The DeepCool Captain 240 EX RGB AIO Cooler Review: Pump it Up, Without the Noise
by E. Fylladitakis on December 14, 2017 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- AIO
- Deepcool
- Cooler
Testing Methodology
Although the testing of a cooler appears to be a simple task, that could not be much further from the truth. Proper thermal testing cannot be performed with a cooler mounted on a single chip, for multiple reasons. Some of these reasons include the instability of the thermal load and the inability to fully control and or monitor it, as well as the inaccuracy of the chip-integrated sensors. It is also impossible to compare results taken on different chips, let alone entirely different systems, which is a great problem when testing computer coolers, as the hardware changes every several months. Finally, testing a cooler on a typical system prevents the tester from assessing the most vital characteristic of a cooler, its absolute thermal resistance.
The absolute thermal resistance defines the absolute performance of a heatsink by indicating the temperature rise per unit of power, in our case in degrees Celsius per Watt (°C/W). In layman's terms, if the thermal resistance of a heatsink is known, the user can assess the highest possible temperature rise of a chip over ambient by simply multiplying the maximum thermal design power (TDP) rating of the chip with it. Extracting the absolute thermal resistance of a cooler however is no simple task, as the load has to be perfectly even, steady and variable, as the thermal resistance also varies depending on the magnitude of the thermal load. Therefore, even if it would be possible to assess the thermal resistance of a cooler while it is mounted on a working chip, it would not suffice, as a large change of the thermal load can yield much different results.
Appropriate thermal testing requires the creation of a proper testing station and the use of laboratory-grade equipment. Therefore, we created a thermal testing platform with a fully controllable thermal energy source that may be used to test any kind of cooler, regardless of its design and or compatibility. The thermal cartridge inside the core of our testing station can have its power adjusted between 60 W and 340 W, in 2 W increments (and it never throttles). Furthermore, monitoring and logging of the testing process via software minimizes the possibility of human errors during testing. A multifunction data acquisition module (DAQ) is responsible for the automatic or the manual control of the testing equipment, the acquisition of the ambient and the in-core temperatures via PT100 sensors, the logging of the test results and the mathematical extraction of performance figures.
Finally, as noise measurements are a bit tricky, their measurement is being performed only manually. Fans can have significant variations in speed from their rated values, thus their actual speed during the thermal testing is being acquired via a laser tachometer. The fans (and pumps, when applicable) are being powered via an adjustable, fanless desktop DC power supply and noise measurements are being taken 1 meter away from the cooler, in a straight line ahead from its fan engine. At this point we should also note that the Decibel scale is logarithmic, which means that roughly every 3 dB(A) the sound pressure doubles. Therefore, the difference of sound pressure between 30 dB(A) and 60 dB(A) is not "twice as much" but nearly a thousand times greater. The table below should help you cross-reference our test results with real-life situations.
The noise floor of our recording equipment is 30.2-30.4 dB(A), which represents a medium-sized room without any active noise sources. All of our acoustic testing takes place during night hours, minimizing the possibility of external disruptions.
| <35dB(A) | Virtually inaudible |
| 35-38dB(A) | Very quiet (whisper-slight humming) |
| 38-40dB(A) | Quiet (relatively comfortable - humming) |
| 40-44dB(A) | Normal (humming noise, above comfortable for a large % of users) |
| 44-47dB(A)* | Loud* (strong aerodynamic noise) |
| 47-50dB(A) | Very loud (strong whining noise) |
| 50-54dB(A) | Extremely loud (painfully distracting for the vast majority of users) |
| >54dB(A) | Intolerable for home/office use, special applications only. |
*noise levels above this are not suggested for daily use
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IdBuRnS - Wednesday, January 3, 2018 - link
You don't think your readers want to know if a cheaper and more standard fan/heatsink cooler works better than one of these bulky AIO units? Seriously?Stuka87 - Monday, December 18, 2017 - link
I have never used an air cooler that can work as well as an AIO cooler. Sure it would be nice to see them compared, but a liquid cooler can handle a MUCH higher load than a heatsink and fan can. And I have used the same CPUs with both style coolers. I end up with a MUCH cooler and quieter setup with the AIO cooler.ellis.bentley - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link
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DanNeely - Thursday, December 14, 2017 - link
"The RGB strip is a welcome addition that surely every user with a windowed side panel will appreciate."The only part about the RGB Cancer Strip that I'd appreciate if I owned this is that it's not hard wired in, meaning that chemotherapy will only consist of tossing the strip in my to recycle box and not require voiding the warranty or having some piece of garbage grade software run at startup to turn them off each time I boot my system.
