The H7 Quad Lumi, one of Cryorig’s newest coolers, is here and threatening to shake
up the tower cooler game.
Howdy howdy guys ponchato here, and today we’ll be taking an in-depth look at the
H7 Quad Lumi including noise, temperature deltas, and RGB LED control with NZXT’s
CAM software.
Thanks to Cryorig for sending this one over for review, and let’s get started.
The H7 Quad Lumi, which is based on Cryorig’s highly rated H7, was released in June of 2017
at a launch price of $60 USD.
Compatible with LGA 1151, AM4, and LGA 2011, this cooler is ready to go for just about
any modern socket.
Case compatibility is great since it’s only 145mm tall, 123mm wide, and 98mm deep, which
means I’d classify this as a compact full-tower cooler.
The Quad Lumi is equipped with Cryorig’s QF120 white LED fan which is rated for 330
to 1600RPM and comes equipped with their HPLN or “High Precision, Low Noise” bearing
– probably just a variation on a sleeve or fluid dynamic bearing.
It has 4 heat pipes, one more than the original H7, that are 6mm in diameter, and interestingly
Cryorig chose not to make the heat pipes have direct contact with the CPU.
We’ll see if that affects performance later in the video.
The Quad Lumi is push/pull ready with an extra pair of fan clips and with all the improvements
over the original H7, Cryorig rates it for a 160W TDP.
That should cover just about any desktop CPU available today.
Inside the box the first thing you’ll see is the cooler itself.
Pretty.
In a smaller box, the mounting brackets for Intel and AMD systems, including a backplate.
On the other side is the box that contains the spare fan clips, mounting screws and nuts,
and a tube of Cryorig CP7 thermal paste.
Finally at the back of the box is the installation manual and warranty card, which is a hard
plastic card instead of just a piece of paper.
Fancy.
Oh and the manual promises a 5 minute installation but we’ll see about that.
The first thing I noticed when setting everything up for installation is that the AM4 mounting
bracket allows for the cooler to be mounted in any orientation.
Not many people will need flexibility past vertical mounting, but it’s nice that Cryorig
added that in.
The first step is to remove the stock AM4 brackets which the Quad Lumi doesn’t use,
and then to remove the stock backplate.
Next, you need to stick the mounting screws through the Quad Lumi’s backplate and make
sure they’re snapped into place so the backplate will hold them while you line everything up.
Next, line up the top plate with the mounting screws, make sure it’s all aligned, then
simply screw down the mounting nuts.
One thing that threw me off, however, was that the backplate isn’t completely fixed
before you install the cooler.
It won’t fall off, but it doesn’t sit still either.
I would’ve preferred a rigid mount right from the start, but it’s not too big a deal.
The next step was adding the included thermal paste onto the CPU heat spreader.
Because the Quad Lumi uses a solid plane instead of direct contact heat pipes, I just added
a pea-sized blob in the middle of the CPU.
After peeling off the protective plastic sticker on the heat sink, I lined it up with the mounting
bracket and set it down.
To finish the installation, you need to remove the fan, then tighten the two screws that
hold the tower to the mounting bracket.
Once those are tight, the fan clips back onto the tower.
These wire fan holders are a bit harder to deal with than mounting screws, but they take
so much less time that in my opinion, it’s well worth it.
Once the fan is secure, plug in the PWM wire to the CPU fan header and the USB wire to
one of the USB headers, and the Quad Lumi is ready to go.
Before we go further, I just wanted to show the Quad Lumi’s RAM clearance.
In fact, it doesn’t really have a RAM “clearance” since it sits completely behind the RAM slots.
So, good news for those of you with gigantic heat spreaders: the Quad Lumi don’t care.
After getting it installed, the first thing I wanted to play with was the RGB LED lighting
system.
The Quad Lumi has LEDs under the logo on top of the cooler and an LED strip at the base.
The logo and base LEDs are controlled by NZXT’s CAM software and the Quad Lumi can run a variety
of different colors and lighting effects.
The light settings include a fixed color, breathing effect, fading, marquee and multi-color
marquee, pulse, and my favorite, the spectrum wave.
Rainbows are neat.
You can also set the color to be based on your GPU temperature, CPU temperature, or
in-game FPS, and finally you have the option to sync the color to the audio coming from
your PC.
You can set independent profiles for the logo and underglow LEDs, in case you want that
extra level of customization.
In addition to picking the LED colors and effects, CAM also reports your CPU temperature,
fan speeds, and a few other bits of system info, including a graph if you’re into that
sort of thing.
My test bench for CPU coolers is a Ryzen 3 1200 overclocked to 4.1GHz at 1.35V on an
MSI B350M Gaming PRO motherboard, a passively cooled Nvidia GT 1030, and the Seasonic 850FX
Focus Plus which can run fanless under low load.
Because of all that, the only noise this system makes is from the CPU cooler itself, so noise
measurements are completely isolated.
All tests are run in open air, noise is recorded from 4 inches in front of the fan, and temperatures
are reported as deltas; degrees above ambient temperature.
First up we’ll look at the idle results which means minimum RPM and sitting idle at
the desktop.
