The Aqirys Aquarius in the 360mm form comes in excellent packaging, which I personally find much better than most because it fully displays everything you need to know about this model even before you decide to purchase it. All dimensions are shown, so you can easily measure the space it will take up when installed, such as the distance from the VRM coolers or RAM in relation to the space offered by the case itself if the AIO is installed on top, for example. The same applies to smaller models in this product line.
In the package, standard for Aqirys, there’s a surprise right from the start - a foam that you can, but don’t have to, stick to the edges, which should eliminate fan vibrations or vibrations from the case - this addition isn’t necessary, since the fans themselves have rubberized sections on the corners, but you never know what kind of case the buyer will have. In any case, it’s better to have it and not need to use it, than the other way around.
Alongside welcome messages and instructions, Aqirys has included AQ-4 thermal paste with excellent specifications in terms of thermal conductivity and viscosity, and besides it, there’s also the AQ-6 model with even better characteristics. It’s nice of them to write down it`s specs, and the data itself is respectable, definitely in the range of better thermal solutions. Looking at the prices, the pastes are not expensive at all if you want to purchase them separately.
In the accompanying white box, there are all the mechanisms for mounting on AMD and Intel platforms, the Intel version looks a lot more complicated, but it covers several very different sockets so that every major platform is supported. The AMD solution is very simple and honestly looks identical to the one used by Cooler Master, it screws onto the pump base in the same way and is placed on the processor in the same way.
The hose that goes from the radiator to the pump is 450mm long and has excellent flexibility, I recently tested the Arctic Freezer III model and this is much better on Aqirys model in terms of maneuvering during installation and generally positioning in the case itself. The fans surprised me very positively, it’s a double ring ARGB implementation, with an illuminated rotor part as well, with rubberized edges to eliminate vibrations, milky white diffusion that looks premium, and standard 4-pin PWM and 3-pin 5V ARGB connections. So you can use them separately, put other fans on this radiator, etc. there will be no problems with some strange proprietary connections. But if we ignore all that, the main thing here is the static pressure of 85CFM, which is really huge, especially in combination with a rather thin radiator.
Among the accessories, you also get this PWM adapter to connect three fans to just one FAN connector on the board and you get this ARGB controller with a button for effects on it`s case if your board doesn’t have an ARGB output. In the build, I used the XO-1`s case controller which is also a great option.
Although I’m not a fan of this type of cooler mounting on an AMD processor, Aqirys here uses a better variant, identical to Cooler Master’s, which is that both screws are free and allow for even screwing. A worse variant of such attachment is found on, for example, Fractal’s Prism cooler where one side is a fixed hole and then if you don’t screw the other side properly, the cooler can stand at an angle, totally separated from the section of the IHS that heats up the most. Another downside of that Fractal attachment is with AM4 processors where any intervention means definitely pulling the processor out of the socket, just because of so much tension on one side of the attachment. Fortunately, Aqirys chose the better variant for the Aquarius model.
And finally, when everything is well screwed in, from the pump and base generally goes only one cable, which only at the top splits into a regular 4pin PWM and 3pin ARGB, usually, the connectors are located just like that on the boards, so this is done great. There’s no cable clutter and you get full control for each of the elements. You control the pump separately, the fans separately, and the ARGB separately - all as it suits you.
Since I’m in a slight deficit with processors, I only have two free ones, Ryzen 7 7700x with a 105W TDP and Ryzen 5 7500F with a 65W TDP. Both processors, for example, without their optimizations, are known to draw a lot more power than the declared TDP specifications, so the 7500F could go up to almost 95W and the 7700x without optimization can reach about 150W with newer BIOSes, especially if you enable that basic boost mode offered by some boards like the MSI Tomahawk model.
In the worst-case scenarios, without optimization, the temperature with this cooler on the 7700X reached just below 90 degrees, which is certainly high, but not something unheard of for X models, we’ve seen it quite a few times in other tests as well. So that’s at 147W consumption in the thermal throttling test scenario. The 7500F was cooler, of course, because it was pulling about 50 watts less.
If you decide on some light undervolting, you’ll be faced with a much better situation with temperatures, but I’ll emphasize - this is optional and I think that 90% of users don’t do this, but just so you know what is gained and what is lost with such procedures.
All in all, this isn’t some crazy groundbraking cooler, it’s hard to be an AIO player in a market where Arctic for example absolutely dominates and with this Aqirys Aquarius model, I didn’t see any drastic difference compared to, for example, the recently tested Arctic Freezer III but in it`s 240mm version, and that’s quite important to mention because of the dimensions, since you’ll easily fit a 240mm into many more cases than this 360mm. That doesn’t mean this cooler is bad because it still had a few degrees lower results, but it shows how strong the competition is in this segment.
Useful links:
Aqirys Aquarius 360mm