If CQXA holding has approval and 90% of shares by this point, it will "complete a compulsory acquisition of the remaining Asetek shares and seek a delisting of Asetek's shares from trading and official listing on Nasdaq Copenhagen A/S."

According to the Financial Times, CQXA owner Suzhou Chunqi has around 6,000 employees with an estimated revenue of 4.16 billion Chinese Yuan (around $500 million). The buyout report states that Chunqiu sees Asetek's "industry-leading liquid cooling" and "SimSports initiatives" as "highly complementary to its portfolio."

If all is right with the takeover, the offer should be fully accepted in the first few months of 2026.

When PC hardware companies all jump onto a bandwagon, it eventually becomes almost impossible to stand out from the crowd, because everyone's doing the same thing. Thermaltake must have realised this because its latest AIO liquid CPU cooler has taken cooler screens to a new level, but it's also given it a whole bunch of neat extra features.

The cooler in question is the Thermaltake Minecube 360 Ultra ARGB Sync (via Hermita Akiba on X), and the name alone gives you all the clues you need to guess what the AIO cooler looks like, assuming you've not taken a gander at the images yet.

Where most vendors have been content to add a single LCD screen to their AIO blocks, Thermaltake has added four individual displays to the Minecube: one facing straight up, and the other three forming a 'wrap-around' effect, starting on the rear IO side of the motherboard before finishing at the DRAM slots side.

Admittedly, having a screen facing the rear IO panel doesn't make much sense, because you're barely going to see it in an average PC case. Anyway, using Thermaltake's software, you can apply individual animated GIFs to each panel or have them display hardware info, such as temperatures and clock speeds.

That's all very cool and whatnot, but four LCD screens and an integrated VRM fan do make that main block a tad on the chunky side. There are no listed dimensions for it, but the pictures suggest it's large. Still, it should be good for 360 W of heat, according to Thermaltake, so it should handily cool even the most power-hungry of CPUs.

The rest of the Minecube 360 Ultra might seem like standard fare (single large radiator, with three 120 mm fans), but there's actually an awful lot to like about it. For example, the radiator pipes are 460 mm in length, which should make it much easier to get the radiator rotated into the right position when installed vertically (i.e. pipe inlet/outlets at the bottom).

Even better are the fans. They magnetically attach to each other, so you only need one cable to connect them to your motherboard, and you can just pull the fan blades out and swap them with the reverse set that are included in the box. Yes, that's right: a fully reversed setup, without having to purchase a whole new set of fans.

Thermaltake says you can wash the blades in water to easily get rid of built-up dirt and grime, and it even provides bearing lubricant to use once they're dried off.

I can't say I'm a huge fan of the quad-screen affair of the Minecube 360, as I prefer my main rig to be all stealthy and black and cool. But all the other features? Heck, sign me up right now, and if Thermaltake adds them to a 'standard' AIO cooler in its range, I might well be first in line to buy one.

Playing Battlefield 6 On AIO Screen from r/pcmasterrace

If, like me, you find the propensity for hardware manufacturers to plonk screens on everything somewhat baffling, though of course harmless, then perhaps you hadn't considered the possibility of, er, playing Battlefield 6 on said screens. Which is exactly what one Redditor has done: slapped the new AAA FPS title on one of those dinky little CPU cooler screens.

The AIO in question looks to be an MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360, and yes, that cooler does actually let you use the screen as an extended display rather than just importing gifs or video files to replay on it. Which means this very likely is Battlefield 6 (BF6) actually playing on the little screen, rather than a streamed video or moving image.

It doesn't look like the game's all too playable on the round screen, though—half of the HUD is cut off. Our Jacob Ridley discovered this HUD-chopping effect himself when he tried the cooler's hand at playing Doom in-browser.

We didn't rate the cooler very highly, but perhaps the ability to play BF6 on it changes things somewhat… or not, because it's entirely pointless. But being pointless doesn't stop it from being hilarious—in fact, it adds to that assessment. This is the kind of independent hardware content I'm here for.

And hey, while we're cramming screens onto absolutely everything inside our PC cases, why not put them to use? Sometimes I wonder whether there's some small text asterisked alongside Moore's law stating that, as transistor density improvements peter off, PC gaming hardware manufacturers will look for increasingly ridiculous ways to impress us. Ways such as cramming screens onto everything.

So yeah, why not? And given how well-optimised BF6 is, I can only assume it's running at about one million fps on such a tiny, tiny IPS screen at 480 x 480 resolution. Judging from the Redditor's other posts, they have an Intel Core i7 13700K and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090, which might be slightly overkill for 480p.

It's not listed on the official BF6 system requirements, but it seems an AIO extended display can run the game just fine. Well, a circular central portion of the game, at least. Perhaps a frustrating backup if your main monitor dies, at least.

Hardware fashion trends, they come and go. Some of them even stick around, like case windows, RGB lighting, or hidden cable internal designs. But there's one relatively modern trend that I think is starting to turn from the sublime into the ridiculous, and that trend is slapping screens on components that really, really don't need them.

Now, before I go full on "old man shakes fist at cloud", I'm going to start off with a heavy caveat. I can appreciate that, for some people at least, CPU temperatures are a major concern.

Hidden underneath a substantial water block, or a skyscraper-esque tower of an air cooler, your machine's processor is a mysterious beast. Modern chips have a tendency to run hot, and can clock themselves down significantly if they hit their thermal ceiling.

Plus, case windows are definitely here to stay. So, providing a large screen directly on top of a water block for at-a-glance CPU temp readings makes a whole lot of practical sense. After all, alt-tabbing out of your game to check your processor isn't throttling itself back isn't exactly the most practical solution, and while the Steam performance overlay (and various other alternatives) now keep you fully in the loop with your temperature readings, they're fairly ugly affairs.

A quick glance to your right, if you have a desk-based setup? Much more convenient.

But, pray tell, what exactly is gained by the addition of a curved and motorised screen playing a video of your favourite anime character, à la the Lian Li Hydroshift II LCD Curve? Sure, it's a bit of an eye-catcher at trade show events, and I believe that is mostly the point. Make it bright, make it move, make it ridiculous, and we'll probably find ourselves wanting it. We all like to lust after ludicrous tech, and I am far from immune.

But should you actually, y'know, buy one? For $269? I say, 'No'. Sure, it's a bit of fun, and I don't want to come off like a complete party pooper with no appreciation for an absurd aesthetic. But when fabulous CPU coolers like the (screenless) Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro deliver exceptional cooling for a touch under $100, it really does make me wonder why you'd pay the best part of $200 extra for a mostly-useless motorised doohickey.

And if you absolutely must know your temps at all times, why wouldn't you save some cash and pick up the regular ol' Lian Li Hydroshift II 360 CL? It's got the same sized radiator, a (static) screen with all sorts of customisation options, and it's nearly $100 cheaper. Still, I get it, I get it. Practical purpose, mixed with ridiculous aesthetics. Fine.

How about a screen attached to your keyboard, though, like the mahoosively expensive Asus ROG Azoth X? It's an interesting keeb in many respects, but as our Jacob points out, the screen is… well, a bit pointless.

Sure, you can customise it to do many things. It can display temps, GPU frequencies, or exactly which song is playing on your Spotify playlist, among other functions. All very useful information, that I'm absolutely not going to crane my neck and look down upon while using my machine. C'mon, keyboard-with-screen users. Prove me wrong. How often do you take a gander at the top right of your keeb to glean useful info about your PC? Yep, I thought so.

Worse still, how about a screen on your mouse, like the SteelSeries Rival 710? It's got an OLED display right in front of where your thumb would be, which I think we can all agree is the perfect place to view gifs.

