Sapphire NITRO+ AIO 240 & 360mm CPU Cooler Review

A Closer Look

At an initial glance, the Sapphire NITRO+ AIO liquid coolers look very impressive. While this might be Sapphire’s first attempt at such a product, aesthetically, it certainly looks nice with a lot of excellent features built into the overall design. However, as this is an AIO, there are clearly more than a few individual components that deserve a closer look!

CPU Block

The CPU block for the Sapphire NITRO+ is undoubtedly one of the most unique designs I have ever encountered. Without giving too many spoilers away before we actually turn the ARGB on, a quick look at this perhaps explains that somewhat cryptic image we saw on the front of the packaging.

Aesthetically speaking though, this is a tough one. Some will absolutely love this bold design while others, we daresay, will think it a bit too over the top!

The contact plate comes with an exposed copper surface that has been polished to an exceptionally high standard. Offering plenty of space too, this shouldn’t just easily cover and accommodate pretty much all mainstream desktop processors, but also Intel’s brand new (and relatively unusually shaped) Alder Lake-S (LGA 1700) CPUs.

Although you are not provided with any thermal compound in the accessories, the contact plate comes out of the box with it pre-applied instead. While some will always prefer to utilise their own brand of choice, for those inexperienced with CPU cooler installation, this should represent a very welcome sight that takes one of the more challenging (and controversial) aspects of installation and solves the problem entirely!

The only area of the CPU block that concerns me is the absolutely masses of cabling coming from it. It would appear that Sapphire has chosen to effectively make it act as the central hub for everything. And this even includes both the speed and ARGB lighting control for the radiator fans. There are, roughly, 6 cables running from this including a SATA (for power), two PWM cables, 2 ARGB lighting cables, as well as an adaptor to daisy chain your radiator fans.

As you can see below, there is so much cabling that Sapphire has felt compelled to wrap it in a velcro strap. If nothing else, and putting potential cable management/installation problems to one side, this is certainly intimidating!

Radiator

The radiator for the Sapphire NITRO+ has one of the most bizarre inclusions I have ever seen. Both the 240mm and 360mm models come with plastic radiator fin protectors. Put simply, I have never seen this before on any AIO cooling solution. Do they work? Well, I suppose so in theory. By and large, though, they seem completely pointless to me. Almost like someone at Sapphire thought ‘Hey! if we put these on, that’ll impress people and really highlight what a premium product this is!’.

Well, rather than impressed, I’m just confused. I mean, extra protection in ensuring your product arrives in perfect condition is always nice. I do, however, think that this is taking things a bit too far!

The radiator itself is fairly standard. It’s a black rectangle and pretty much visually identical to any other AIO radiator. I must admit though, it is perhaps a little disappointing to not find at least some branding on it!

The fins to the radiator are well presented with them being nice, tight, and compact, while still allowing for plenty of airflow through them. In addition, there are no dents either! That must be thanks to those plastic covers! Albeit, the fact that they only cover one half does seem to only add to the bizarre nature of their appearance in the first place!

Getting things back on a more mundane level, a huge plus mark for both the 240mm and 360mm models here is that the radiator hoses (leading to the CPU block) are nicely protected within a woven casing. In addition, they are also decently long meaning that installing this shouldn’t prove to be a challenge within any compatible PC case.

Fans

Out of all of the individual components of the Sapphire NITRO+, the fans are perhaps the most concerning. Aesthetically speaking, however, they certainly look nice, and offering a single cable for both the speed and ARGB, cable management for them should be very pretty easy.

Oh, and at the risk of telling you the obvious, you get 2 x 120mm with the 240mm AIO and 3 x 120mm for the 360mm variant!

On the whole, while the fans look nice, they are rather basic. There is very little antivibration padding to the corners, and, on the whole, and only on closer inspection, just appear to be a little cheap.

This theory does perhaps get hammered home when you look at the manufacturer of the fans. While it’s never unusual for AIO liquid coolers to feature third-party fans, have you ever heard of ‘First D’? – No? Well, given that this is what I do for a living and I’ve not, that clearly shouldn’t make you feel ashamed of any apparent ignorance! – Put simply, given that I’ve never seen these used in anything before (let alone ever heard of them), I have no prior history to fall back on which only makes me a little concerned about what kind of performance they’ll give.

I hope that I’ll be impressed, but something tells me I won’t.

Overall

As an assembled unit, the Sapphire NITRO+ looks like a pretty imposing and sleek AIO liquid cooler. Admittedly, the aesthetics will not suit all and I suspect that in many regards this has possibly taken too much of a leaning towards the something of a trend seen in the Asia market (a moderate tradition for eye-candy over understated). On the whole though, I think I rather like it!

As you can see, both the 360mm and 240mm versions are pretty much exactly the same. Albeit, and this is just my own personal opinion, I think the longer 360mm version carries the aesthetic off significantly better out of the two. The overall aesthetics just seem to look nicer with the more (completely erroneous) slender style.

However, I wonder if the Sapphire NITRO+ looks better without the ARGB switched on in many respects. As you’re shortly about to see, whatever you might take away from this being a silky smooth and professional-looking AIO cooler, this is very quickly destroyed(?) by the full, bright, and vivid rainbow offered in the ARGB spectrum.

While this might be Sapphire’s first AIO liquid cooler, they certainly haven’t skimped here with the ARGB lighting. Starting with the CPU block, as alluded to on the main packaging image, this is certainly a very unique and eye-catching design. Even the eyes on the creature logo (I have no idea what it actually is) light up!

While this is perhaps aesthetically challenged (in that some will love it while others will hate it), the effects on offer here are varied, amazingly bright, and actually are among some of the best I’ve ever seen.

This is, of course, carried through onto the radiator. Again, the ARGB lights are amazingly potent and offer some very pretty patterns that should, at least in theory, suit all tastes. As above though, I can’t help but feel that for as good as the ARGB is, once it’s turned on it does kind of detract from the sleek style of the ‘base’.

Beauty is, however, always in the eye of the beholder. So in this regard, you’re going to have to make your own mind up. However, before we get onto the performance, what’s the installation like? Well, let’s find out!