Enermax LIQMAXFLO ARGB 360mm AIO Cooler Review

There's no shortage of amazing AIO coolers these days, with seemingly every big-name brand having a very competitive product that performs great, looks cool, and more often than not, they're largely similar in price too! Of course, there's always room for one more, and today I'll be taking a look at the Enermax LIQMAXFLO I ARGB cooler, which comes with a 360mm radiator, and a range of cool features that are sure to make it stand out from the crowd. Firstly, Enermax has long made some of the best-performing AIOs on the market, so at the very least, I'm really hoping that still holds true today! Enermax LIQMAXFLO The LIQMAXFLO is just the latest entry in a long line of LIQMAX coolers over the last 10 years or so. Equipped with 3 x 120mm ARGB fans, as well as a unique pump design that houses a small ARGB fan of its own, this one really is just a little bit different. Furthermore, Enermax breaks away from the non-user-serviceable nature of AIO coolers, as this one comes with all the equipment you'll need to top up the cooler to extend its service life. Features Support for AM5 and LGA1700 360mm Radiator 3 x 120mm ARGB Fans ARGB Fan Pump Refillable design 24-pin Jumper Block included Additional Thermal paste included Packaging & Accessories The box is pretty large, but given it's a 360mm cooler, that's hardly surprising. I do like that there's a big photo showing the cooler, fans, pump and ARGB right on the front though. You can also see the badges for AM5 and LGA1700 support. In the box, everything is very neatly packaged, with double layers of cardboard for the box, the cardboard insert, a cardboard sleeve, and a protective bag, giving the radiator and other components multiple layers of protection. The components are all tucked into a big plastic bag, but broken down into small bags within this. Plus, each fan is individually wrapped and protected too. A Closer Look The radiator looks really good, with an inky black finish to the paintwork and just a subtle LIQMAXFLO logo printed on the side. It matches up well with the jet-black tubing and pump housing and all looks stealthy. Of course, stealth isn't really the goal here, as all the fans are equipped with vibrant ARGB, including this funky little ARGB fan that's built into the pump. The pump is a little taller as a result of the fan, but overall, it's exceptionally slim, meaning it won't overhang the CPU socket and conflict with other components. The radiator is densely packed, offering an excellent fin and heatpipe density, so it shouldn't have an issue shifting some serious heat. Plus, you can mount the three included fans on either side of it, improving its overall mounting options. The fans are Enermax's own high-static-pressure design. While many radiator fans use 9 smaller blades, Enermax has deployed a 5-blade design, but as you can see, the blades themselves are massive and heavily shaped, so should push quite a lot of air even at lower RPM. The fans have anti-vibration mounts on all four corners and on both sides of the frame, all-black cables, and frosted blades to catch the light from the LEDs that surround the motor. The fans also use a proprietary connector, allowing them to be easily daisy-chained for improved cable management. Test System & Methodology Idle tests are recorded after 10 minutes of the system being left alone after boot with no additional background processes or software running. All load tests are performed in Cinebench R2, first using a single speed run to generate the Cinebench R23 score, then a 10-minute loop to determine the overall all-core average load temperature for the relevant cooler. Clock speeds are left at the default factory settings provided by the CPU and our NZXT Z690 N7 motherboard. Optimised settings lock the CPU P-Cores to 4.9Hz and the E-Cores to 4GHz at a voltage of 1.3v. Fan speeds for the case are set to 30% at all times. Pump RPM is fixed to 100% for liquid coolers, and CPU cooler fans are left to the motherboard "automatic" and "normal" profile unless otherwise stated. Acoustics are measured from 2ft above the NZXT H7 Flow PC case, using a decibel meter, with all side panels and filters in place on the case and as stated, the case fans are left at 30% (just to the point where they become comfortably audible over ambient), to represent a real-world usage scenario. We are no longer testing coolers on an open-air test bench for this reason. As of 20/07/2023, all coolers featured on these charts were retested to reflect our improved methodology, and as such, reviews prior to this date can not be fairly compared to the new results. However, we have been periodically retesting older coolers, which is why you may see their performance figures here, and why they may not align with previous test results from the same product in their respective reviews. Test system: NZXT Z690 ATX Intel Core i9-12900K @ stock and & 4.9 GHz all P-Core 4 GHz E-Core 1.3v Aorus RTX 2080 16GB Crucial DDR4 4400 MHz XMP 512GB NVMe