At idle, most tower coolers can run essentially silent, so there isn’t much competition
here – my Ryzen 3 1200 only burns about 15 watts at idle, which means even the stock
cooler can run pretty much silent.
That said the Quad Lumi does keep it very cool at only 4 degrees above ambient, very
close to the much larger Gammaxx 400.
Next we’ll look at the coolers at full tilt, 100% RPM and under load with Prime95.
These results demonstrate the upper limits of cooling provided by these coolers and the
temperatures are, more often than not, limited by the heat sink itself rather than by fan
speed.
The Quad Lumi compares well with the Freezer 33 eSports One from Arctic; 1 degree warmer
but 3 decibels quieter, probably due to the Quad Lumi’s lower maximum RPM.
Here we’ll look at the RPM vs PWM graph, with the H7 Quad Lumi in purple.
On this chart, more linear is better.
The ideal result is a straight line from 0% PWM to 100%, which would indicate having the
most granular control over the fan’s RPM and therefore cooling and noise.
Based on that, the Quad Lumi’s PWM controller is fairly good, with about 80% of the PWM
range being usable.
This isn’t a terribly important metric in the grand scheme of things, but it’s something
to consider when looking at build quality.
Next we’ll take a look at the temperature delta vs RPM graph.
This graph basically tells us whether the cooler is limited by its airflow or by its
heat pipes’ ability to transfer heat – a leveling off at high RPM means additional
airflow won’t help much, which is typical for most tower coolers.
On the other hand if the curve never levels off, that indicates the cooler is limited
by airflow.
That can be seen clearly with the stock Ryzen 3 cooler in red and is common with all top-down
airflow coolers like it.
Based on this graph, as expected, the Quad Lumi appears to hit the limit of its heat
pipes before running out of airflow.
Finally we’ll look at the most important graph, temperature delta vs noise.
This answers the primary performance question for any cooler: how loud is it, and how well
does it cool?
Based on these results, the Quad Lumi seems to fall in line with what you’d expect from
a compact full tower cooler.
It roughly matches the Freezer 33, another compact full tower, and runs a few degrees
warmer than the larger Gammaxx 400.
When testing CPU coolers, I’m always hopeful to find one that bucks that trend, but the
unfortunate reality is you can’t beat physics.
CPU cooler design has been pretty much fully optimized, so outside of simply making the
heat sink bigger, there isn’t much room left for improvement.
That said the Quad Lumi can hit a 40 degree delta at well under 40 dB, which is great
for building a quiet system.
The last thing I wanted to note here is a very common occurrence with tower coolers,
and that’s the strong effect of diminishing returns as you increase fan speed.
Between 50% and 100% speed, the Quad Lumi runs 13 decibels louder but only drops the
delta by 2 degrees.
In fact, among upright tower coolers, I haven’t seen one that doesn’t do exactly that or
something very similar.
In other words, it’s very rarely worth it to turn up your fan curves past 50% or so,
even under load.
Now for the pros and cons.
On the pros side, the Quad Lumi is very quiet, especially at lower speeds.
If you have anything stronger than a GTX 1050 in your computer, in all likelihood, you’ll
never be able to hear the Quad Lumi to begin with.
Second, I really appreciate how easy installation was.
I remember back in the day, trying to install a CPU cooler usually meant getting at least
a few cuts from the fins.
That wasn’t even a consideration with the Quad Lumi; installation was fast, straightforward,
and easy.
I like that.
Finally, and this last one is completely subjective, the Quad Lumi is a gorgeous cooler.
Tower coolers are usually just an ugly rectangular box, sometimes with an LED fan slapped on
the front, but this one actually looks really nice.
The fin pattern is dope, the top plate is fitting and looks better than bare metal,
and the LEDs are just plain cool.
Even with the lights off, this cooler looks great.
No rose is without its thorns, though, so let’s take a look at the cons.
The first and easiest is price.
In my opinion, $60 is a bit steep for a CPU cooler.
Granted, most budget coolers don’t come with programmable RGB LEDs and multiple lighting
zones, and none of them look this good to begin with, but that comes with a higher cost.
Second, performance-wise, the Quad Lumi doesn’t really stand out.
To be fair, though, no one does.
We may just be at the upper physical limits of heat pipe and fin design, regardless of
who’s building or designing the cooler.
All in all I have to say I was really impressed with the H7 Quad Lumi.
It’s a super quiet cooler, and in my case I can leave it at 40% speed with the Ryzen
3 1200 never going above 70C, while emitting under 39dB.
That’s totally undetectable if you have a GPU or power supply fan, or a hard drive
in the same case.
Beyond that, it’s short enough to fit in almost any case, installation was stupid easy,
and it’s a really attractive cooler.
If you’re looking for an upgrade from a budget tower cooler, or a sweet addition to
a new build, Cryorig’s H7 Quad Lumi is well worth a look.
If you want to pick one up, follow the link in the description.
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and if you have any questions on the H7 Quad Lumi or these benchmarks, leave them in the
comments below.
Thanks for watching, I hope I helped, and I’ll see you in the next video.