Cooling

DeepCool GamerStorm Castle 360RGB V2 AIO Cooler Review

How Much Does it Cost?

With a retail price in the region of £129.99, the DeepCool GamerStorm Castle 360RGB V2 gives us some excellent value. Particularly when you consider the level of performance that you get from this cooler.

Sticking with the price though, compared to alternative 360mm models, particularly those with RGB features on a par with these, this cooler is significantly less expensive. As such, the Castle 360RGB V2 represents an excellent budget-alternative.

Overview

In terms of performance, there are definitely both positive and negative aspects. For example, the temperature control at idle is truly excellent and even when pushed hard, the numbers never approach anything concerning. Better still, the RGB lighting effects are excellent and with a manual controller included, you don’t even need a compatible motherboard to get the best from this!

There is, however, one major problem. Specifically, the noise. When working hard, this cooler is noisy. Yes, 360mm coolers have 3 fans and, by proxy, are (generally) always going to be more vocal than any smaller designs. To me, however, this almost borders on being obtrusively loud and, as such, if you take overall noise levels as a high-priority of your system build, this probably isn’t going to be the cooler for you.

If you can overlook that one flaw, however, what you have here is an absolutely rock solid AIO cooler that does its job well and won’t cost you a fortune either!

Should I Buy One?

So, what are my concluding thoughts on the Castle 360RGB V2? Well, overall, I feel that this is something of a flawed masterpiece from DeepCool and I mean that in every possible positive sense.

It looks good, performs well, keeps temperatures down and, perhaps best of all, doesn’t cost you much when compared to similar alternatives. The only real downside is the noise levels. They’re not great and, in truth, I wish that DeepCool would’ve looked to improve that aspect a bit further.

This does, therefore, tie into my flawed masterpiece argument. The DeepCool GamerStorm Castle 360RGB V2 is a fantastic cooler and (perhaps) approaches the best of what they have to offer at the moment. It could, however, certainly be improved considerably if it was just a bit quieter. Something that could possibly be addressed with some manual tuning in the BIOS. I suppose, at the end of the day, it all boils down though to what your priorities are. I mean, for this price, you do have to make some compromises, right?