Deepcool LS520 240mm AIO Review – You might love this

Back in July of 2019 I never thought a 240mm AIO would be more than enough for my Ryzen 9 3900X. It’s the mid of 2022 now and this frigging new AIO just blew my mind with its performance.

So I recently got my hands on the LS520, which is a 240mm AIO by Deepcool. And I honestly never thought reviewing just another AIO will be this exciting. But that’s how innovation can excite you.

Design

I might sound like a broken record but Deepcool has really upped their design language in the past 2 years. I love how simple and elegant the overall design of the pump is. 

The pump uses Deepcool’s 4th generation pump design which is the latest number for the generation of pumps they have – so it should perform the best as compared to previous generations. I mean typically that’s how it goes right?

All of this is plastic and it carries this mirror finish on the top to reflect those sweet RGB lights throughout its surface. 

The fans used are Deepcool’s FC120 fans that are ARGB compatible and they use a proprietary fan connector which will help them daisy chain with each other like a good but isolated happy family. The 4 corners have noise-damping rubber pads. 

There’s no software to control their lighting. So you’d need to rely on your motherboard’s software to do so. Pretty sure that no one who hates installing extra useless junk on their PCs will see that as a con.

The tubes are extremely flexible and the sleeves seem pretty standard too. The tubes also came with 2 clips on them that can help you mingle the tubes together for a cleaner look. A very tiny addition but it does bring a lot of value to the aesthetics.

The radiator fins also had no weird bents on them.

Supported sockets

The AIO supports till intel 12th generation right now but supports the futuristic AMD AM5 processors too that are not too distant anymore. Pretty nice to see an asymmetrical design of the same brackets for the AM4 and AM5 mounts. Not making extra separate mounts for each one of them saves a lot of metal from the planet earth. And of course our money too.

Most of the brackets are metal and have a nice finish on them. The manual has been planned quite nicely with easy-to-understand diagrams for tech toddlers. 

Deepcool has tried to implement a DIY element for the pump by supplying an extra blank plate that can be replaced by the default mirror finished plate on the pump. Now draw whatever the heck you’d want and customize the darn thing yourself. 

This is again a pretty small addition but can bring in a lot of value to how your AIO looks. Also, this plate can rotate at 90-degree steps, so orienting the pump the way you find right will be a 360-degrees affair. 

Dimensions

The base plate is of standard size with thermal paste pre-applied to it. And it is larger than the top surface of the pump, because of pyramid schemes. I mean pyramid design. 

The radiator thickness with the fans isn’t too fatty that most of the cases will reject it with a left tinder swipe.

Installation

Deepcool has surely hired a really smart product design team for all of their recent new stuff. And this was apparent during the installation of this AIO. I mean it can’t get any simpler than this. Or maybe it can, right after 3 years. 

Just use the stock backplate for installing an AMD processor and install it on the back side of the motherboard and then on the front tighten them with these 4 screws that are common for both AMD and Intel chips. 

Then screw the AM4 slash AM5 brackets on the pump’s base. You can change the way these brackets go on the pump if you need a different orientation than how I am going for my system. 

Then you simply put the pump on the underlying screws and then tighten them with their own separate screws alternatively. 

I installed the radiator on the top because it seemed cleaner and easier. Mostly easier because I am super lazy. 

Putting the cables in was also pretty easy. The AIO pump connector from the AIO goes into the AIO pump header on the motherboard. 

And then the fans were daisy changed together and I hooked their connector in the CPU fan header on the motherboard. I was also easily able to daisy chain the ARGB header from the fans to my case fans. 

Installing this AIO kept me super duper happy as I hardly had to spend any time installing it. And when I generally spend less time doing something – I stay happy. 

The AIO just looks GORGEOUS. I am a fan of simple design elements and Deepcool does a 10 out of 10 job when it comes to the overall elegant design they adapted for this AIO. 

Pretty sure the subtle reflective RGB elements on the pump aren’t going to hurt any set of eyes that sets their vision on it. That almost sounded like a lame poem. 

Thermal performance

The noise levels from the fans are typical too, how most of the AIOs sound in this price segment. (noise test in the video at 6:14)

The LS520 really impressed me with its performance. My jaw literally dropped seeing the AIO managing even the 200-watt mark inside an open case. 

And I say that because as you can see with an ambient temperature of 29 degrees celsius, the AIO managed to keep the max temperatures around 92 degrees. 

This was extremely rare for a 240mm AIO to do on the 3900X. The other two 240mm AIOs I reviewed recently stand nowhere close to how the LS520 performs. 

I also ran a quick benchmark test in the shadow of the tomb raider in stock CPU settings, and the temperature didn’t rise above the 60 degrees Celsius mark. When the room temperature was around 30. The CPU’s average power consumption was around 85 watts though.

Conclusion

But for this extra performance and the gorgeous looks of the whole package here does come at a pricing that is quite a lot more than the other 2 AIOs I compared it with. 

What really boosts my confidence for the LS series is the 5-year warranty claim Deepcool offers with them. That really assures a warranty-loving fanatic like me that the AIO should last for a long period of time with the least number of failure reports too. But that’s only something the passage of time can tell.

So yeah this is about it for this pretty-looking AIO which doesn’t fall short in the performance sector too. If you liked my efforts on the video and you end up choosing this AIO, then you can buy from my affiliate links below.

💬Discord: https://discord.gg/TsMHuPhjQ2
🛒Amazon US: https://amzn.to/3nRt91S
🛒Amazon India: Awaiting

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