The DeepCool Captain 240 EX RGB AIO Cooler Review: Pump it Up, Without the Noise
by E. Fylladitakis on December 14, 2017 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- AIO
- Deepcool
- Cooler
Conclusion
DEEPCOOL obviously wanted to keep things simple and risks low with the release of the Captain EX 240 RGB. They simply took the core design of their former all-in-one cooler, the Captain EX 240, and added RGB lighting to it. The Captain EX 240 was a commercially successful product, with good ratings and proven performance. Adding RGB lighting to it should have been a trivial matter for DEEPCOOL’s engineers and the production of the new model would not require any significant production line modifications, allowing the company to quickly market a competitively priced cooler with RGB lighting.
The stock thermal performance of the DEEPCOOL Captain EX 240 RGB is average. The Captain EX 240 RGB actually falls behind most of the similarly sized AIO coolers that we have tested to this date. DEEPCOOL’s unique fans do not seem to help with the cooler’s thermal performance either, as the thin radiator has low-to-medium airflow impedance and limited dissipation surface. Only significantly higher airflow fans would be able to make an actual difference here.
On the other hand, DEEPCOOL’s engineers designed the TF120 fans to be quiet, and quiet they are. That makes the Captain EX 240 RGB one of the quietest dual-fan AIO coolers in our database. Many competitive products that offer better thermal performance than the Captain EX 240 RGB also are much louder. The only (similarly sized) direct competitors of the Captain EX 240 RGB in terms of silent operation are the Fractal Design Celsius S24 and the Alphacool Eisbaer 240, which lack RGB lighting and/or retail at a significantly higher price.
The highlight of the DEEPCOOL Captain EX 240 RGB is neither its thermal performance or the quiet operation, but its design. The Captain EX 240 RGB implements the same “external circulation” design that made its predecessor famous, which is a nothing more than a short glass tube attached on the CPU block assembly. It is just an aesthetic upgrade that has no practical purpose, yet it was enough to improve the popularity of the Captain EX 240. The unique feature of the Captain EX 240 RGB is the addition of RGB lighting, which may be a double-edged knife for some users. The operation of the RGB LEDs requires a controller and, if the motherboard does not have RGB strip header(s), the controller that DEEPCOOL provides is very basic and requires opening up the case every time you want to change a setting/color. Users that like very clean designs would probably prefer to purchase the Captain EX 240 over its RGB variant, sacrificing the RGB lighting for fewer cables and gizmos to hide. Finally, the rubber tubing perhaps is a bit too thick and inflexible, but it definitely is very tough, and its exterior layer has it looking much like a high-pressure braided hose.
The current retail price of the DEEPCOOL Captain EX 240 RGB is $120 including shipping, placing it dangerously close to other products that may be lacking the RGB lighting but offer better overall performance. The vanilla Captain EX 240 retails for $90 and is virtually the same cooler, minus the RGB lighting and the extra RGB strip. For people who value quiet operation over raw thermal performance and want a quality product, either version of the Captain EX 240 is a sensible choice and may even be quite the bargain during a sale. Whether the addition of RGB lighting is worth the extra $30, we leave this decision to you.
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Galid - Thursday, December 14, 2017 - link
By the time you whined about how things should be done, I had two pages opened, I can tell you this: you get lower noise on air coolers in most scenario but delta over ambient on the worst AIO is lower than the best air cooler at 150w load.I would have loved it if there was two relevant air coolers included in these graphs but nothing to write a page about.
bananaforscale - Wednesday, June 20, 2018 - link
You are asking for apples to apples comparisons on coolers with requirements *that aren't the same* (packaging is a huge deal), therefore your logic breaks down.kevbev89 - Thursday, December 14, 2017 - link
I agree with what tricomp and rtfmx9 said... the "apples to apples" reasoning doesn't apply here. From personal experience a ton of people are always asking is water cooling better than air. From a functional standpoint they both serve the same exact purpose.jabber - Thursday, December 14, 2017 - link
I buy AIO coolers mainly because I don't care about getting max cooling efficiency and I think AIO coolers just look far far better than chunks of chrome plated tin in my rig. I'm sure I'm not the only one.Yuriman - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link
I'm sure you're not. I personally have a side panel on my case and can't see the cooler, so effectiveness and price (value) are the factors important to me.SilthDraeth - Thursday, December 14, 2017 - link
I am so glad that you are here to tell your audience that they are wrong and they don't actually want the products compared, despite the numerous comments suggesting and requesting a direct comparison. You must work for Apple. Even though we all ask for the comparison, and believe that they are competing with each other (after all, they serve the same purpose, cooling your system, so I fail to see how you can't correlate that they would be competing for our dollars), yet, we should just forget our own thoughts, and jump on your bandwagon of no need to compare in the review because they are entirely different types of cooling...Then you finish it off with your condescending "the magic of our professional equipment" line, and "you can easily go look up previous reviews the the information you want" attitude. You are the one being payed to write these reviews. Yes a ton of use have used the past data to find things, but it isn't always so clear cut, if you can't remember an exact model name, or as has happened, the data isn't on the site anymore, or is a bear to find.
Seriously, in the past, I remember they used to have a drop down menu with all the reviewed GPU, or CPU and it was easy to find the information. I don't see that anymore, since the site got redesigned.
So get off your high horse, and lose the snarky attitude. I swear, since Purch bought Anandtech the quality and the attitude has stunk.
SilthDraeth - Thursday, December 14, 2017 - link
Ok, I found the the area I was referencing. "Bench" at the top of the site and yes, the cooling data is in there. Though, I would hope the methodology has remained constant.DanNeely - Thursday, December 14, 2017 - link
It probably is. For other tests when methodology changes the benchmark name changes; which is why you've got things like "GPU 2017".PeachNCream - Thursday, December 14, 2017 - link
Air coolers and liquid coolers absolutely are direct competition with one another and I think it's incorrect to state that they're not. It'd be helpful to a number of readers to include a couple of air coolers (maybe the OEM sorts to form a baseline and one or two aftermarket models) without telling your readers to go fish in old articles. :(normadize - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link
A rather disappointing comment, especially coming from AT. You claim testing is repetitive and that we can look at (much) older reviews and trust the numbers are comparable.While you are not exactly an engineer, you could document yourselves a little better. The ambient temperature could not have been exactly the same. You persist in showing delta above ambient in all your reviews, which is an incredibly misleading figure for anyone without an engineering background: temperature does not have a linear dependency with the causing factors (e.g. power draw increases quadratically with frequency, etc) and the same goes for ambient temperature. Heat up your room by 20C and then run the exact same tests and you'll see different delta-over-ambient figures.
You should stop showing delta-over-ambient and instead include ambient temp and device temp in each of your graph. That's far more informative.