all right this must be the week of aios we have another one announced today
sapphire is getting into the standalone aio game with a rather arachnid look about this one
welcome to machines and more you know sapphire for being one of the premier board partners
for amd's graphics cards you know you've got the pulse the nitro plus and yes they've done hybrid
coolers with their toxic series so liquid coolant isn't that much of a stretch for this company now
the coolers on their cards are always among the highest performing cards within a particular chip
series and i think that's thanks to the large fans and the excellent heatsink design but this s240a
that we're checking out today and the s360a are standalone cpu coolers and that is a first for
sapphire and these fall into their nitro plus product line with branding and an aesthetic
that's distinctly nice row plus and the retail availability will coincide along with the launch
date which is today sapphire did provide the test unit today free of charge for testing purposes but
this video isn't sponsored and they aren't privy to the testing methodology and don't have any
insight into this content prior to the release and a big thanks to them for letting us check it out
so let's dive right in if you take a look at this pump head and it is so sick it's got the spider
look legs going down the sides the nitro plus robot face logo and the way it lights up is really
nothing earth shattering the way it looks when combined with the raised cover and the brushed
metal look it's quite a fashion statement moving on to the fans they're very similar to the fans
on the nitro plus rx 6000 series cards with what they are calling the hybrid fan blade design the
12 blades sit within a rim they are interconnected by a ring that's not shot at certain points
and it's definitely a consistent look compared to their graphics cards and this kind of ring design
fan has been popular uh just like the last ai we checked out in the pl240 from cooler master and
it's kind of like the p12 rgb also in the box you'll get the rad and the pump assembly this
is an ace attack unit with a gen 7 pump it's got articulating elbows at the pump head so
it's flexible copper cold plate with pre-applied thermal paste and you'll see the locking mechanism
and hardware and the coal plate this all pretty much looks the same as uh compared
to other acetate units the total height of this pump is a little taller because of that spider
looking cage at the top and the assembly sits at about 59 millimeters so make sure you have enough
clearance for that for this one the lga 1700 hardware is included so if you are rocking out
on elder lake already this is ready to go without having to request hardware now this might be the
best pack radiator that i've seen it comes with protector plates on it really nice gesture here
the two fans from first d it's a very cool looking fan design but the blades do have a quite a bit of
play here and a special cable connector delivers both fan power and the argb signal to it you'll
notice that the two fan connectors don't have the same socket the six wire fan being the one that
gives you the rpm readout back to your motherboard if you get the 240 version you'll also have
an unused socket on that cable that's for a third fan that's included with the 360 version these
connectors have a specific adapter cable that connects them all back to the pump head and yeah
there's a lot of cables here beyond that one and there's a pump header cable cpu fan header cable
sata power cable three pin rgb header connector and one that connects down to any other argb
devices to pass that signal through now in practice these weren't terrible to manage at
least they mostly all came out of one socket and that can be somewhat managed through the mounting
hardware rather elegantly but if you ever use an ac tech unit this is pretty typical for it
because they are argb you can get some really neat lighting effects the pump head looks really really
good and if your case is one where this can all be readily visible i think this will display very
nicely installation for this unit is similar to any ace attack unit and i really like this type
of four point mount for am4 it uses the stock back plate with standoffs and this firmly attaches to
your cpu with even pressure now once installed we can take a look at the noise normalized thermal
performance one thing is because the noise characteristics of this pump which i'll get to
in just a second i did have to limit it to seventy percent and this is fairly typical with ace attack
units where above that level it'll get clicky and very audible and that's the highest i would ever
consider running this pump here i'm testing with the usual cpu for this type of test uh the ryzen
73700x here at targeting 97 watts 4.3 gigahertz i'm testing at two noise levels and for the first
which is roughly one decibel above the noise floor the fans hit 1040 rpm and compared to some of the
other higher performing units on the market the performance does seem to be more on par with the
similarly aesthetically driven ml240 illusion with its stock fans this is the same pump as that on
the phanteks and the x53 so it really comes down to fan quality that's the distinction here at the
next higher noise level the fans go up to 1360 rpm and at that point it does pass the ml 240 illusion
it does seem to be more middle to bottom third of the pack right now when it comes
to thermal performance if you look at it another way the noise gap between this
and the x53 is about two ish decibels when you equalize the thermal performance
speaking of noise let's just take a quick listen to the fan at varying rpms and then the aesthetic
pump because i want to give you an idea of where you might want to limit the pumps rpm
so right around that 70 mark is a good stopping point right the fans do have some headroom also
above where i tested but above that 60 mark is where you start hitting the point of diminishing
returns you can get a lot more noise for very little thermal performance i tried to get one
but sapphire didn't commit to an msrp as they stated the price is going to fluctuate too much
from region to region and different retail outlets that is why you might want to give
such a recommended price point but okay i'll have to list retail prices down below when it does
become available but let's do this i'll frame my recommendation this way if we take a look at two
comparable units to this one in the nzxtx53 and the ml 240 illusion from cooler master both have
decent performance similar form factors and both these retail for about 120 us given that i don't
think this comes in at a price lower than either of those and especially since this is a newer
first generation lower volume product where asetek is the oem with the gen seven pump i
can only assume it's going to be higher than that and let's just say maybe 140 dollars
and lower than that yeah i think this aio might be palatable i think some of you especially if you
have a sapphire card you might find this really distinctive look worth paying the premium for i
really like it and i just think that pump cap is so so cool and if you're going for an all sapphire
build this would complete it even though the fans are scrolling average that may not matter to you
if you have a case where noise is well dampened and you can just run them a little bit faster or
if you're planning on swapping them out anyway well you know it doesn't really matter if you
do swap fans do keep in mind that you will have that cluster of cables coming out of the pump
head still and some of them will not need to be connected and having all those nitro plus goodies
in the build that's got to be worth something right for a more performance oriented build i
think you might think twice about this one since it's really more biased towards looks but for a
first generation product i think sapphire's design team did a really good job and this one sets the
stage for hopefully for some improvements and a future generation to come really it does come
down to these fans if they do a little work there this is going to be one unit to contend with and
sapphire is really good with fans as you know from their gpus so i think this has a lot of potential
so i'll do it for this review if you're interested in upgrading fans on your eio stay tuned since we
do have that round two 120 millimeter fan comparison coming up and i will be doing it
on this ao so please give a like subscribe links will be down below thanks for watching
you