Cooling

DeepCool AK400 ZERO DARK PLUS CPU Cooler Review

Performance

Starting off with the stock performance, the DeepCool AK400 ZERO DARK PLUS provided us with some exceptionally impressive results. While a first glance at the chart might not initially make this apparent, you do have to look at the company in which this resides. Yes, it does run a little warmer than most with 53C recorded at load, but this is still more than comparable to many of the other coolers on the charts (with most of them being at least 240mm AIO solutions). – Lest we forget as well that the DeepCool AK400 ZERO DARK PLUS isn’t a massive air cooler which obviously should temper some expectations accordingly.

I think it would be fair to say though that the rather limited size of the radiator does tend to find its relative limits when overclocking is applied. Hitting 64C, this is still, of course, a more than acceptable result indicating that, to some degree, the DeepCool AK400 ZERO DARK PLUS is perfectly capable of handling moderate overclocked settings. – I do not think, however, that things should really be pushed too far in this respect which, in fairness, does often prove to be the edge for most air-cooling solutions. Stock is fine, overclocking capability though is generally more limited.

What about noise levels though? Well, at stock, the DeepCool AK400 ZERO DARK PLUS was exceptionally quiet even despite having the two fans running. This is even notably low when overclocked suggesting that some compromises can undoubtedly be found in the BIOS settings. I would expect that with a few moderate tweaks most users should be able to trade off a little extra noise for a bit of a lower operating temperature while not spoiling the overall performance of the cooler.

It would, however, be remiss of me to not mention that while its overclocked acoustic performance was excellent, when the fans started to fun faster I did note something of a harmonic resonance noise which isn’t uncommon in twin-fan air coolers. – Again though, a few tweaks in the BIOS could easily solve this, or, alternatively, simply don’t use the splitter which will likely result in the fan speed deviating enough to resolve this.