No wait, that's wrong. It's the worst place to view anything ever, but hey, it's there should you need it. Which you won't. Did I mention it's a wired mouse, currently available for $170—which is exactly the same price as the best wireless gaming mouse we've ever tested? No? That's some food for thought, isn't it?

Oh, but I haven't even got to the most egregious example yet. That'd be the V-Color XFinitiy+ DDR5 kit, which includes a tiny OLED display on the side of each module for easy viewing of your RAM speeds, voltages, and profiles. Except it won't be easy viewing, will it? Because it's on the side of a bloomin' RAM stick, which means you'll be tilting your head at entirely the wrong angle around cables, coolers, and other internal components to see information that you'll rarely—if ever—need to keep an eye on.

I could go on, of course. But my point is, while it's certainly impressive in a technical sense to mount tiny screens in all sorts of places where they wouldn't usually go, the utility they provide is, at best, minimal. You sure can charge more for a product with a screen than without one, though, and us PC gamers are drawn to the shiny, the bizarre, and the backlit in a depressingly predictable way.

Again, I go to the shows. I coo and caw with the rest of you. I too consider opening my wallet for the bauble-like quality of a new screen-imbued component, before the crushing realisation of my actual bank balance brings me back to Earth with a thunk. It's the nature of fashion, y'see. We don't need it, but it sure is pretty in the photos—and for that reason alone, we want it.

And in lieu of actual innovation? If in doubt, stick a screen on it. It's a way of getting people to pay attention to your products over others, at the very least, and you can charge a premium on the end result, too.

And so, round and round we go. If you pay attention to the new hardware releases, it now seems like we're in an era where the inside and outside of our machines are destined to eventually become coated in blinking, flashing, eye-catching displays, beaming info to the sides of our eyeballs that could otherwise usually be gleaned by looking at the big, honking display right in front of us.

Oh yes, I nearly forgot. We all sit in front of considerable displays in the first place, ideally angled and sized to provide any information about your PC you could possibly need at the click of a button. Beaming the same information, fragmented, into the side of my head or below my fingertips is not something I'm prepared to pay substantially more for on my own setup, and I don't think you should either.

But hey, what do I know. I'm sitting next to an RGB-lit gaming PC with a case window as I speak, and back in the day I may well have railed against that. Time moves on, and perhaps I'm just becoming a curmudgeon in my old age. I'll tell you something for free though—the first side-screened gaming headset that reaches my desk is going to have to work pretty hard to justify its existence. Oh for goodness sake… forget about it.

If you think the power consumption of today's gaming graphics cards is bad, it's nothing compared to how energy the massive processors in AI and data systems use. All that power ends up as heat, resulting in chip cooling being a serious challenge. Microsoft reckons it has a great solution, though, and it's all about getting water into the processors themselves.

The most complex direct-die, liquid cooling loops you'll see in a gaming PC all involve using a chamber that mounts on top of the CPU. At no point does the coolant ever touch the chip directly. In a recently published blog, Microsoft explains how it has developed a system that does precisely that.

By etching the surface of the processor die with an intricate pattern of tiny channels, water can then be pumped directly into the silicon itself, albeit to a very shallow depth.

The keyword to describe this is microfluidics, a technology that's been around for many decades, and if the history of consumer tech is anything to go by, it'll be a phrase plastered across every CPU cooler within a couple of years (though not actually do anything).

This might all just seem like Microsoft is cutting a few grooves into the chip and having water to flow through it, but it's far more complicated than that. For a start, the channels themselves are no wider than a human hair, and they're not just simple lines either. Microsoft employed the services of Swiss firm Corintis, which used AI to determine the best pattern for maximum heat transfer.

The end result is a network of microchannels that genuinely look organic, though at first glance, you'd be forgiven for thinking the complex patterns were just manufacturing defects. It certainly looks super cool (pun very much intended).

Microsoft claims the tech is up to three times more effective at removing heat from a massive AI GPU than a traditional cold plate (aka waterblock), citing a 65% reduction in the maximum temperature rise of the silicon.

Since all the coolant transfer apparatus doesn't need to be right on top of the microchannels, the system can also be applied to stacked chips, with each one etched before mounting. This way, each die within the stack is cooled individually, meaning they can operate closer to their maximum specifications than with a normal cold plate.

Take AMD's X3D processors, for example. These all have one stacked chip underneath the heatsink: a Core Complex Die (CCD) bonded to a 3D V-Cache die. Each one acts as a thermal barrier to the other, though the CCD does generate much more heat than the cache die. If these could be both cooled via microfluidics, you'd be able to operate them both at higher clock speeds.

Of course, such complex tech isn't cheap to develop or implement, and the likelihood of it ever appearing at the consumer level is very slim. But I wouldn't be surprised if somebody takes an RTX 5090, rips off the heatsink, and swaps it for a homebrewed microfluidic cooler.

There again, if ramping up power consumption is the only way AMD, Intel, and Nvidia can keep improving chip performance, perhaps we might see etched processors and direct-die cooling being standard fare in our gaming PCs. After all, it wasn't that long ago when heatpipes and vapour chambers were phrases never to be uttered by a PC component manufacturer, but now they're in coolers of every kind.

The liquid cooler that Hyte called "the raid boss of liquid coolers", the Thicc Q80 Trio, is being taken off the market and all users are instructed to stop using them immediately and get a refund. This is, Hyte says, because of a "fragile internal component that is susceptible to damage during transport."

This comes after some user reports of coolant leakage and subsequent analysis. The scary thing is that apparently "the damage to these coolers is internal and invisible to the end user, but may cause these liquid coolers not to function or to fail."

"Effective immediately, Hyte is directing all users to cease using the Thicc Q80 Trio AIO, and to remove the cooler from their system immediately. Distributors and resellers have been notified to cease using and selling the Q80. Customers who purchased directly from Hyte.com will receive full refunds and instruction on how to safely dispose of the AIO soon. We will also notify authorized resellers to reach out to customers who have purchased this product on next steps."

Hyte also notes that the Thicc Q60 doesn't suffer the same issue because it "uses a different design." So no need to get removing those from your rigs.

It's unclear whether the Q80 Trio will have its "fragile internal component" redesigned and be re-released, or whether this simply spells the end of the company's latest and greatest liquid cooler. I suppose there's a chance that changing packaging to make it more secure during travel might fix it, but it seems unlikely a company would risk that after an issue this big, and it likely needs a bigger rethink.

We saw the Thicc Q80 Trio at Computex earlier this year, which the company described as "the most Thicc, cool, quiet, and intelligent AIO ever made." The screened-up AIO features three FP12 fans on a 360 mm radiator and comes in at 52 mm thick, with fantastic claimed airflow and static pressure.

Hopefully we see it return in a less leaky fashion, because it looked to be something mighty impressive. The Thicc line-up's special feature is the 5-inch screen attached to the pump, which was something pretty novel when the Q60 came out. It's still one of the largest screens you can get on a liquid cooler, and includes its own processor, RAM, and storage to run its visuals. Though the Q80 costs a whopping $350.

Hyte also includes an apology at the bottom of its announcement. And I will say, as unfortunate as it is to see a product with fatal issues like this, it's always nice when the company responds promptly and decisively like this. Quick direction for all users to stop using the cooler and get a refund seems like the best solution to a bad situation.

If you're looking to come up with a different way of cooling a big CPU or GPU to get more oomph out of it, your options are a bit limited. Water loops, dry ice, liquid nitrogen, mineral oil—they've all been done before and to varying degrees of success. Enter stage left, one tech YouTuber with a cooler from a Dodge Journey SUV and a whole heap of automatic transmission fluid.

