Cooling

DeepCool GamerStorm Castle 280EX CPU Cooler Review

Performance

Whether overclocked or at stock levels, the DeepCool GamerStorm Castle 280EX easily handles CPU temperatures providing results that may be surprisingly better than you anticipated. A particular highlight is the load stock levels which are more than impressive for a cooler of this size. For these results, you usually expect to see a 360 AIO cooler and remember, this is just a 280mm design. Additionally, when overclocked, temperatures remain well under control providing results easily within what most would consider more than acceptable remits.

The only caveat to this design is the acoustic performance. While not too bad at idle (for stock or overclocked) when you put the processor to work, the noise ramps up quite notably. This also includes ‘spike’ areas of fan activity which are, admittedly, not uncommon in AIO designs. In fairness, however, this was an issue we noted with the Castle 240EX and it would appear that not much has changed here. When overclocked and at full load, the noise levels were quite high. While not intolerable, the short version is you would definitely hear this running within your PC under these conditions. Don’t get us wrong, the noise levels are not intolerable, but at full tilt, they do begin to err towards that area.

We would, therefore, suggest that a little PWM tweaking in your BIOS would undoubtedly be to your benefit to find the perfect performance compromise between fan speed and CPU temperatures because out of the box, while the one is great, the other isn’t so much!