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DeepCool’s reputation with air cooling is superb, and the variety of differing products for differing market segments that the company offers is impressive. In today’s review, we are examining the £50 DeepCool AK500. This is a fat single tower cooler that comes equipped with a 120mm PWM fan.
Video Timestamps
00:00 Start
00:36 First look at the AK500
01:58 Fan spec
03:02 Warranty details
03:43 Installation process
04:24 Test setup
05:32 Performance data
08:31 Closing thoughts
When it comes to accessories, we get the usual set of Intel and AMD installation hardware. This is in addition to a small tube of thermal paste, as well as four fan clips to allow for push-pull upgradability. DeepCool also includes a low noise adapter cable that reduces top speed by 300 RPM, if that’s an approach you prefer versus motherboard speed control.
DeepCool uses a thicker-than-usual 120mm-class heatsink for the AK500. As a note, the AK500 sample that we have uses a conventional aluminium heatsink colour with a black fan, but there are all-white and all-black versions if you prefer those.
The reason we call this a thicker 120mm-class heatsink is because that’s exactly what it is. The AK400 from DeepCool is 45mm thick for the fin array, which is about normal. The AK500 is double that at 90mm thick for the fin array.
Given this thickness, DeepCool offsets the angle of the five 6mm nickel-plated copper heatpipes to allow for RAM clearance. Though be aware of potential VRM heatsink headaches.
Those five heatpipes feed into a nickel-plated copper contact base. This is a different, more premium approach the Heatpipe Direct Touch design used on cheaper coolers such as the AK400. And it should pay dividends on CPUs with large area heatspreaders.
DeepCool deploys its 120mm FK120 fan for use with the AK500. This Fluid Dynamic Bearing fan operates at a speed range of 500-1850 RPM using a 4-pin PWM connector.
500 RPM on the low speed side is not particularly strong for a £50 CPU cooler. I would have expected better here, as we see from some competing coolers from the likes of Arctic. Even the included low speed adapter cable only reduces the high-speed limit to 1550 RPM, but not the 500 RPM low speed limit.
There’s no RGB lighting on the fan, which I know will be appealing to many. DeepCool does, however, use an all-black design approach, apart from the company’s turquoise or teal logo.
The fan also mounts to the heatsink via rubber dampers pre-applied to its frame. That’s a good quality touch for noise control.
Warranty for the AK500 is 3 years, which is fine but hardly inspiring or market leading. At this price point, we are getting close to Noctua territory. And of course, Noctua and Arctic, offer far superior warranty lengths to most competitors.
Of course, this is simply a block of metal and a fan, so the need for a long warranty is not as necessary as with an AIO that could have a pump failure.
Pricing for the DeepCool AK500 is currently £50 on Scan, or a few pounds extra on Amazon in the UK.
AM4 installation of the AK500 was simple and quick, as DeepCool uses the default AMD bracket.
I put the stud posts in place and then mounted the brackets on top of them. The plastic top cover has to be removed from the heatsink, and it can then be screwed onto the mounting brackets. Thankfully, DeepCool includes a long screwdriver for this task. The 120mm fan is then clipped into place and connected.
The mount is quick, easy, and solid. We had no issues with RAM interference, as DeepCool’s design intends. Though, it is easy to see how tall VRM heatsinks could cause problems. But that’s an unlikely situation for this cooler.
Test System:
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X
- Overclocked Settings: 4.45GHz all-core @ 1.312V (UEFI), Medium LLC – around 1.3V delivered
- Motherboard: Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master
- Memory: 32GB (2x16GB) Corsair Vengeance LPX 3600MHz 16-18-18-36 DDR4 @ 1.35V
- Graphics Card: Gigabyte RTX 2060 Super 0dB Mode
- Chassis: Fractal Design Meshify 2
- Chassis Fans: 2x140mm 1000 RPM Fractal Front Intake, 1x140mm 1000 RPM Fractal Rear Exhaust, 1x140mm 1000 RPM be quiet! Pure Wings 2 Roof Exhaust (for air cooler testing)
- Power Supply: Seasonic Prime TX-1000
- Operating System: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Testing Methodology:
- For testing, we use a 30-minute looped run of Cinebench R23 and record the steady-state CPU temperature at the end of the test. This ensures that the CPU has had ample time to warm up and reach steady state under all of the coolers.
- Ambient is maintained around 22-24 degrees Celsius. Where there is variation beyond this temperature range, we add in extra repeated tests to ensure consistency.