The content creator in question happens to be YouTube channel TrashBench (via TechSpot), and on face value, I think it's fair to say that its recent endeavour to cool the pants off a GeForce GTX 1060 and 1080 Ti more than lives up to the channel's name. I'm not being mean here; it's just that automatic transmission fluid (ATF) is the last thing you'd pick for trying to cool down a GPU.

It's designed to act primarily as a lubricant for automatic transmissions, and although it does soak up heat, the main reason why cars have coolers for the ATF is to keep its viscosity under control. Definitely not for cooling an entire graphics card. But hey, there are no rules about this, so why not?

Well, it's sticky, viscous stuff, and while it's not harmful or corrosive fresh out of the bottle, ATF is oil-based, so it's very messy to work with. In a Reddit post, TrashBench host u/Tra5hL0rd_ freely admits this. "ATF is fun. It crawls into every crevice, stains your cables, and turns teardown into a full day regret spiral. Don’t try this unless you’re okay with ruining hardware and your mood."

What TrashBench did was fill a large plastic container with eight litres of ATF and plopped a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card, minus its fans, into it all. Then a submersible pump was added, with its output hooked up to a transmission cooler block from a Dodge Journey SUV. To draw heat out of the ATF loop, a second one was fed into the other side of the block, running a glycol mix and… err… a drinks chiller box thing, half full of ice.

Honestly, it's better to just watch the short video above. TrashBench's overclocking results weren't super great with the 1080 Ti—a fraction under 8% higher clocks—but the 1060 played ball far nicer. While it's not highly clocked out of the box, TrashBench still managed to get a 16% improvement, all with the GPU barely reaching 30 °C.

The end result? Only the world's highest score with a Core i9 14900K and a 6 GB 1060 in 3DMark's Fire Strike. Okay, sure, there are only eight other entries in the database for that hardware and test combination, but there are only eight lanes in the 100 metre Olympic sprint, too. At the very least, the colour of ATF gives the whole thing a nice Goth vibe.

Anyway, I tried immersion cooling myself, many moons ago, but with an old Pentium 4 setup sitting in a vat of mineral oil. No records were set with that endeavour, other than a possible claim to the most amount of time spent cleaning a kitchen after I accidentally knocked the whole thing over. Immersion stuff is surprisingly easy to do, but Hell's bells, is it unruly stuff to deal with.

I'll leave you with TrashBench's thoughts on doing the whole ATF-powered overclocking shebang with a current-generation graphics card. "F*ck, no." Wise words, indeed.

For many years, CPUs and GPUs got by with just using a smidge of power. It's a very different story these days, and the AI boom has forced processor designs to consume vast amounts of power. To help shift all this heat away, some companies are creating such complex-looking thermal solutions that they could easily pass off as works of art.

One such example is Alloy Enterprises' liquid cold plate for Nvidia's H100 AI superchip (via SemiAccurate), but what sets this apart from the crowd is how it's made. Most cold plates, aka water blocks, are milled from several billets of metal that get bolted together to create a chamber. Alloy Enterprises teamed up with nTop to use the latter's modelling software to make something so intricate that milling or casting it would be impossible.

After modelling the ideal liquid flow via nTop's software, Alloy then created a 3D model of the whole thing. Since it can't be manufactured as a whole unit, the software package slices it up, with each layer being laser cut out of a sheet of aluminium. These layers are then treated before being stacked on top of each other.

Then the magic of diffusion-bonding takes place, where a judicious amount of heat and pressure is applied over a long period of time, which essentially forces the thin layers to bond in such a way that, to all intents and purposes, it becomes a single block of metal.

Alloy Enterprises summarises into a suitably engineering marketing fashion: "180-micron microcapillaries that direct coolant with precision to regions of high thermal output, parallel inlet and outlet channels that minimize flow length and pressure drop, and a gyroid infill structure that increases surface area while supporting the internal volume."

Nvidia's H100 is a 700 W GPU, where the G stands for 'AI training, inference, and large-scale data processing' rather than graphics. That's a fair amount of power, of course, though the common-or-garden RTX 5090 isn't too far behind at 575 W. As things currently stand, GPUs are the real powerhouses of the processor world, but it won't be long before CPUs are on par or ahead.

That's according to another king-sized cooler company, Microloops, which gave a presentation (via X-user HXL) about how it was going to tackle the 4,000 W power consumption of future generations of server CPUs. And we're not talking 50 years into the future or anything like that; Microloops anticipates such power levels by 2034.

AMD's EPYC 9965, a 192-core Zen 5c processor, can use up to 500 W of power, but TechPowerUp reports that the company will be targeting double that figure for its next generation of massively-cored CPUs. Air cooling just isn't good enough for such things, so the order books of Microloops, Alloy Enterprises, and many others are likely to be packed full thanks to AI systems builders looking to maximise the efficiency of their water-cooled thermal solutions.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see similar projects kicking off for gaming PCs. I don't mean OEM builds; it will be the ultra-enthusiasts and overclockers who are happy to BIOS mod their RTX 5090s to use 750 W or higher. But eventually, what's successful at the niche end of things often finds a way to trickle down to the general consumer.

Vapour chambers, water-cooling, and even RGB lighting were all once the preserve of the few, but now anyone can spend a bit of cash and throw it into their humble glass-panelled boxes. So who knows, by 2034, we could all have a diffusion-bonding cold plate on our CPUs, and we'll still be here, arguing over who makes the best gyroid infill structures.

All good things come to an end, and when that happens, we often look back and grumble aloud that change isn't always welcome. If you've been a fan of AMD's bundled CPU coolers over the past few years, then you may well fall into that camp, as the sun has now set on the Wraith Prism and Wraith Spire, with just the basic Stealth model still clinging on.

Naturally, AMD made as little fuss about this as possible, and it was only the sharp eyes of X user momomo_us that noticed two somewhat hidden snippets, marking the end of two rather nifty CPU coolers.

The roll-over text for some older Ryzen chips reads: "Due to the AMD SR4 cooler reaching EOL status, select AMD Ryzen 7000 and 5000 Product ID Boxed models are updated to no longer include a cooler, removing the AMD SR4 cooler, starting 8/1/2025." SR4 is AMD's codename for its Wraith Prism system.

That's the one with all the fancy RGB lighting, and I've built a number of Ryzen 5 5600X gaming rigs with that cooler. Admittedly, it was never the most potent of air blasters, even though it looked really neat. Under heavy load, the fan noise was quite piercing, but hey, free is free, and when you're building on a tight budget, every penny saved is a penny towards a better GPU.

Other Ryzen chips have lost their original bundled cooler, such as the Ryzen 7 8700G, which used to come with an SR2a, aka Wraith Spire. These will now come with the basic Wraith Stealth (SR1), which is nicely low-profile, but otherwise a bit lacklustre. It's fine for dealing with low-powered CPUs, but you wouldn't really want to use it on anything over 65 W.

The writing was on the wall for these bundled coolers, though, as none of AMD's 9000-series processors ship with a cooler. Mind you, while it's sad to see the Prism and Spire go, at least the aftermarket cooler market has plenty of options. Sure, none of them are free, but one could argue that the Wraith coolers were never really free, either, as the cost of them was just part of the CPU's original retail price.

If you are planning on building a budget gaming PC, with an eye to using a Ryzen 5000, 7000, or 8000-series processor, then be sure to check out all the best CPU air coolers we recommend. For just $38 at Amazon, Arctic's Freezer 36 is ridiculously good, and so is the Thermalright PA120SE ($35 at Amazon). The latter can be a bit fiddly to install and doesn't have much RAM clearance, but at this price, it's a minor issue.

