Review on 💦 GIGABYTE AORUS RGB AIO Liquid Cooler 360mm Radiator, Triple 120mm Windforce PWM Fans, Full Color LCD Display, Advanced RGB Lighting and Control, Intel 115X/2066, AMD AM4/TR4 Compatible by Dave Goodman

*Actually last update in a few months* So this thing has been running stable ever since I bled it and concluded that the 5800X is hard to cool with ANY cooler. I have since replaced the 5800X with the 5900X and the temps are more reasonable. Under 60 when the games are usually higher. The idle temperature is still a bit high at 34-36 degrees, but the system does everything it should. Playing with a negative curve in the curve optimizer also helps offset some of the heat. On top of that, the system still works, and I'm glad it does. ------- *LAST UPDATE (unless there is a catastrophic failure)* - So Galahad came along and I quickly installed it, was impressed with the build. , fit and everything is ready. I realized that the mounting system for AM4 is absolutely terrible. Still installed. Immediately touched in Cinebench. I removed the pump to see that only one edge of the die was in contact with the cold plate. I fell in love with Galahad's RGB effects, despite its pathetic performance due to the terrible editing options, and made the decision to send it back and turn my attention back to Aorus. I rubbed the cold plate very gently and noticed a "cup" in the middle of the cold plate. Fresh thermal paste was applied again and although the idle temperature did not improve, the load temperature dropped by about 2 °C. Still a miserable fit above 80C under load, but spike sharpness has been greatly reduced. I'm now (usually) below 40C when idling. Temperature under load is usually around 83C. If I hadn't run out of sandpaper I could have completely smoothed out the curvature of the cold plate and gotten acceptable temperatures. Once I have more sandpaper and the desire to do so, I'll finish lapping this board, making it much more efficient for the job it's supposed to do, but then at this price I don't have to fix the manufacturer's flaws. My previous updates and unedited review are below. Since the cooler is ok now, I'll change the rating to 3 stars, although the RGB effects on the fans aren't very smooth (galahad impressed me with their smoothness and quality), the cold plate needs to be "fixed" ", the software is hot junk, price escalation, and fans really only lend themselves to forced configuration. Just be aware of what you're getting and the possible failures of getting it. ----------- ------------------------------------------------ --- ------------*Update - Day 2. It's now consistently 20°C warmer than the Hyper 212 I'm using. I've been messing around with pump/fan speeds and it's 51°C the lowest I can get this to work.After doing some research this cooler appears to have serious flaws although it is not yet on the brink of mass failure.Idle temps have been steady at 51C all day.Stayed at 50 for a few seconds total drop °C.i found that when booting, entering bios and monitoring temp the temp immediately rises to 60c and then very gradually drops to 50s and today to 40s when the pump starts pumping liquid. I really want to love this cooler because of the LCD but for the price it's horribly bad. The LCD display (whose animation and color gradients aren't even very smooth) isn't worth the three-figure premium on the price tag. POSSIBLY I'd like to try the third one at this point and if it doesn't work the first time, pop in the cold plate, although that should never be a requirement for a cooler at any price point. *Update - Day 3. Galahad hasn't arrived since, I keep using it, and on day 3 of loading the idle temp was 69-70C. I accidentally got the idea to prime the pump and see if it helps , what I did. The squeaking on reboot/shutdown has decreased significantly (updated only twice. Loud squeaking of the suspend is back at full volume), although it's still present. The idle temperature dropped to 40 degrees, which to be honest is still too much. 3 runs of Cinebench r23 showed a peak temperature of 85C, which to be honest is still too much. It's still up in the air to replace this or just return it. My third could be a lot worse and at this point it's just a waste of time. *Update - Day 4. The Aorus software stopped communicating with the LCD even though it was still running in the background so the LCD was just showing a static amount of temperature at the moment it decided to break. I had to do a software reset to fix the problem. I also noticed unusually high background CPU usage due to RGB Fusion and the Aorus engine, and shutting them down resulted in an immediate 3C drop in CPU temp. This software is complete garbage. When running RGB Fusion alone on a Hyper 212, this never happened. The addition of the Aorus engine software seemed to cause the two programs to be overused. While the system's idle temperature is still high (drops only briefly to 38°C, then rises back up to 41°C), it reached 37°C for the first time since I've had this cooler on Windows (and therein lies the biggest problem.) At this point I'm unlikely to continue using this cooler and put the Hyper 212 back in. I can return it for the final exchange (seems to be another week for Brown Galahad to deliver although it's less than 6 hours away) and see if it works and if not I'll be more than happy to have one Get a full refund for this cooler and never use another Gigabyte AIO again. Although I haven't had any issues with their motherboards in over 12 years, the cooler is far from being worth the money a serious performer should be at the price it's being sold for, especially above the half past one mark. --- First Review --- The first Aorus AIO I got from AMZN wasn't double boxed you box. and the box was dented, no big deal as the cooler itself was still in good condition right? no The one who boxed first had the softness of an angry hippopotamus. Simply bend ribs by 8-10%. At this price there should be less than 1% curved fins. The replacement I got from the egg was flawless. Less than 1% bent the fins (they can't all be perfect) and after cleaning the included gupa I applied some Cryonout and immediately noticed my cold plate looks like it just came out of a meat grinder. Well I tried anyway. In short, it looks great, but it performs like a $30 Chinese 120mm lens. Derived from the Hyper 212 (an air cooler that costs forty-five dollars), this cooler runs 13°C higher and reaches 90°C, while the Hyper 212 typically idles at around 32°C and peaks at around 88°C. I also noticed that there was a loud squeak when the pump stopped when it was first turned off. Then restarted, everything turned on normally, there is no pump noise, the fan noise is normal, but I'm not sure if the pump stops when turned off. (Update - this happened a few more times, once when pressing ctrl+alt+del from BIOS for a quick reboot and once during windows initialization. The pump had no problems other than those times.) Attach thermal insert and see if it makes a difference, but I also noticed that the cold plate does NOT sit completely flush. When I first pulled it out to inspect, a mound of paste formed in the bottom left corner of the cube while the rest detached and spread throughout the cube. Not exactly a scientific view, but due to the nature of your job, if you apply thermal paste multiple times a day, you can sometimes notice things. (Update - I adjusted all the mounts and reapplied the MX4. Same problem. Temps are still too high.) Cinebench R23 went from 15.0xx to 14.8xx-14.9xx on the 5800x coming off the Hyper 212. Sitting at a working desk while typing this review in Opera, my processor is idle at 46C. (Update - after reassembling and reapplying a different paste after a thorough cleaning I'm currently sitting at 48C. Too much for idling. Another downside if you have a very dusty house like mine and in a pull configuration these fans have cut outs and only work really well in push mode. In a pull configuration there will be a large air gap between the fins and the heatsink. Worst case I have Galahad because Brown lost that one. Kinda have she managed to find him after losing (this is the first one) and i bought a new galahad because i did NOT want to pay almost three hundred the moment this happens, i might well get another one because this one looks like a flop so far Worst case I will also try my MX4 thermal paste and see if the Cryonaut suits me Just a bad batch though l I doubt it's also ohm expensive for underpowered.) Will update as things develop and whether or not I can get it to work properly. It looks like I've just received two bad ones in a row, although I wasn't able to test the first one due to the obvious flaws of the person who boxed it.