Just recently DeepCool launched their AK400 cooler and they are already following up with a budget line-up to fill this market segment. Today we are going to be talking about the new lower end AG400 and AG620 and compare them to the AK series to see if they have made loads of compromises or if it’s now an even better deal. Check out the video to see the unboxing and direct comparison.
After running a whole stack of tests, we have the results. Just for reference - we are using Ryzen 7 3800XT with a custom overclock which pulls around 120W during the whole duration of the test. In noise normalised tests at 35 dBa, we see the older AK620 cooler delivering slightly better performance over the AG620 and on the lower-end we see the new budget cooler runs exactly 2 degrees cooler than AK400. While the difference is not huge, it is still nice to see some improvement.
For the second test we set the fan speeds to maximum and let them rip. This shows the maximum possible performance at the cost of acoustics. Here we have the AK400 still in the same spot since the fan it comes with is actually really quiet, but that is why it performs worse than its cheaper alternative. With AG400 we are able to extract another 1 degree of cooling.
In the higher-end units if we look purely at the temperatures, they are essentially identical, but when we look at the noise levels - the new cooler is a little louder. To be fair to all of these units - I feel anything under 40 decibels is pretty reasonable as it is unlikely for most users to run their CPU at full tilt for a very long time.
Which brings me to the conclusion - given the choice, should you buy the new cheaper coolers from DeepCool or save some money and go for the older AK variant. The answer is actually pretty easy - if you want to save a few dollars and don’t care for the looks or convenience - cheaper units perform really well. On the other hand, if you want your build to look a little bit better or in the dual tower example expect to change your CPU and re-use the cooler then you may be better off getting the AK series as you will have slightly better performance and extra thermal paste. In general, all 4 of these units deliver similar results.