The only place EK deviates from the objective is to talk about its RGB lighting on the acrylic cover, claiming that it’s a “light diffuser with a frosted finish for a dynamic lighting display with smooth color transitions.” We think, frankly, it looks like it was made in someone’s shed on their 3D printer, but that’s not particularly relevant to its performance. We’ll let you judge the looks yourself. The EK AIO 360 runs at 51.4dBA at 20” distance, led only by the EVGA CLC 360 cooler at 60.4dBA -- you can see how much the results change based on the noise level. The CLC 360 did horribly relative to its size in the 35dBA test, although it does comparatively better at 40dBA in our Intel HEDT testing, but it does maintain a lead at its deafening 60.4dBA 100% speeds. The most interesting data is the EK AIO 240, which manages to equal the Kraken X72 and outperform the Kraken X62. The Liquid Freezer II’s lower-ranking result is expected and, at its noise level of 42.5dBA, it is significantly more efficient and effective than either NZXT Kraken cooler and the EK AIO 240 at 46.6dBA. That said, the NZXT coolers and their older Asetek Gen5 design are starting to show their age. The Kraken X63 in our Intel HEDT bench testing didn’t make any thermal improvements in the pump, only in the fans, and so Asetek looks to be presently in a disadvantaged position versus newer designs. Turns out that suing all your competition out of the market only works for so long before it breeds necessity and innovation.

To briefly mention internals, we have a separate tear-down video coming up that’ll talk about how the EK AIO series works and how it’s assembled. The biggest item of note is that it’s running a larger diameter plastic impeller, as compared to the smaller Asetek CLC impellers or the medium-sized Arctic metal impeller. The EK AIO also uses a massive electromagnet for the pump, something we’ll look at in the tear-down. Installation Procedure To learn about our test bench and testing procedures, please see our detailed testing methodology article or video. At the time of writing, the EK AIO 240 D-RGB was available for 120 dollars. This makes it a not so pricey cooler compared to other 240mm AIOs in the same size range, especially with ARGB capabilities. Compared to earlier market giants like Corsair, NZXT, and ARCTIC, EK has been very generous with the EK AIO 240 D-RGB features. NOTE: This is a transcript of our video, for the most part, although the video has some more discussion in the intro and conclusion than found here. We publish these articles to be helpful, but make most our money to sustain this expensive operation via videos. If sharing the content, please consider sharing the video instead. Our first chart looks at the more intensive 200W heat load, as produced by the 3 dies on the AMD 3950X. We’ve normalized the noise levels to 35dBA at 20” distance, creating an equal playing field to test the efficiency of the pumps, fans, and radiators without permitting the fans to just brute force performance at the expense of noise. Again, remember that we keep the included fans for this test.

Details

We employed AIDA64 Extreme for rigorous stress testing. To ensure real-world conditions, we used the Thermaltake View 71t case, equipped with five front and bottom intake fans and three exhaust fans (including the Vardar S) at the top and bottom. In all of these tests, the EK AIO 240 D-RGB outperformed its well-known competition, the Noctua NH-D15/S, although it fell short of defeating the ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 240.

EK®, the leading computer cooling solutions provider, is expanding its All-In-One product line with two new products: EK- AIO Basic and EK-AIO Elite Aurum 360 D-RGB. Install the fans on the radiator. You can do this step after installing the radiator in the chassis as well. It all comes down to personal preference and usage, as users may be able to determine their needs in the end, since all of these coolers provide almost equal cooling but differ in terms of looks and noise levels. Should You Buy It?

This next test is noise-normalized at 40dBA on an Intel HEDT CPU, our 3-year-old test bench, and is compared against more coolers. Note also that the fact that this is a monolothic, HEDT, large-area IHS has the potential to significantly shuffle some results. Testing at 40dBA also changes things, as now we’ve shifted in a way that the fans with worse static pressure performance may be able to achieve the minimum pressure required to cool efficiently, whereas 35dBA can fall below that threshold for inefficient fans. Maybe there's something I need to monkey with in the BIOS to rein in the CPU a bit? And maybe I should be using Argus Monitor for fan control instead? Really interested to hear how you guys find the EK AIO 240 D-RGB. I have one in my Ncase v6.1 now, cooling a 5900X on the Asus Crosshair VIII Impact, with two Noctua NF-F12 Chromax as intake (so pulling in cold air from outside, through the rad) and a Noctua NF-A9x14 Chromax on the rear as exhaust, using thermal grizzly kryonaut, and I'm getting some crazy high temps. This is using Asus FanXpert4 for fan tuning, on the standard profile with the pump set to 100% all the time.