The_Assimilator - Thursday, December 14, 2017 - link
Amen brother!bananaforscale - Wednesday, June 20, 2018 - link
There's a non-RGB model that glows white.rocky12345 - Thursday, December 14, 2017 - link
Great write up & lots of info on the product but I have to ask this. When doing a test of a cooler and only giving the Delta type stats like here & GN does the same thing & I also said this to them as well.What is the point of doing a cooler temp test if we do not get the actual temps of the cooler under the tested work loads? Doing a Delta over ambient means very little if we do not know the ambient temp at the time for each of the testing runs done. I think we also need idle and max temps put into the charts so we know exactly how each cooler does against each other and how hot a CPU will run at each tested work load. I know my own CPU overclocked can go as high as 78c in the stress tests but only reach 56c while gaming.
Yuriman - Thursday, December 14, 2017 - link
It makes a lot more sense to give delta temps. Let's say delta is 50c, you could have an ambient of 10c and a load temp of 60c, or an ambient of 30c and a load temp of 80c. Both are equivalent, and show the cooler being able to reduce temps from a given heat source to 50c above ambient. Why would you want to know the actual load temp and ambient?rocky12345 - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link
I think it would be nice to have both sets of data to be included in the results as well as it clearly stating the ambient temp posted for each of the tests. This way everyone gets to see all the info they need. Personally I also like to see actual CPU's being tested so it puts actual models of cpu's tested and each of them well behave with each cooler. With how companies like how Intel use cheap paste under the lid and if you want to get the best temps you need to delid a Intel cpu to get better results testing on a heat block does not really show how todays Intel cpu's will behave with a cooler.Well that is if you do not do the delid of coarse.With my own CPU which is a Sandy bridge soldered heat spreader i7 2700K I know how it will behave with any given cooler tested because of it's better build quality than their newer stuff. I know with my cooling setup which is air cooler that when I had it in the basement @ 19c room temp it does 5.0GHz-5.1GHz and stays at pretty good temps under normal work & gaming loads.
I have since moved that system upstairs and room temp is 21c-22c it will do 4.9GHz-5GHz because the temp went up a bit under normal work and gaming loads by a few degrees. Not enough that it became unstable or over heating but just enough to make me uneasy since it would hit 84c-87c in the stress testers I use to test if it's stable and as to how warm it gets under those stress tests.
I want to switch to a big rad water cooling setup soon which is why I read or watch reviews for this now. By not showing actual temps with real cpu tested data it makes it almost useless for me to use this data to help me make my buying plans on which ever water cooler is the best. As you said it does give a delta temp over ambient and that you can suck the info from that to give a idea of how coolers will react to a given amount of wattage and heat they need to be able to remove to keep things chill.
The testing done here is done very well but it only paints part of the picture and needs the data I said needed to be added to make it more useful to everyone.
abufrejoval - Thursday, December 14, 2017 - link
You have done a great job to eliminate “randomness” from your results, creating a testbed that allows for reproducible “objective” results.But I wonder if that is entirely a good thing, because in practice these things *will* be running on CPUs, that are more dynamic in terms of heat generation with every generation: Just imagine the engineers finally come up with a non-volatile CPU design and energy consumption jumps between 0 and 200 Watts in microseconds.
Because humans used to be hunted (and hunt), our brain is designed to filter out constant noises, but be especially sensitive to *changes* in sound. So, if your aim is to hide the sound your PC produces, as independently from the current workload, you need to design not necessarily for the lowest absolute noise for any workload, but for *unnoticeability*.
The general problem is, that a jump between 10 and 800 Watts between in ideal idle desktop and a maxed-out gamer rig probably takes attaching a submarine (submerged) to cool without any noticeable acoustic signature: As you eliminate all moving parts you find that there are non-moving parts that are in fact creating sound as well, when having to deal with these power deltas. And I guess the ultimate way to counter these is going active, using noise cancellation techniques.
Now all that is probably excessive, but what I would recommend you to test is to see how these cooling rigs react to dynamic changes of the heat-supply: If their sound profile remains very steady under dynamic workloads, they may be far more acceptable than if they make frequent tiny adjustments even at very low absolute levels. That’s because our brain is tuned to amplify the changes and tune out the steady drones.