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DeepCool’s Castle 360EX all-in-one liquid cooler has already seen plenty of time on the market. But now, we have a revision that has been updated to include addressable RGB lighting alongside the clean, pure white colour scheme. With this latest revision, DeepCool retains the infinity mirror display on the pump, we get triple CF120 series PWM fans, and price tag is competitive at just under £115. Let’s take a closer look at this eye-catching, all-white 360mm AIO.
Video Timestamps
00:00 Introduction
00:56 Unboxing
01:31 A Closer look
01:53 ‘Anti Leak’ Technology & braided tubes
02:28 In house pump / coldplate / pump block
03:14 Powering the pump / Fans
04:35 RGB system (connections)
05:08 Warranty
05:46 Installation
06:41 Test hardware configuration
07:23 Test results
11:10 Luke's Closing Thoughts
Mounting hardware and accessories are provided for all Intel and AMD platforms, including LGA 1700 and Threadripper. You get some cables for handling the fans and their RGB lighting connections.
DeepCool also includes a manual LED lighting control box, but this clearly defeats the point of an addressable RGB cooler. So we expect this to stay firmly in the box while the motherboard header takes care of lighting.
DeepCool uses a conventional 27mm-thick aluminium radiator and the fins fill out roughly the entire volume of the radiator housing. That housing and its fins are coloured in a sleek, clean white to ensure consistency. There is a fill/drain port near the tubes, but this is for warranty purposes, not user maintenance.
Perhaps more important is the inclusion of DeepCool’s Anti-Leak technology on the radiator. This is via the EPDM pressure relief bag that contracts to create a void when pressure rises to relieve the pressure inside the radiator. In theory, this helps to reduce the risk of leakage, which is a clear positive.
The 465mm-long braided tubes have a decent degree of flexibility to them. They also maintain the clean white appearance of the rest of the cooler, though the white material will certainly get dirty quickly if it is touched by fingers regularly. Alongside the flexibility of the tubes, there is also a good degree of adjustment at the entry points to the block.
DeepCool’s in-house pump/coldplate design helps the vendor avoid any patent issues with Asetek or the likes. The copper cold plate is a sizable area thus making it sufficient for large heatspreader coverage on Ryzen or Intel HEDT.
‘25% more skived fins on the copper cold plate’ is advertised on the DeepCool webpage. Though 25% more than what, is not exactly clear. Realistically, DeepCool is saying that the copper plate has a large enough surface area to allow for appropriate heat dissipation.
Physically, the pump-block unit is massive; it measures in at 86x75x71 mm. This is clearly not an ITX-friendly pump-block design. The overall design is cylindrical and maintains the consistent white colour scheme.
DeepCool deploys the eye-catching infinity mirror display that features the brand name. The top cover can be removed so that the name plate can be rotated in 90-degree intervals to allow for correct alignment of the orientation, irrespective of one’s installation preference.
There is also eye-catching ARGB LED lighting that shines through the infinity mirror display, as well as in a ring around the pump block unit. The dual-chamber pump itself is 3-pin 12V DC-powered by a 3-phase motor. It runs at a speed rating of 2550 RPM.
The trio of DeepCool’s CF120 A-RGB PWM fans feature an all-white housing alongside translucent blades. This maintains the white theme of the entire AIO and allows the 12 LED on each fan to shine brightly through the blades.
The Hydro Bearing 120mm fans are rated at 500-1800 RPM via the 4-pin PWM connector. The low-speed limit of 500 RPM is likely fine for most usage. It’s not as good as the lower bottom limits we see from some more expensive competing options, but it is fine for the price point.
ARGB lighting is handled by the proprietary connector that inserts into the DeepCool-supplied break-out cable. Motherboard A-RGB control is the go-to mode, and this is very much preferable over third-party software in my opinion.
Kudos to DeepCool for (sensibly) using white colouring for the fan and LED connection cables. This – once again – helps to maintain the overall white appearance. A pair of connectors emanate from the pump-block unit and each of the 120mm fans. These are for power/speed control and RGB lighting.
I’m perfectly fine with this number of cables as only the two from the pump-block unit are difficult to hide. However, I do not like that DeepCool is using proprietary connectors for its LED lighting interface. This necessitates the use of an adapter from the motherboard’s standard RGB or A-RGB header.
Warranty is clearly an area where DeepCool’s offering is weak. Even at the roughly £115 current selling price, 3 years of coverage is poor for a 360mm AIO. We’d typically expect to see 5 years or better at this segment of the market. So that’s one thing to bear in mind.
Installation is a multi-step process, but it is not difficult. You first screw the appropriate brackets onto the bottom of the pump-block unit. The default AM4 backplate is held in position with four of DeepCool’s thumbscrew stand-offs. The pump-block unit then sits on these stand-offs and is screwed into position.
Then the radiator and fans can be installed, the cables connected, and the DeepCool logo inside the infinity mirror display rotated as desired. There are a lot of cables with the ARGB approach via a break-out connector, but they are easy to hide round the back of the motherboard tray.