I suspect that it won't be long before AMD and Intel stop bundling coolers with any of their retail desktop CPUs, and while it's not a major problem, I am going to miss the Wraith Prism. Noisy for sure, but oh-so pretty when running, and it kind of feels like a nod to a time where hardware manufacturers cared more about kudos than outright profit margins. It was no joke of a cooler, either, unlike Yorick. Now he was certainly a fool.

The MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360, first and foremost, aims to please in the looks department. It has all the makings of a premium liquid cooler in 2025: a screen, hidden cables, and RGB lighting. It's doing everything it can to distract from the fact that performance is middling at best, and that you could get better performance without spending nearly as much. Though I have to give credit where it's due here: MSI's screen tax is lower than some.

The CoreLiquid P13 360 was only just released, and I'm struggling to find in stock anywhere outside of MSI's own webstore in the US, and even then it's buried on the second page. Available in black or white, it's listed there for $190. I'm hoping that's not some introductory offer—it doesn't appear to be—as it's notably cheaper than any other liquid cooler with a screen we've tested. Here are some prices for comparison, some especially ludicrous:

• Corsair iCUE Link Titan 360 RX LCD | 2.1-inch IPS | $220
• Tryx Panorama SE 360 | 6.67-inch OLED | $280
• NZXT Kraken Elite 360 RGB | 2.72-inch IPS | $290
• NZXT Kraken Plus RGB 360 | 1.54-inch TFT | $220

With OLED and IPS panels among the more desirable options, you might expect the CoreLiquid P13, at a mere $190, to feature a TFT screen. But it doesn't. The screen is a 2.1-inch IPS, with a resolution of 420 x 420. That's nothing on the Tryx Panorama SE's resolution at 2240 x 1080, greater than some gaming monitors, but it's double that of the NZXT Kraken Plus RGB 360 at 240 x 240, which is priced closer to the CoreLiquid P13.

The rounded bezel on the CoreLiquid P13 does cut some of the screen off, but overall I'd say my first impression of the screen is good. As high praise as I can offer a screen on a liquid cooler, which generally is not to my preference. It's bright, vibrant, and the lack of distraction on the simple pump unit helps keep it nice and tidy.

Where things fall apart for the screen are in the MSI Center application. The app is only required to control the screen itself—the pump, fans, and lighting are controlled via the motherboard headers. In MSI Center, it's possible to choose what to display on the P13's screen, including various key stats for your CPU, GPU, RAM; frames per second; one of many clocks; or a video of your choosing from a file or YouTube link. It can even be used as a secondary display if you prefer, though more on why that sucks in a bit.

The options to display key system stats come across clear and vibrant on the tiny, 600-nit screen. But I hope you like a purple and blue colour scheme—it's the only option provided by MSI. It's odd; there are quite a few options to choose from, though little variety. If you bought a liquid cooler with a screen for the customisation options, I think you'd be surprised by how little of that there is outside of MSI's own choices.

The YouTube functionality is also incredibly clunky. First off, it will play you the ads, as it's not downloading the video (of course not, right?) and you will often see YouTube playing God knows what on your liquid cooler screen after your chosen video has ended. I ended up on a compilation of the world's funniest animals a mere two videos on from bathtub Geralt.

What's notable by its absence is the ability to add an image or gif of your choosing to the tiny panel—though that's made possible by the Extended Display option in the app, which lets you run this miniscule IPS as a tiny second monitor. Though, that makes it sound as though you have a choice in the matter—you don't. The screen on the MSI is always, as far as I can tell, seen by Windows as a tiny second monitor. That means it's pretty common to lose your mouse cursor to it or have some window weirdness with it running.

Weirdness including, when switching from between the primary and secondary monitor, refusing to turn off the AIO's screen and instead displaying its output on my desktop monitor. A tiny square in the middle of my otherwise 4K-capable screen. I can fix this by switching back to the 'Extend' option, but it just proves the point, really. Whether MSI or Microsoft's fault, things get weird on Windows with a miniscule second monitor plugged in.

Altogether I'm left a bit disappointed. While the screen is of a good enough quality and vibrancy to look pretty decent, the CoreLiquid P13 doesn't offer many ways to style it in your own vision—only MSI's. It ends up feeling gimmicky. I did play Doom on it, the ultimate gimmick, but it was nothing more than running it in a browser. Even I can admit that's cheating.

The CoreLiquid P13 supports the latest and previous generation sockets from both AMD and Intel, and included in the box are the necessary screws to make that possible. It features a single bracket for both Intel and AMD mounting solutions, attached to the pump unit out of the box (though check it's fully in place to save yourself some hassle later). The all-in-one bracket is handy, but bulkier, necessitating the inclusion of a cover to keep the larger than usual bracket out of sight. MSI has included one here. A plastic shroud with four magnetic mounting points to click it into place around the pump unit.

On installing the cooler myself, I hadn't initially noticed the pre-installed mounting bracket was not slotted onto the pump unit all the way. This led to a lot of frustration trying to get the cover on top of it. Only on removing the unit could I then bash the bracket into place and try again, this time successfully installing the lot. I'll give it to MSI, it does look a lot tidier with the cover installed. It covers up any and all ugliness for a clean look in the right motherboard.

Though on taking the cooler on and off four times in testing, at least one of the standoff screws was overtightened and required a little more force than I'd like to remove, or unscrewed attached to the cooler bracket. This is a familiar problem—many liquid coolers have the same design—but it could be improved.

For the most part, the top liquid coolers today all offer cooling performance that's pretty good. Pump technology has come a long way since the early days of AIOs, and most companies are able to strap a good pump onto an effective radiator and get passable results. What I will say as to the CoreLiquid P13, however, is that it's on the higher end of the temperature range that I'd deem acceptable with the Core i7 14700K, and, at times, exceeds it.

In Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition and Baldur's Gate 3, the CoreLiquid P13 hits higher average temperatures than most other coolers I've tested in recent months, including the Corsair iCUE Link Titan 360 RX LCD and NZXT Kraken Plus 360 RGB—both with screens of a similar look and feel. In neither game did temperatures exceed a reasonable level for the Core i7 14700K, at 64 °C and 74 °C respectively.

PC Gamer test bench

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X | RAM: G.Skill Trident Z5 32 GB (2x 16 GB) @ 5600 MT/s | GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 | Motherboard: Asus ROG Z790 Dark Hero | SSD: Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 2 TB | PSU: Gigabyte Aorus P1200W | Chassis: Thermaltake P5

It's in the more demanding processor benchmarks, those intended to really test a CPU cooler's mettle, did I see the kind of temperatures I wouldn't be happy with. 90 °C in X264 and 91 °C in Cinebench R23, with the chip reaching 100 °C at one point in the former. That shows the cooler was overwhelmed and unable to shift enough heat away from the CPU in this test to avoid some thermal throttling, which is often the case with most air coolers in this test. Liquid coolers generally fare a little better, with temperatures in the low to mid 90s, so it's a bit of a miss here.

Though the Core i7 14700K is a demanding chip, hence why we use it for these tests. It operates with a Maximum Turbo Power of 253 W, which is greater than any current generation Intel or AMD chip. I also run a test with a 120 W PL1 + PL2 limit, effectively matching many mid- to high-end AMD chips, and in this test—another run of Cinebench R23—the CoreLiquid P13 performs much better. I'm still reading a maximum temperature higher than that of any other liquid cooler I've tested, at 76 °C, but the average temperature of 55 °C is only a couple degrees off a few other liquid coolers. As such, if you were planning to run this liquid cooler with a more power-savvy processor, such as a Ryzen 7 or Core Ultra 7 chip, you'd likely not run into any issues with thermal performance, but for 13/14th Gen Intel chips, it's a no-go.

