Best cheap liquid cooler
Deepcool Gammaxx L240 V2
The best budget liquid cooler
Socket support: Intel LGA1700, LGA1200, LGA115x, LGA2066, AMD AM5, AM4, AM3, AM2, FM2, FM1
Full radiator dimensions: 280 x 120 x 27 mm
Fan speeds: 500–1800 RPM
Noise level: Up to 30 dB(A)
Effectively silent at idle
Can get loud under significant CPU load
✅ If you want great value for money: You can get smaller, cheaper liquid coolers but honestly buy an air cooler if you wanna go smaller than 240 mm (unless you need to fit cooling into a weirdly small space).
❌ If you want more bling: Beyond the colorful light show, this cooler looks cheap.
Deepcool is well known for its capable AIOs at affordable prices, and the Gammaxx L240 V2 is the best budget liquid cooler on the market. That makes it a great option for users looking to step up from air cooling into the world of AIO cooling.
The Gammaxx 240 mm features basic RGB lighting on the pump head and fans. There’s a more expensive ARGB version, should you really want it. Deepcool likes to talk about its ‘Anti-leak technology,’ which seeks to maintain an optimal pressure balance inside the loop. Which certainly can’t hurt.
The Gammaxx 240 can also cool most processors, though, like many of the chip chillers on this list, it draws the line at AMD's Threadripper beasts. But it keeps the rest running with remarkably low noise levels, which is one of the main reasons we recommend it.
At idle, the L240 is effectively silent. As you’d expect, you will start to see an increase in temperatures and noise levels with high TDP processors, especially when overclocking. Our 5800X CPU with PBO enabled is about the maximum we’d consider appropriate for a 240 mm cooler. Under load, the fans can and do ramp up quite a bit.
If you’re after a 240 mm AIO that’s inexpensive and quiet under less demanding loads, then the Deepcool Gammaxx L240 is a great choice. Sure, its noise levels can get high if you push it hard, but at this price, it comes highly recommended.
Do I need liquid cooling if I don't overclock my CPU?
Liquid cooling can undoubtedly give your processor the thermal headroom it needs to run comfortably overclocked, but you might want an AIO in your system for other reasons. The vainest is the aesthetic—not having a huge hulking heatsink clogging up your chassis when there's a Perspex peephole to show off your components is often desirable.
That can also play into having a smaller chassis entirely. Liquid coolers can often give you the thermal performance to run a high-spec CPU in a small chassis where you can only fit a weaker, small-form air cooler.
Is liquid cooling quieter than air cooling?
Generally, an all-in-one liquid CPU cooler will be quieter than an air cooler mounted directly on the processor. That's because the fans attached to the cooling radiator are generally larger and can therefore spin slower than an air cooler. The water pump is often well insulated, but there can be some noise from this part.
But there are large air coolers with big heatsinks and large fans that can compete well with the noise generation of an AIO liquid cooler. The Noctua NH-D15, for example, has two 140mm fans and is very quiet in operation. The quietest of all would be an entirely passive cooler with no moving parts whatsoever. However, those can't always cope with the hottest and most heavy CPUs.
Best high-end air cooler
Best high-end liquid cooler
How does liquid cooling work anyway?
The coolant passes through a closed loop via a plate attached to your CPU, and in combination with the attached radiator and fan, it cools the CPU. It's simple and a hundred times easier to install than an entire water-cooling loop.
Corsair iCUE H170i Elite Capellix XT
The best high-end liquid cooler
Socket support: Intel LGA1700, 1200, 115X, 2066, and AMD Socket AM5 and AM4
Full radiator dimensions: 457 x 140 x 27 mm
Fan speeds: 500–1,700 RPM
Noise level: Up to 35.8 dBa
Excellent cooling performance
Looks surprisingly classy for all those RGB LEDs
Not a bad price for a cooler of this size
✅ If you want performance and surprisingly lovely RGB lighting: It's not only a mean cooler, it's also pretty lovely to look at.
❌ If you don't have a big case: A 420 mm cooler is, like, really big. Many cases won't fit it, so triple-check your measurements.
Coming in as our pick for the best high-end liquid cooler is the Corsair iCUE H170i Elite Capellix XT. There's a whole lot of cooling performance on offer with the H170i Elite—if you can look past its absolutely ridiculous name, that is.
This cooler's excruciatingly long name does hint at its massive size, at least. This is a triple 140mm fan cooler, and as such requires plenty of room inside a chassis to mount it. You'll need a gap for a 420 mm radiator to sit somewhere, and only some larger or cleverly designed cases can manage it. But in return it can run those three fans relatively slowly, and that means quieter operation, yet with excellent thermal performance.
This is actually the liquid cooler we have hooked up to our test rig right now, and we've found it to be excellent for keeping Intel and AMD's latest CPUs in check. That includes today's best CPUs, such as the Ryzen 9 7950X and Core i9 13900K, which all ran without any issue whatsoever with this cooler attached.
There are smaller sizes available with the same fans and cooler setup as this 420mm beast. The most popular of the lot is perhaps the 240 mm version, which should fit most modern PC cases.
If you're looking for over-the-top cooling, however, it's this 420 mm liquid cooler that we feel is best for the job.
How do you test CPU coolers?
Like most components, choosing the right CPU cooler depends on several variables, including performance requirements, case compatibility, budget restrictions, and aesthetics. We test performance using Prime95 and a mixture of modern PC games for extensive stress testing to find the best CPU coolers. Our top selections were based on thermal performance, noise, value, and overall feature sets.
Best CPU 2023: the nominees
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