SSD Thermaltake Tough Power 750W NZXT H7 Flow RGB Case All testing is conducted using NT-H1 thermal paste We want to thank Gigabyte, Noctua, Crucial, Intel, Thermaltake, NZXT and more for providing us with the above testing equipment and their ongoing support. Testing Methodology We always use Noctua Noctua NT-H1 thermal paste to make sure testing reveals the efficiency of the tested coolers not the efficiency of the bundled thermal paste Cinebench R23 is run for 10 minutes to calculate “load” results Multiple readings are taken with the average of the package temperatures calculated for our recorded result Fans are left to operate at default PWM profile speeds unless otherwise stated For water cooling tests, all pumps have been operated at 12 volts unless otherwise stated Ambient temperatures should be between 21-23 degrees in all our tests unless otherwise stated Acoustic measurements are taken 60cm vertically away from the CPU cooler Stock tests are performed using “out of the box” settings for the CPU All coolers were tested under identical settings unless otherwise stated. There is approximately a 1-degree Celsius margin of error in our temperature recording software CPUID HW Monitor There is approximately a 1.5dBA margin of error with our Benetech GM1351 decibel meter In all these graphs we may have a few “reference” results of particular products that do not fit within that category for comparative purposes. Software Used CPUID HWMonitor Cinebench R23 Unigine Superposition Temperatures Right away, this cooler is killing it, scoring just 71c at full load on our 12900K! Using optimised settings, this was improved even further, smashing the record for this CPU and coming in at a staggeringly low 62, wow! Acoustics Acoustics are great too, easily the quietest 360mm radiator we've tested so far. And again, overclocking this still held true, with it not much louder than the NH-U12A! CineBench R23 Weirdly, despite the lower temperatures the Cinebench score isn't the best, but as you can see, it's certainly holding its own. The score did go down with overclocking, but only a little, despite the lowest CPU temperatures we've had. I tested a few times, and this result held nearly the same, which is odd. However, from my own testing, the fan profile was very quiet, and if you push the fans up a little bit, you can get this to 27000-ish while still keeping the noise competitive with other 360mm radiators. How Much Does it Cost? Unfortunately, at the time of writing, there was no pricing information available, but I expect this will change very soon when stock lands at various retailers. I've no reason to suspect this won't be priced fairly similarly to rival products though, with perhaps a small premium to account for the inclusion of some fluid and other components to allow you to refill and maintain this cooler in the future. Overview Enermax has a really nice cooler on its hands here, and obviously, it's got the performance required to compete with any other premium AIO out there. However, while many brands are sticking LCD displays into their coolers and charging crazy prices, I actually prefer the quirky simplicity of a tiny ARGB fan in the pump. It gives it a shot of colour and something unique to help with the aesthetics of your build, and that's fine by me. Furthermore, this cooler comes with a small bottle of water for the radiator. There's a PSU jumper block in the box, so you can run the pump when it's not installed in your system, allowing you to bleed out any air bubbles, they even include thermal paste so you can reinstall it more than once. It's little details like this that make the LIQMAXFLO really stand out to PC enthusiasts, as it means you can keep this cooler running its best for a lot longer with very little effort. The build quality is great, perhaps just a small cut above the competition due to its serviceable nature. But even small details, like the paints and plastics they've used. They're a little darker black than most, and it just makes the cooler look and feel a little more premium, and small details like this certainly go a long way. I'm not usually a fan of proprietary connectors, but Enermax has this covered too. The fans daisy chain to each other with a single cable that handles both the PWM fans and the ARGB lighting, making cable management so much easier. However, it still has optional cables to break these into the standard 5V ARGB and 4-pin PWM cables, and there's a fan to SATA block should you need to power them directly. If that's not enough, there's a 24-pin cable block with a jumper pin, which can be used to trick the cooler into powering on using a PSU outside the system, allowing you to run the fluid through, clear bubbles, etc. Should I Buy One? A premium cooler, that's well made, stylish, and has some great ARGB lighting effects, plus it delivers performance that can clearly compete with the best of the best. So long as Enermax get good supply of this at UK retailers soon, they should be onto a winner here.