This can be a little tricky inside a chassis but IceGiant includes an appropriately sized screwdriver. While the Cooler Master and Arctic dual tower models are glued to the 90C limit and reduce the CPU package power and operating clock accordingly. In this segment we see the behavior of temperature as affected by the type of work the CPU is doing. You need to pay attention to the supported mounting orientation, but this won’t be an issue for conventional users’ chassis usage. Keep this in mind while planning your build with respect to the PC Chassis as the chassis should have support for CPU cooler’s height of a minimum of 165mm or so.

There is a caveat whereby lesser performing coolers force the CPU to run at higher temperature levels. We highlight VRM temperatures when using each cooler on our Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master motherboard with the overclocked Ryzen 9 5950X. Reviewing coolers is a very divided topic so its best to always serve with as much context as possible. Next in the hierarchy is our first air cooler – the IceGiant ProSiphon Elite – which ties with the 240mm Cougar AIO.I guess my only appearance criticism would be that the front 140mm fan positioning is a little awkward as it does not sit flush with the rest of the heatsink. There we have it – some interesting results from a varied batch of CPU coolers tested with the tough Ryzen 9 5950X thermal load. To power air through this dense fin array are 3 120mm, 9-bladed fans that operate at up to 2100 RPM using a 4-pin PWM connector. Plus, I also think it’s reasonable to re-emphasise that this thermosiphon cooler is designed for significantly higher heat loads than the sub-250W figure that we are throwing at it.

Worth noting is that the shroud marks quickly, as shown by our remnant grey thermal paste that cannot be cleaned off easily. When you take that into consideration, it's no wonder Deepcool has become a popular manufacturer in the DIY PC market. Therefore, considering how well the Assassin III performed, it will be quite interesting to see how the AS500 does. That said, packing 140mm fans, this should be expected but I have to remind users to please check compatibility as single tower coolers tend to confuse new buildings giving the impression their significantly shorter especially ones with 140mm fans.The Cougar Aqua 240 ARGB also deserves mention as the budget-orientated unit performed well in our testing. In terms of the design, it is essentially identical to the AS500 and rather similar to the Gamer Storm Assassin III, but with one less cooling tower, among other changes. The horizontal radiator pipes are spaced approximately 6mm apart which is denser than the competing AIO coolers we are looking at in this test. We won’t put too much emphasis on PBO results, but we will spend some time to quickly analyse them using our full fan speed data.