Though if it sounds like bad news all round here, it's not. MSI has attached three of its CycloBlade 9 fans onto this unit and they're pretty quiet, even at a maximum RPM of 2200. I've got a new sound meter for testing, which is better but more sensitive than my last and picks up a much higher baseline for ambient noise, so I'm no longer able to compare to all my previous testing. However, I did load up one liquid cooler I still had to hand, the Cooler Master MasterLiquid Core II, and the results are pretty good for the MSI unit. It's roughly the same at 60 dB to 61 dB on the Core II, measured from 15 cm away from the fans, and the pump hit 44 dB to 45 dB on the Core II. So, roughly the same, but that's not a bad thing when the Cooler Master is a very impressive unit.

What's more, the fans on the MSI are visually cable free. MSI has routed the power and ARGB cables behind the fan brackets, which means they're practically invisible. It's all done out of the box too, so no need to worry about routing them yourself. The pump unit also hides its cables through the sleeving on the tubes, terminating at the top of the radiator in a single 'EX Conn' connector. This is a proprietary header for PWM and RGB on MSI motherboards, but if you don't have one of those (and I don't) there's a splitter in the box to break it out into a single fan header and ARGB header.

One downside to the tubing on the CoreLiquid P13 is the length. They're 400 mm long, including the caps at the end, which is more or less 'standard' but we've seen a few liquid coolers launch with longer, such as Arctic's Liquid Freezer III Pro ARGB, our current best liquid cooler recommendation. That's not an issue for most PC cases if you're mounting the radiator in the top position, but it can be a stretch if you're mounting in the front of a larger case and you want to have the cables lower in the system, or in my own system using the Thermaltake P5, which has an abnormally distant mount for radiators (on account of its design intended for custom loops). It still fit, ultimately, but I'd prefer longer tubing as standard.

Altogether, the MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360 offers one big positive over the competition: value for money. If you want a screen on your liquid cooler, it offers one at a much lower price than many others from big name brands like Tryx, Corsair, and NZXT. The almost cable-free finish is something you don't tend to see on more affordable units, either. That's great if you can overlook the downsides, of which I'd argue there are a few worth noting.

Performance could be better, especially as you could ditch the screen and spend nearly half as much on something like the Liquid Freezer III Pro and lower temps. Also, the screen has limited customisation options and can cause some weird behaviours in Windows. Ultimately, it's just more of a hassle than I'd like for a liquid cooler, despite its otherwise smart appearance.

We've seen CPU coolers with screens before. We've seen CPU coolers with OLED screens before. We've seen CPU coolers with curved OLED screens before. We've even seen CPU coolers with curved, motorised OLED screens before. But have we seen a CPU cooler with a curved, movable 3D-effect OLED screen before? No, sir, we have not. Until today.

Give it up for the ROG Ryuo IV 360 ARGB water cooler, the ultimate checkbox exercise in CPU cooling, announced today at Gamescom. Its finely triangulated USP is a movable curved 6.67-inch AMOLED display that supports "3D-effect videos or customized system information".

Asus says, "a powerful pump delivers robust cooling performance, higher flow, and lower impedance, while the pre-mounted, daisy-chained ARGB fans provide high airflow and static pressure. Its fans have a low-noise design and feature front and side lighting."

The cooler supports LGA 1851, 1700, AMD AM5, and AM4 CPU sockets, and features 400mm tubing for better chassis compatibility. There's also software with support for hardware monitoring and screen content management. Oh, and there's a white version, too, that's otherwise identical.

Getting back to that "3D effect" thing, our understanding is that is doesn't mean some kind of lenticular 3D, as per the Acer Predator SpatialLabs View 27 we recently reviewed. Instead, we're talking 3D effect as in those videos that use borders and lines to frame movement, plus extreme perspective and a bit of blur. Like this demo video.

Asus doesn't provide a specific resolution for the display, only describing it at "2K". But that probably means 1,920 by 1,080, or something very close to that. By default, it can either display one of a number of preloaded 3D effect visuals or a user-configurable suite of hard info, such as CPU temps, fan speeds, voltages, clockspeeds and all that good stuff.

You can also splitscreen the display, so that part of it is showing hardware info, the other trick visuals. And as you can see above, the "3Dness" does actually kinda work.

As for the "movable" bit, the OLED screen is on a slider. So now you know. For the record, the radiator measures 394 by 140 by 32 mm and sports three front-and-side lit 120 mm fans. That setup delivers a rated airflow of 71.44 CFM at a noise level of 39.6 dB(A). The cooler module has a six year warranty, while the screen is covered for two years.

Finally and on the sordid matter of money, this was never gonna be cheap. US pricing hasn't emerged, but it's available in the UK for £322, which implies something in the region of $350. Ouch. But then if you want screens on everything, it's going to cost you.

We've all been there, right? Thermal paste splattered all over the CPU socket? No? Just me and that guy from The Verge? Whatever, the prospect of replacing thermal paste with a neat, long-lasting pad is still intriguing. And that's exactly what cooling specialist Carbice and PC maker Cyberpower claim to have delivered thanks to the novel use of carbon nanotubes.

Of course, carbon nanotubes are one of those wonder materials that seem almost endlessly useful. Well, in theory. To the list of possible carbon nanotube applications that includes super capacitors, space elevators and nanoscale drug delivery, you can now add the very real prospect of CPU cooling.

The Carbice Ice Pad is described as a "mess-free, maintenance-free" alternative to the traditional thermal paste that sits between the heat spreader of a CPU and the cooler, be that an air-cooled heat sink with a fan or a block for a water cooler.

"Our Ice Pad is engineered to create a tight, durable thermal interface that transfers heat away from your CPU with far greater consistency than thermal paste. No reapplication. No cleanup. No degradation under pressure. It’s been proven in space and AI data centers, and now the Ice Pad is the first consumer product to actually deliver full nanoscale physics for high-performance gamers," says founder and CEO of Carbice Dr. Baratunde Cola.

Apart from avoiding mess, the main advantage here appears to be long-term performance. Where thermal paste can dry up and become less efficient at conducting heat away, these carbon nanotube pads are claimed to actually improve with time. If we're reading the graphs correctly, the initial thermal performance of the pads is essentially identical to thermal paste, but the latter begins to degrade almost immediately.

"Ice Pad leverages the advanced science of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes—so small, you can’t see them without a microscope—to fill every little gap between your CPU and cooler. Unlike regular thermal paste, which can develop voids and wear out, Ice Pad is engineered using a thin layer of aluminum and a super-dense layer of highly conductive carbon nanotubes to pull heat away fast and spread it evenly. The result? Better cooling, better contact, and better performance. It’s cutting-edge science doing the hard work, so your system runs cooler and more reliably," says PC partner Cyberpower.

It's interesting that the introduction of the Ice Pad is being done with the help of a PC builder as opposed to simply selling the pads separately. Does that imply that the initial installation is tricky and needs to be carefully controlled? We hope not, because the prospect of DIY carbon nanotube pads does seem appealing.

It's worth noting here that carbon nanotube cooling is distinct from graphene nanosheets, which are also made from carbon, but leverage 2D sheets of carbon a single atom thick, as opposed to the microscopic tubes of carbon atoms in nanotubes.

Both configurations of carbon, it seems, have exceptional cooling properties. But it's the tubes, rather than sheets, that are in play with the Ice Pad. Carbice says that the sheets are "rated for the system’s lifetime." But several questions remain.