- We also test each cooler with at least two fresh installs (typically three) to mitigate the likelihood of a dodgy mount spoiling results.
Test Results:
Acoustics
Let’s start off with noise performance at 100% fan speed. This is important for getting an indication of where our performance expectations should lie based on noise output.
Running at 1850 RPM top speed, DeepCool’s single 120mm Fluid Dynamic Bearing fan operated at 42 dBA in our test setup. That’s practically the same noise output as the AK400 which uses the same fan.
I would call this level of noise output mediocre for a cooler priced at £50 in the UK. It’s perhaps a bit less than mediocre to be honest, but the cooling performance will give us a better indication.
Getting down to 40 dBA noise operation on the AK500 required reducing the fan speed to 85% of its PWM duty cycle. This was reported as 1650 RPM according to the UEFI reading.
Interestingly, this was a lower speed percentage than the AK400 that uses the same 120mm fan. Perhaps the way in which the airflow interacts with the AK500’s physically larger heatsink has an influence here.
85% fan speed to hit 40 dBA is not particularly great for a premium air cooler, but we will have to see how the performance stacks up.
Thermal Performance
Performance from the DeepCool AK500 running at full fan speed on our overclocked Ryzen 9 5950X test system was positive. The £50 unit managed to offer up stellar performance for an air cooler that put it close to 240mm AIO levels of cooling.
In fact, this chunky boi from DeepCool is up there with the best air coolers that we have tested on our 200+W Ryzen-based system.
40dBA noise-locked performance on the AK500 is also excellent.
Once again, we see this single-tower air cooler offering up highly competitive performance versus even noise-locked 240mm AIO liquid coolers. And the performance of DeepCool’s higher-end AS500 Plus is also matched by the AK500.
Of course, Arctic’s cheaper Freezer A35 A-RGB is not far behind DeepCool’s £50 unit. But as we saw from the unrestricted noise performance of the AK500, it has some more performance left in the tank if you ramp up the fan speed.
Firstly, it is critical to note that small difference in the displayed delta temperatures are not as important for our PBO testing because the clock speed and cooling power achieved are more important metrics.
PBO numbers at full fan speed continue the trend that we have seen thus far. The DeepCool AK500 offers up strong cooling performance that makes it competitive against our other air coolers and some cheaper 240mm AIOs.
Managing to cool 220W of AMD Ryzen 9 package power to allow a 4.37GHz clock speed is promising. This is a little better than what the dual-fan DeepCool AS500 Plus managed.
VRM temperatures are unimpressive though. Here, we see DeepCool’s AK500 sitting at the bottom of our chart. The ability of that 120mm fan to disperse airflow around the VRM heatsink is clearly limited.
So, that’s something to bear in mind when comparing against other air coolers.
Cutting straight to the point, there is a lot to like with the DeepCool AK500. This is a simplistic CPU cooler that offers stellar performance in its reasonably sized package.
Noise performance with the full speed fan is pretty mediocre as far as air coolers go. And the fan speed control range is not great either.
Cooling performance, however, is good – very good. We saw this £50 air cooler offering up thermal numbers similar to budget 240mm AIOs. And it did that whilst running with more tolerable noise outputs thanks to its omission of a pump.
Versus other air coolers, the DeepCool AK500 also fairs well. It offered up similar numbers to what we saw from DeepCool’s own AS500 Plus. This was a cooler that we reviewed previously and were impressed by.
Installation was quick and easy. We had no complaints on the RAM clearance and realistically, most people won’t run into headaches for VRM heatsink clearance.
The warranty is not what I would call impressive for a £50 CPU cooler. Three years seems a little slim in my opinion. Though I guess there is the argument that not much can really go wrong with an air cooler. But competitors such as Noctua and Arctic do offer up much longer warranties.
Overall, the DeepCool AK500 is a strong air cooler that offered up good performance in our test scenario. Full fan speed and 40 dBA noise locked cooling performance was stellar. The £50 price seems to be fine and overall build quality is strong. This is a solid offering from DeepCool.
Buy from Scan for £49.99 HERE.
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Pros:
- Good air cooler cooling performance
- Simple installation
- Reasonable price tag
- Push-pull capability
Cons:
- 3-year warranty should be improved
- Fan speed control range could be better for a £50 cooler
KitGuru says: Good cooling performance, excellent build quality, and a reasonable price point. DeepCool’s AK500 is a solid product.
