DeepCool AK400 ZERO DARK PLUS CPU Cooler Review

A Closer Look

Out of the box, the DeepCool AK400 ZERO DARK PLUS certainly represents itself well with a nice sleek aesthetic, and unlike a lot of other ‘performance’ air coolers, this comes in a pleasantly compact design. – Oh, by no means is it small because as has often been proven in the past, smaller air coolers typically tend to lack the edge when it comes to actual solid levels of performance.

Before we come to any kind of visual conclusions though, let’s take a closer look at some of the key elements of this CPU cooler.

Contact Plate

The DeepCool AK400 ZERO DARK PLUS features four heat-pipes which come away from each side of the contact plate. Typically speaking, we tend to prefer to see five for high-performance air coolers, but we should note that for that kind of performance, consumers should be looking towards something like the DeepCool AK500. The radiator on this model is quite small and with the pipes matching the black aesthetic, this should still provide some solid levels of CPU cooling.

The contact plate is a reasonable size and although coverage for larger socket types like the Intel LGA1700 and AMD AM5 might not allow much wiggle room in terms of additional space, the DeepCool AK400 ZERO DARK PLUS does still cite full compatibility which we wouldn’t anticipate to be a problem.

In terms of the contact plate itself, DeepCool has left the copper exposed which, all going well, should allow for some solid levels of heat dissipation. In terms of quality though, this hasn’t been polished to an incredibly high standard with us noticing a number of exceptionally light surface marks/scratches (once the pre-applied thermal compound was removed). – It should be noted though that the DeepCool AK400 ZERO DARK PLUS isn’t exactly an expensive cooling solution and some allowances have to be given for ensuring this can be brought to market at a reasonable price.

Radiator

While the DeepCool AK400 ZERO DARK PLUS might, from some angles, look like a fairly large cooling solution, this is something of an illusion based on the fact that it comes with two fans. – The radiator itself is relatively small, but just falls within the remits of being large enough to offer some solid levels of cooling performance.

In something DeepCool has replicated throughout their entire AK series of coolers, the radiator features a patterned design to the external parts of the fins. While a really nice aesthetic touch, the only obvious downside to this is that with both fans installed, the look completely disappears. If it wasn’t for the fact that there is a single-fan variant (the AK400 ZERO DARK), this would appear to be an almost pointless choice and while nice to look it, it doesn’t really offer anything to the AK400 ZERO DARK PLUS.

At the top of the radiator, you’ll find a nice slick patterned capping plate with the DeepCool logo in the corner. Similar to what we mentioned above, we’ve seen this on a number of AK series coolers and it certainly adds a nice aesthetic touch to what will be the most visible aspect of the cooler when fitted inside a case.

Fan

As mentioned earlier in this review, the key feature of the DeepCool AK400 ZERO DARK PLUS is that it offers another additional fan when compared to the base version. The fan itself comes in a sleek black aesthetic that matches the radiator and, overall, provides a nice clean look.

A closer look at the back confirmed this as a DeepCool design. We have seen the FC120P used in a number of their other cooling solutions and have never failed to be impressed with the level of performance it offers.

Overall

The DeepCool AK400 ZERO DARK PLUS certainly presents itself well as a nice, slick, and clean CPU cooling solution. While there are undoubtedly some areas in which DeepCool has attempted to keep costs to a minimum (contact plate mostly), overall, this still seems to represent an excellent cooling solution that, all going well, will offer the performance to match its aesthetics!

How will it perform though? Well, before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s see how easy (or difficult) this is to fit to our test bench!