Just how hard are they to install? Can you reuse them? Can you even remove and reattach your cooler? And what's their peak cooling performance like compared to paste?

We're hoping to receive some of these intriguing pads in the near future. If that happens, we'll report back on all our findings. But it's just possible that the days of squirting paste around your tower case are numbered. Wouldn't that be nice?

When it comes to design, the mark of any good company is its ability to take criticism well. It's such a critical element that's often overlooked when we evaluate overall brands, but being able to take critique from a flawed product and then feed that back to the design team is incredibly advantageous on so many levels.

For one, it of course shows that those in charge are humble, that they lack ego or arrogance, but beyond that, it ensures the next product is better developed and that valid criticisms are accounted for. Yes, there's no doubt pushback from marketing bods, salesmen, and the folk bringing in the raw material, as of course they want to increase the profit margins (as they always do), but the advantage a refined development cycle brings is second to none.

Now, that might sound a bit pretentious, I'll admit, but it is an absolute truth when it comes to product design, and here's the thing: the Panorama SE ARGB very much follows that mantra. You can tell Tryx has looked at the feedback it received from the launch of the original Panorama and corrected its mistakes, improving on the design and releasing a better, more affordable product that delivers far more than it did previously.

I tested the first Panorama 360 earlier this year, and although it was bold and audacious and had that glorious curved OLED display sitting on top of an Asetek block, it lacked a bit of finesse to it. There were details that were overlooked, compatibility issues, short tubing runs, and setbacks that very much marred the overall experience. This wasn't the best CPU cooler I'd ever tested; that's a fact, but it was on the right path, and for a fledgling company fresh out the gate with a warranty longer than its history, it was by no means bad at all.

The Panorama SE, then, is impressive. Not only because it's addressed a lot of the foibles I had with the original Panorama, but also because Tryx has managed to launch this new iteration within less than a year, correcting practically every single complaint I had.

The big one, of course, was the orientation of the display. As Tryx was using Asetek's 8th gen V2 water pump (the one with the annoying as hell tiny fan mounted in it), the only way you could orient the display that made any practical sense was so that the tubing outlet and inlet were situated on the bottom. You had no choice in the matter if you wanted to orient the screen the correct way around.

With the SE, Tryx has done away with Asetek's clunky, massive superblock and instead opted for its far lower profile Adela pump instead, without the included pointless fan. It's also gone ahead and changed the mounting solution on that curved OLED display, so you can now orient it in one of three directions on the center of the CPU block, meaning you can now rotate that block in any manner you need to ensure your tubing ports can effectively go in any orientation.

It's not a flawless system; the display doesn't go over the tubing directly, sadly, but it does give you a grand total of 12 different mounting configurations you can set this up to operate in, rather than the one we had previously.

The screen is now noticeably larger as well, moving up from a 6.5-inch display to 6.67 inches, with an increased resolution, and some brightness calibration chucked in for good measure. The Kanali also now has full support for it too, with a "waterfall" mode, if you do opt to mount it vertically like I have.

Tubing has also seen a significant improvement as well, bumping up from 400 mm to 450 mm, and the addition of a set of new ARGB fans has not only dropped the noise levels substantially but also kept performance relatively consistent.

Positives abound, it doesn't quite nail the performance measures (no best AIO for 2025 accolades for you, no sir) as well as its predecessor did. Its average benchmarked temperature from my testing sat at around 72 degrees Celsius total (69°C adjusted for ambient), versus the 66°C its Panorama predecessor managed, with high average temps recorded in Metro Exodus, Baldur's Gate 3, x264, and Cinebench, being particularly noticeable.

One interesting takeaway, however, was how rapidly this thing managed to cool down to 33°C after its last Cinebench run, managing that in an impressive 104 seconds, a whole 12 seconds faster than the original Panorama (and markedly quicker than anything else I've tested to date). This is a bit of a hunch, but I suspect this could be down to that 450 mm tubing.

In essence, although it's only an additional 50 mm on either tubing run, Tryx has effectively increased the total liquid volume inside the Panorama by around 11.3 ml (if my dubious math is correct). By default, the more coolant you add, the greater the thermal capacity of that coolant (you can add more heat energy to it without the temperature of that coolant increasing as fast as with smaller reservoirs).

Our time taken to reach that lowest temperature test requires us to run and score our 10-minute Cinebench test first, then wait five minutes for HWInfo to report the lowest temperature on the CPU. We then run Cinebench again, but this time only for 5 minutes, and then time how long it takes to return to that steady state.

So while the fan and pump performance may be somewhat less effective than the non-RGB fans and the 8th-gen Asetek pump Tryx was using previously, leading to higher average temperatures over longer periods, the increased reservoir size means that shorter bursts of high-intensity load are effectively quicker to cool, as the coolant requires longer than five minutes to heat up to the same temperature.

The big win, though, by far and away, beyond performance anomalies and slight design tweaks, is the price, and oh boy is it a drop. We're talking $60 / £80 compared to the original Panorama. That is a staggering reduction in cost (around 18% in the US, or 24% in the UK), particularly given the extras you're getting. A better display, RGB fans, longer tubing, a sleeker more compatible design, and that same seamless mounting procedure. The list is pretty endless, and that alone absolutely boosts this score into the stratosphere here.

Yes, you are making some sacrifices compared to the competition out there; the NZXT Kraken Elite is still a monster, of course. The Panorama just isn't quite as effective on temperature management, but other than that, it's hard to beat. I'll see you in three months time for the Panorama X, probably…

Sometimes in the world of PCs, a new product gets launched that's so niche, rare, or unusual that mere mortals never get a chance to see what the fuss is all about. One such example is from Japanese firm Clock Work Tea Party, which deems that what all PC gamers really want are scented thermal pastes. And thanks to the diligence of a well-known hardware tester, we now know whether CWTP's Ultimate Ultra Violet Limited Edition paste is actually any good or just a pile of (smelly) nonsense.

I'm honestly not making any of this up. Clock Work Tea Party (CWTP) is a Japanese firm that makes thermal interface materials (aka thermal paste) for CPUs and GPUs, that two features to make them stand out from the crowd. Firstly, the applicator has all the hallmarks of being a weeb-inspiration, and secondly, the majority of CWTP's pastes smell.

Yes, I know everything technically has a smell, but CWTP gives its pastes a more potent pong than usual. In the past, it's released Apple Green and Strawberry scented models, but its favoured fragrance seems to be Osmanthus, a species of flowering plants native to Japan, China, and other SE Asian countries.

Igor Wallossek, the titular lead and owner of Igor's Lab, managed to get hold of CWTP's Ultimate Ultra Violet Limited Edition (CWTP-EG4GUV-L) and put the paste through his exhaustive battery of thermal tests. I'll hand it over to Igor to provide the summary of his findings and thoughts on the stuff:

"In thermal terms, [it] is a mediocre thermal compound that is visually and olfactorily surprising, but technically weak over long stretches. When applied, it develops a strong osmanthus scent, sweet, exotic and unusual, almost like a niche floral perfume from Kyoto that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find on the CPU."

I know for a fact that I wouldn't expect a CPU to have any kind of odour whatsoever, partly because I don't want a CPU to have any kind of odour. But hey, if that's your thing, then who am I to criticise? And if a pongy paste just so happened to be very good as a thermal compound, then the stench fragrance of osmanthus shouldn't really matter.

However, as Igor's tests amply demonstrate, it's not a good thermal paste at all. Well, to be fair, it has a decent thermal conductivity when applied very thinly and under high contact pressure, but once the layer thickness increases to a level similar to that when used with a CPU, the conductivity falls behind a whole host of other pastes Igor tested.

