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Gamer Storm is Deepcool’s “gaming” brand. There are still no keyboards and mice in its product lines, and it consists mainly of the same cases, air and liquid cooling systems, fans and power supplies. However, the peculiarity of Gamer Storm is that only the best gets here from what the company’s engineers manage to develop and produce. And in this review, we will look in detail and try out a new two-section flagship CPU cooler under the menacing name Assassin III.
Packing and scope of delivery
The large package of the cooler is decorated in quite calm gray-green colors, which are hardly associated with its aggressive positioning. On the front part there is an image and the name of the product, on the sidewalls the advantages of the cooler, its technical characteristics and dimensions are listed in symbolic and textual form. Protection against damage inside is provided by polyurethane foam pads. For the safety of the content, you can be calm.
The delivery set looks rich. The great thing here is a quality Phillips screwdriver with a magnetized tip. The rest of the list, in addition to the radiator and two fans, includes:
- installation instructions;
- syringe with thermal paste;
- plastic card for uniform application of thermal paste;
- a napkin to remove old paste;
- Two adhesive Gamer Storm logos
- metal Gamer Storm logo and double-sided 3M tape under it;
- three pairs of mounting brackets for fans;
- splitter from one connector to two to four contacts, for a fan;
- two step-down resistors LSP;
- two mounting feet for AMD sockets;
- two mounting feet for Intel sockets;
- universal reinforcing plate made of plastic;
- four screw racks for Intel LGA2011 sockets;
- four screw studs;
- four metal supports for mounting feet with insulators;
- four knurled nuts with a hole for a flat and Phillips screwdriver.
Appearance
Gamer Storm Assassin III is a classic two-section tower. The design uses aluminum for the heat sink fins and copper for the heat pipes. And yet, in the best traditions of cooler design, everything is covered with nickel, and all connections are soldered. The mass of the device, excluding fans and mounts, is 900 grams. When fully assembled, the weight reaches almost 1.5 kg.
The body of the heatsink consists of 44 fins strung on seven 6mm copper heat pipes spaced evenly across the entire width. The gap between the ribs is 2.1 mm. For those who think that this is a lot, we recall that Assassin II had eight tubes in total. The manufacturer claims that the maximum thermal package of this product can reach 280 watts. The heat dissipation area is approximately 11800 cm2. There is no aerodynamic optimization of the plates, they are just smooth on large edges. The width of the radiator in this projection is 138 mm.
In profile, both sections have a width of 50 mm and a gap of 35 mm in the middle. It is easy to calculate that the thickness of the radiator is 135 mm. The side faces of the ribs are bent at 90 degrees and thus create a side wall. It is good for two reasons at once – the radiator becomes stronger, the plates do not stick to each other. And such a sidewall does not allow the air flow to leave the ribs ahead of time and go to the sides. The bottom three plates are trimmed on the outside to improve RAM compatibility.
In order to somehow decorate the cooler, the uppermost plates on both sections were made mirrored, and the ends of the heat pipes were covered with a glossy plastic panel. According to the original idea, the Gamer Storm logo was still supposed to show off on it, but it did not live up to the “release”.
In profile, the plate looks like a racing car wing. In principle, not bad, but the actual height of the radiator with it grows to 167 mm. On the other hand, at least there is no RGB backlighting here, which will appeal to opponents of this trendy trend in the gaming device market today.
A metal bar with two spring-loaded screws is responsible for pressing the cooler to the processor. It is screwed to the massive base with two hexagonal screws.
Seven heat pipes are beautifully and neatly pressed into the base of the cooler and soldered at the junctions. Separately, it is worth noting that these pipes are unusual, but made using the “sintering” technology (sinter). On the inner surface of the heat channel there is a porous layer of baked copper powder, which enhances the capillary effect, and the coolant evaporates, taking away heat much faster.
The nickel-plated base has a conical shape of grinding with a protruding center that is noticeable even to the naked eye. However, this is not at all the Thermalright proprietary hump that has been pushing through the covers on delicate Intel processors since the 6th generation. It’s just a 0.1mm rise, everything else is fairly even. The size of the sole is 45×43 mm.
As stock fans, Assassin III comes with two 140mm models with an unusual rounded frame. They are marked as Gamer Storm TF 140S (DFR1402512CM). The bearing is hydrodynamic, the speed range is from 400 to 1400 rpm and is controlled by PWM. You can lower the upper speed limit to 1000 rpm using the included LSP resistors. The maximum noise level is 56 dB (A), it is well audible, but there are no annoying overtones in the frequency range. The propeller becomes conditionally silent at 750 rpm and 40 dB (A). To improve aerodynamics, there are additional spoilers on the “lee” edges of the blades, which increase the amount of air pumped and reduce the turbulence of the flow to reduce noise. The power cord is tape, with four pins, 400 mm long. Near the mounting holes of the frame (calculated, by the way, for a 120-mm standard size), there are rubber pads on each side to reduce vibrations. Fans weigh 156 grams. In general, the propellers turned out to be quite successful, they can both create a powerful air flow and operate almost silently.
The fans are attached to the radiator with conventional wire brackets, which allow you to adjust the height of the frame.
If you want to win back a couple more degrees of CPU temperature, the kit includes a set of brackets for the third fan.
And in this form, the user will observe the cooler in his case most of the time.
Let’s move on to installing and testing the cooler.
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