Over the years cooling options for PC enthusiasts have grown quite a bit. Gigabyte’s AORUS division’s newest all-in-one is a prime example of some of the latest trends taking place. Packed to rim with features AOROUS has released the Liquid Cooler 360. AOROUS is not unknown for embracing new features, or technologies, so this product continues their efforts to bring premium products to the gaming community. Guru3d has taken the Liquid Cooler 360 to the bench for testing with an Intel i7 4790K.
CPU Specifications
- 4 Core / 8 Threads
- Base Clock 4.00 GHz with Turbo up to 4.4 GHz
- TDP 88 Watts
This processor is a bit on the mild side compared to the 8 core / 16 thread offerings that both Intel and AMD offer. This cooler can support those, but their review will give you general idea of performance.
General Specifications
- Socket Compatibility: Intel 2066, 2011-3, 1366, 115x, AMD sTRX4, TR4, AM4
- 60 x 60 mm Full Color LCD
- 3 x 120 mm addressable RGB fans up to 2500 RPM +/- 10%
- Aluminum Radiator with 380 mm tubes
- Copper Block
- Pump Dimensions 80 x 80 x 60 mm
- Noise level: 18~39.5 dBA
Full specifications can be found here.
This cooler actually has three radiator sizes. Users could pick from 240, 280, or 360 mm sized radiators. Most notably though AORUS has included something that’s popping up in various new places these days. They have included a LCD on top of the cooler. One thing to note for this is that the AORUS display requires a 5 pin SATA connection for power. Recently NZXT has done the same with some of their Kraken line. A few years back Galax started including LCD displays on the sides of their Hall of Fame GPU line.
If wanting something beyond the RGB explosion, or regurgitation depending on perspective, that’s dominated much of the industry in recent years then a component with an LCD display may be the solution. It can also allow a user to monitor some key components without need an on screen display which can be nice during gaming sessions.
So once you get past all the flashy colors and displays it will still come down to performance. It performed admirably well with the i7 4790K overclocked to 4.60 GHz. They applied 1.30 volts with that clock speed. Under 100% load this cooler managed to keep the processor at an average of 72 °C. It wasn’t without some quirks though.
Software Headaches
It seems that users currently have to install two different programs that are not necessarily linked together in a normal fashion befitting a true software suite. The other caveat is that your motherboard bios will be unable to access all the features of the cooler so you have to install both and operate from the desktop in order to have full functionality. One of the programs, RGB Fusion 2.0, evidently has some odd CPU usage issues currently too.
Overall Guru3d speaks well of this cooler outside of the items mentioned above and current MSRP is $199. Hopefully AORUS can work out a more all in one software approach for this AIO cooler so that its other potentials don’t get overlooked.