Deepcool Gammaxx GT ARGB CPU fan. That didn’t sound short at all. But the fan isn’t short too. So what exactly is short here if neither the name nor the fan is short?
So I received this CPU cooler to do my scientific researches on it. But some of you may already know what sort of scientist I am right? So this fan is an upgraded version of its predecessors. Of course? They upgraded the fan and made the lighting addressable RGB.
The fan quality is just fine but for the price you’d be paying for it, you should just be happy. I really like the finish on the top of the heatsink. It’s aesthetically pleasing. The matte black finish is nice and who doesn’t like matte black finish on their things.
The CPU, of course, comes with a 120 mm RGB fan with an RPM range of 500 to 1650. And there are 4 heat pipes on the bottom.
The heatsink has 6” height,3” depth with the fan being 1” in its depth. And an overall width of 5”. Wow, maths.
The built quality is fine. For the price it’s okay. It costs somewhere around 3000 rupees in India and somewhere around 35 US dollars in….USA? I won’t say its the best or the most premium feeling CPU cooler out there. But it doesn’t matter much in this price range and if it performs well too. Which we shall see ahead. The manual says that this CPU cooler should come with a 5V power SATA RGB controller for those motherboards which do not have a compatible header for the fan to run on. So make sure you get one in the box if your motherboard isn’t compatible.
It will support most of the sockets of Intel and AMD including the latest intel 10th gens and the current Ryzens so you don’t need to worry about all that. But checking all these facts on the product page can never hurt too.
You get a basic thermal paste packing inside the box with all kinds of screws and nuts and bolts and mounts. I have a strong suggestion here though. If you don’t have any alternative thermal paste compound lying around then, for the time being, you can put this one on the CPU. But if you are someone who games a lot or renders a lot then buying a decent thermal paste will help the cooler perform even better than the standard paste provided with this or with most of the CPU coolers you go out and buy.
If you are upgrading an old system with this fan then be aware of the fact that if your CPU case is from the stone age, then you’d have to disassemble the whole motherboard to place the backplate under it and then hook it.
The backplate also has all socket naming finely demarcated on it. But the plate feels kind of flimsy so make sure you are super careful and do not tighten the bolts too tight as you install the cooler.
Even if you have a newer case, my suggestion will be to get the motherboard out and screw the backplate carefully on the bottom so that you can feel the tension between the screws and your screwdriver which I hope isn’t screwing your driver.
If you are rocking a motherboard with ARGB headers on them then connecting and syncing it to your workstation lighting is going to be super easy. I tested it on my Asus TUF x570 motherboard and everything was immediately synced. The 2 cables coming out of the fan and the heatsink, get hooked to this controller cable which has these labels of different motherboard vendors on them. (see video for reference) And then this fan cable which goes into the CPU fan header. If you wanna put another fan for a push-pull configuration you can do so too if your motherboard has a CPU optional fan header too or just put it anywhere else just to power it on without any stats like RPM etc.
If not then you would need a converter and whatnot. But if you already have a converter then you do know what I am talking about.
Now after connecting everything and installing the motherboard, not in that particular series, you are ready to test your new CPU cooler and check if it performs any better than your stock CPU cooler or did you just wasted a good chunk of your money.
Well in my case I didn’t want to fiddle with my primary system as I can’t afford to disassemble it and lose time on other projects I am currently doing. So I went to my office, where most of the systems are sitting idle due to everyone working from home. And because I couldn’t take my cameras and tripods there I couldn’t actually shoot the installation process. But Deepcool has made a very nice video on the same which I will post in the description below for you to go through. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKmMbaIS3g4
I tested the CPU cooler performance on a Ryzen 2700x with a GTX 1050 and 16GB of RAM.
I also made sure to test the same bench with a Noctua u14s as it’s generally a good habit to compare a ton of CPU coolers together unless you are a pseudoscientist. Which clearly I am not.
As compared to the AMD stock cooler which was wraith prism, in this case, there was a definite boost in performance of the about 8.5% in idle temps. But the Noctua was even 7.3% better than the Gammaxx but you have to pay almost twice of the Gammaxx and forget RGB and start loving this brownish theme instead which many dislike except for utilitarian people like me?
And during prime 95 small FFTs test the Gammaxx performed 8.3% better than the wraith prism but as expected the Noctuas performed about 7.6% better than the Gammaxx.
So as expected the cooler definitely performs better than the stock cooler most of you would get with your CPUs. The wraith prism is actually one of the better stock coolers but I am pretty sure if I had an Intel CPU with its stock cooler to compare with then the Gammax would have yielded even better results.
The noise levels were quite moderate. I could not hear the fans much during the prime95 test even though when it was in an open case. So inside a closed case, they would be hardly audible.
And before I forget, the cooler looks good as the bright RGB lit fan right in the front looks good and is RGB and just lits. So yeah it lits well. But my favorite part is the top part of the heatsink. The subtle lighting bleeding through the deep cool logo is pleasing to the eyes.
Stay safe humans. Otherwise, what’s the point of all this RGB? That’s all for today. MuBot out.