As you'd imagine, CTWP's Ultimate Ultra Violet Limited Edition paste isn't exactly cheap, weighing in a 2,280 yen (roughly $15/£11). That kind of money will get you two 4 gram tubes of Arctic MX-6, the paste that I use for all my work, gaming, and test rigs. I guess if you want your PC to smell of something other than absolutely nothing, then paying a little extra for a heady hum of autumn blossom around your gaming den is no big deal. Best not use it with any high-power processor, though.

Have you ever looked at a liquid cooling radiator and thought "I wonder if a car rad would work any better?" Me neither. However, you and I don't have the same brains as the folks behind YouTube channel Geekerwan, as they've rigged together a radiator and water pump from a BMW M4, some Toyota Highlander fans, and a water block to cool one of AMD's most powerful chips. And it works!

The CPU in question is the truly over-specced AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9995W, a 96-core chip that's capable of pulling over 1000 W of precious electric go-go juice from the wall socket in its own right. It's technically got a max boost clock of 5.4 GHz, but as you might expect, that figure won't apply to all of those cores at once.

However, the Geekerwan team managed to push their sample to 4.9 GHz across all 96-cores using their jury rigged cooling setup, which is a remarkable achievement (via Wccftech). It's nowhere near as effective as a liquid nitrogen cooling setup, one of which was used by a different group of overclockers to achieve a world record speed of 5.8 GHz on the same chip—but then again, Geekerwan's techs didn't have to wear oversized gloves and eye protection, or risk freezing off delicate parts of their anatomy in the process.

That being said, the car radiator setup has some issues of its own. For a start, a car-sized radiator (even the remarkably small one used in the BMW M4) combined with a regular water block going into a car pump is, well, not exactly optimal for shifting the heat given off by an overclocked mega-chip, so much of the setup remained underutilised during the run.

The team also couldn't use regular PC fans to flow air through a radiator of this size, so they picked up a twin Toyota radiator fan setup from a seafood market. I think that's correct anyway, as I'm relying on translation here, but I like the idea of shopping for some tuna and spotting a clapped-out SUV behind a stall, before bravely asking "how much for bits of your engine."

The fans alone draw 100 W while shifting an astonishing amount of air, which makes them potential candidates for our best PC fan guide, if you ask me.

Anyway, while the setup had issues, it did provide a stable enough overclock for a Cinebench R23 run where the 4.9 GHz figure was achieved—along with a staggering 2000 W+ instantaneous power consumption figure.

Yep, this setup appears to have confused the bejesus out of the chip and motherboard's power regulation systems, and bested the capabilities of the water block itself. We do these things not because they are easy, etc. So, while I don't see this particular liquid cooler catching on with enthusiasts, it's been a valuable learning experience for us all nonetheless. Can you use a car's watercooling system to overclock a CPU? Yes. Should you? No, no, and once more for good measure, no again.

How long until we end up with a screen included on the cooler for a solid state drive or RAM? It probably already exists. What we can be sure exists are liquid coolers with screens on them. They're everywhere. I ended up testing many of them in recent months for a big update to the best liquid cooler for CPUs page, along with some cheaper units without screens. Wanna guess which ones I preferred overall?

There's little arguing with the value on offer with some liquid coolers these days. If you skip over the flashy features and focus on the essentials, you can get a 360 mm all-in-one cooler for under $100/£100.

The best example of such a cooler: Arctic's Liquid Freezer III Pro ARGB. It costs $94/£80.

I've just wrapped up testing with this cooler, and it's really a stellar unit. The build quality is great, the RGB isn't too overboard (though there's a non-RGB option available), and importantly, the performance is tip-top. It's up there with the best of them, including some that are nearing three times the cost.

The Liquid Freezer III Pro ARGB includes new P12 Pro fans, updated pump control, increased fin density, and a VRM fan like the last model to keep your essential but overlooked power components cool. It's a great package, made slightly better by the inclusion of a contact frame for Intel builds.

Though I will say on the contact frame, it is a bit of a pain to install. It requires removing the Independent Loading Mechanism (ILM) and installing the frame instead, which is a bit fiddly, even with the motherboard laid flat, and exposes the pins on the motherboard even more than normal. Just be careful, and it's fine, and the contact frame is worth having (it's a necessity on this cooler for Intel builds anyways) as it prevents chip bending, which is an issue on 13th/14th Gen Intel chips.

Quick list

The best liquid cooler for every budget

You don't need to spend a fortune on your next liquid cooler. The Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 ARGB is all you need for a modern processor and it costs just $94/£80. That's for the 360 mm version with ARGB lighting. You could spend as little as $71/£62 on the 240 mm option without the lights. That frees up budget to put elsewhere—towards a better graphics card, perhaps.

You wouldn't be doing your rig or your processor a disservice for using the Liquid Freezer III Pro. We previously rated the Arctic Liquid Freezer III as the best all-in-one liquid cooler and it's only improved with the Pro version. It still has the same thick radiator and built-in VRM fan as its predecessor, but the Pro version also has greater fin density and improved pump rpm control. Moreover, it's the fans that get the biggest upgrade.

Arctic includes three P12 Pro fans on the Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 ARGB. These look impressive on paper—a big step-up over the P12 PST PWM fans on the older version—with a maximum 3000 rpm, high airflow, and a static pressure measured at a massive 6.9 mmH20. That's Arctic's static pressure figure, and I'm unable to put it to the test myself, but it's a huge result for usage on a radiator. I have put the fans' to the test using an anemometer.

In my testing, the P12 Pro reached 2.6 m/s at 3000 rpm. That's beaten only by the Hyte Thicc FP12, and it even surpasses our pick for the best PC fan, Noctua's NF-A12x25 G2 PWM, likely due to Arctic's much higher rpm. The P12 Pro's lead does disintegrate at lower rpm. Noctua's G2 fan beats everything else at 1200, 800, and 450 rpm. That's important as you will tend to run your fan lower than its maximum rpm most of the time. But it's undoubtedly impressive.

The P12 Pro is a loud fan at full throttle, on account of that lofty max rpm, though it is notably quieter than the Hyte Thicc FP12, which reaches the same speeds. The Hyte also outperforms the Arctic at max speed. I retested both side-by-side and I'd definitely prefer the Arctic fans in my PC due to the tone of the Hyte fans, but to be honest, I wouldn't really want either running at full speed. They're hella loud. You need to keep these on gentle curve to keep them schtum.

There's no dedicated software for the Arctic. However, setting a curve in your BIOS couldn't get much easier. You have a choice: either set it up with individual control of all the fans and pump, or run everything off a single curve. This is made possible by two sets of cables included in the box: one set has individual fan connectors for the pump, VRM fan, and radiator fans; the other has just a single connection. Both terminate on the pump unit using a proprietary connection.

I tested with the individually connected cables. I was worried the small VRM fan would be extremely noisy, as tiny fans often are, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it's not that audible. For the general user, then, I'd probably recommend sticking to the single cable approach. It's a lot smarter-looking. Altogether, the Arctic hides its cables pretty well. The fans on the radiator are daisy-chained together to reduce loose wires, including the ARGB cables, all of which is then routed through the sleeving on the tubes to the pump unit, potentially combining into just a single fan connection and ARGB connection. After using a few liquid coolers with screens that demand cables everywhere lately, I'm shook. The Liquid Freezer III Pro is so simple—as it should be, really.

Though unlike the Hyte Q60 or NZXT Kraken Elite, Arctic's approach doesn't shift the cables away from the pump (where they're more visible) to the radiator (where they're not). It's the other way around. Though a two small cables from the pump are easily hidden, so it honestly works nearly just as well.

Speaking of the set-up process, it's easy enough on an AMD Ryzen processor but slightly more involved on an Intel one. That's because Artic has, to its benefit, included a contact frame with the Liquid Freezer III Pro—one and the same as the contact frame with the Freezer 36. This is a metal frame that entirely replaces the Integrated Loading Mechanism (ILM). Basically nixxing the metal CPU frame and socket cover in favour of a flatter, sturdier block of metal. It's a good idea, too, as Intel's 13th and 14th Gen processors were liable to bending over time. Yep, bending. The contact frame prevents that, but only if you do it right away with a fresh CPU.

It's great to have that peace of mind offered by the contact frame here, which is included in the box at no added cost, but it takes a little more effort to install it on your motherboard. Doing so requires carefully removing the ILM with the provided tool, being careful not to jab a screwdriver or finger into the delicate socket underneath, then making sure the backplate is still aligned with the four holes on each corner. Best to do this with the motherboard lying flat, as I've done it once on my vertical test bench and, yeah, don't do that. The job then requires placing the CPU into the exposed socket, followed by the contact frame on top, then screwing all that together with the backplate on the rear. Once together, it's solid as a rock.

Whack some of the included Arctic MX-6 thermal paste on there, or another of your choosing (I test everything with a massive tube of MX-4), load the cold plate into place, and tighten the two captive screws. Sorted, and stable as heck. Though I did notice the coldplate on the cooler doesn't quite cover the full Intel chip, with a thin slice on the lower edge of the chip exposed. The important thing is the actual silicon and the heatspreader above it is well covered, anyways, which it clearly is for the temperatures recorded during testing.

Just note there's potential for a compatibility issue between the tubing from the pump and a particularly tall M.2 SSD. There's no real way to mount this cooler any other way than having the tubing extend out from below the pump, which shouldn't be an issue in itself for the extra long 450 mm tube length on this cooler, but it might rub up against a tall M.2 slot for a PCIe 5.0 SSD. Arctic says to contact support if you run into this issue anyways, as it will provide a free M.2 cooler.

The Liquid Freezer III Pro manages excellent thermal performance throughout my test suite, even with a chip as power-hungry as the Core i7 14700K. Admittedly, I'm yet to test a liquid cooler that doesn't perform around the same level—the technology has really come on leaps and bounds in recent years so that even budget coolers are up there with the best—and the Liquid Freezer III Pro is no different. It's often up there with one of the best liquid coolers money can buy today, Cooler Master's MasterLiquid 360 Core II, and easily competing with much more expensive models from Corsair, NZXT, and more.

I've already mentioned the noise levels from the fans individually, and we test each liquid cooler with the fans at max speed, so unsurprisingly it's a loud unit by comparison to some. However, I've been letting it run in the background on the standard fan curve, as set by the Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero I'm using on the test bench, and it's pretty quiet. That bears out in my fan tests, as at 1200 rpm the P12 Pro are some of the quietest fans I've tested.

If you ignore the hyper-expensive liquid coolers with massive screens, and I intend to, I see only one real competitor to the Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro ARGB from my testing. That's the Cooler Master MasterLiquid 360 Core II. It performs exceptionally well, looks good, and it's quiet. It's also spectacularly affordable at around $100/£86. Between the two, I lean slightly towards the Arctic option, if only because of the built-in VRM fan, which can help keep other key components cooler over their lifetime, the neat cable solution, and the contact frame. Though, really, both have their merits, and if one is much cheaper than the other, I say go for it.

The Hyper 212 is a legend. I was still in school when it first came out—the early 2000s, I believe—and it's remained an undying recommendation for some PC builders ever since. I'm not surprised it's still around either, being a cheap and capable cooler, though I am surprised Cooler Master is still able to find ways to repackage it into a new product to this day. So, what's the Pro version all about, and is it actually worth buying in 2025? Let's dive into all that.

The core design of the Hyper 212 looks to be relatively unchanged since the latest version of the Hyper 212 Black. They share a similar construction, with four heatpipes, a single SickleFlow Edge 120 fan, and a black finish across the aluminium heatsink. Though Cooler Master has tweaked the formula a little to justify the new name and $34/£40 price tag—that's more expensive than the Black cooler right now, by the way.

For starters, the heatpipes have been redesigned. The Pro uses Cooler Master's new Superconductive Composite Heat Pipes (SCHP), which the company suggests is efficient enough to see the Pro cool up to 230 W. That's theoretically enough for some pretty powerful processors, though in reality, you still likely want to look elsewhere for use with a high-performance gaming processor with a particularly high TDP.

Our test bench uses the Core i7 14700K, which has a Maximum Turbo Power over 230 W (253 W), and it shows. This chip is too power-hungry and hot for the plucky little Hyper 212, running at over 90 °C, but that's to be expected. That's why I also limit the TDP to 120 W, more in line with today's popular Ryzen chips, to give air coolers a fairer run of things. In this power-limited test, the Hyper 212 Pro performed a lot better, even while running the demanding Cinebench R23 benchmark.

That said, the Hyper 212 Pro is outperformed by the Cooler Master Hyper 612 Apex and, more importantly, the real competition, Arctic's Freezer 36. It's not a close-run match, either. The Hyper 212 Pro hits 77 °C max and 59 °C average during Cinebench R23. The Freezer 36 only 71 °C and 55 °C. In cooler world, at least nowadays, that's a pretty big gap.

The Hyper 212 Pro is at a disadvantage versus the Freezer 36 for its single fan. The Freezer 36 has two easily removable fans, while the Hyper 212 Pro only has one held on with two simple metal clips. Yet despite only having half the fans, the Hyper 212 Pro was pretty loud in my testing, easily surpassing the noise generated by the Freezer 36's dual-fan configuration when measured from 15 cm away.

The increase in volume might be to blame on the slightly faster max fan speed on the SickleFlow Edge 120 versus Arctic's P12 PST fan, 2500 rpm to 2000 rpm. But that excess fan speed hasn't helped the Hyper 212 Pro keep temperatures any lower than the Freezer, so it feels a bit of a wasted effort.

So, a little toasty and a little loud. Not a great run for the old timer. But at least you can be sure it's little. The Hyper 212 Pro is fairly tall, especially for its vanity cover over the top of the heatpipes, but it's a slender unit and doesn't bother your RAM sticks in any way. There's plenty of clearance. It also only weighs 0.7 kg, which is light enough that I'm not too worried about it snapping my motherboard on a bumpy car ride.

This latest addition comes with an all-black finish and an RGB fan to sweeten the deal. The all-black finish and accent on the top make the Pro look a little more fitting in a PC build in 2025 than previous models, and it does look nicer than the cheapest version of the Freezer 36 in its bare metal, but it's nothing particularly special. At least the RGB fan is easy enough to set-up. It uses a straightforward ARGB header straight from the fan, which plugs into compatible motherboards (most modern motherboards have an ARGB slot) and can be controlled with a variety of software, including that included with your motherboard.

Cooler Master has nailed the installation process after all this time. It's about as straightforward as they come with a couple of screws and brackets that lock together securely. Easy peasy.

I could go on, but I've already made my mind up. At around $25, you can just about argue for the affordability of the older Hyper 212 models. At least if you're on a shoestring budget and need to save every penny. However, with a price tag any higher than that, it's a much harder sell versus something like the Arctic Freezer 36. Right now, Arctic's cooler is just $38/£33 and that's absolutely where my money is going instead.