I bought the cheapest liquid CPU cooler on AliExpress… - Is it any good?

There are plenty of aftermarket cooling options out there for your processor, and they don't have to be expensive. Today we're taking a look at possibly the cheapest 120mm AIO on AliExpress, the IWONGOU, and seeing how it compares to one of the lowest cost budget air cooler, the Thermalright Assassin King SE.
0:00 Unboxing and Info
2:38 Setup
3:43 RGB! and Noise Level
4:26 Temperatures
5:31 Comparison To Cheap Air Cooler (Thermalright)
7:24 Final Words
IWONGOU Coolers:
www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesal...
Thanks for watching :)

[@mzmknight]

These cheap testing vids of parts and pcs are ACC so useful and fun

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Thanks! Always hope to help someone out :)

[@scottmcdowall4230]

The problem with Buying Cheap isn't the performance, it is the fact that companies cut corners especially stuff made in China, If you bought 100 of these in bulk between 10 To 25 will be faulty.

[@ikram2512]

​@@scottmcdowall4230do u really expect 10-15 years old durability on 20 dollar aio?

[@scottmcdowall4230]

@@ikram2512 I did mean initial performance, but you make a valid point, I have never used an AIO, so I don't really know how many potential points of failure there are so I couldn't possibly answer the question, Might be worth the risk on an ultimate budget build.. But I mostly mean stuff from china in general have those failure rates in bulk sales..

[@alrecks619]

@@scottmcdowall4230 people usually buy cheaper coolers so they can invest on more expensive ones later down the road, though.

[@stefankoopmans2200]

This brand is pretty legit. I have 2 PC's equiped with these cheap 50 Euro 240mm versions (white, with ARGB). They work very well and are pretty quiet. I also added buck convertors (like 2,5 Euro ps) to manually set the RPM value to make them dead silent. I use them on a 14 Core socet X99 Xeon and a 6 core 1366 Xeon. Those machines are all Ali-express motherboard and CPU combo's you can buy for very cheap. My main GamePC is also equipped with full custom waterloop GPU + CPU (mainly Bykski and Freezemod brand). Really cool affordable stuff. It's about 3x cheaper compared to western brands. I was very impressed when I found out all this stuff a year ago. Everything is still working great.

[@user-oe5rd1uh8r]

is x99 supported out of the box becouse i wanted one but didn't se on the supported list eather x99 or 2011

[@extracoolboy]

Would you say that these MBs are safe to use? I was kinda afraid of possible UEFI malware or backdoor with these.

[@stefankoopmans2200]

@@extracoolboy To be fair, I don't really know. For my usecase this is not important so I don't care. I guess If stuff like that bothers you, you should avoid buying these. Maybe there are some tech reviewers that dive into this stuff though but I'm curious as to how easy we are able to detect sneaky backdoors etc.

[@extracoolboy]

@@stefankoopmans2200 I mean yea, this has happened to legit MB manufacturers, so I would be extra careful with something from Ali. You never know.

[@ivanvladimir0435]

@@extracoolboy I have used them before, I haven't had any issues so far

[@sirtanon1]

Wow. I was literally just looking at this cooler in Ali Express.. what timing!

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Awesome :)

[@nunofernandes4501]

IWONGOU SO MUCH, BABE...

[@rpreto72]

your garden is very neat

[@haniffhussein]

just missing some gnomes

[@chipwitgaming]

Interesting. Thanks for the review!! I agree that in your use case, air cooling just seems safer if both solutions are giving you a temp under 60 degrees with only 4 degrees of separation. No reason to risk a budget liquid cooler failing and drenching your system.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Thanks for watching :)

[@blizyon30fps86]

That rarely happens though with aios like extremely rare even in budget cases you’re more likely to have a psu failed than aio

[@stefankoopmans2200]

That's not my experience though. Watercoolers have massive load capacity compared to traditional heatsinks, so temp rises way slower and are overall way more stable. They are absolutely impressive when used with high power graphics cards. Like 85C down to 50C is a huge difference, and thats compared to a humongous aircooler that also makes lots of noise in comparison.

[@alekpo2000]

it makes more sense for a top of the line cpu but then you wont be buying a 20$ cooler lol

[@blizyon30fps86]

@@helenHTID aio liquid is non conductive, you would be perfectly fine if it leaked just clean it and let it dry

[@Mr.Genesis]

I would love to see you return to some of these cheap parts for later videos to see how these products hold up over time. Or possibly consistent use of them over time like you have done before. I'd be interested to see the longevity of these cheap alternatives.

[@olivierduivestein6541]

One of the most USEFUL channels on KZbin.

[@basshead.]

Scotty Kilmer's channel too.

[@MISTER__OWL]

I always appreciated your camera work I have a good chuckle with some of your shots.

[@emilkitane5916]

You should make a video of the difference between that free paste and some brand named paste in terms of temps

[@RandomGaminginHD]

ah good idea :)

[@mzmknight]

The free thermal paste 😂 way less thick

[@1337Ox]

it would probably be like 2-3 °C difference

[@16driver16]

​​@mzmknight is thick good? Or more likely to dry out? Also I've found it's thin at first then fine like mustard or ketchup from a bottle, because you can't stir, shake or otherwise mix it

[@Dango-God]

Paste doesn't make much of a difference when cooling something with an IHS like a CPU. Bare dies, however, often benefit greatly from something like a PTM7950 thermal pad.

[@gamesbond0078]

just earned a new sub very informative video without being bloated

[@teamcyrmining3673]

Great video , good comments , thank you!

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Thanks for watching :)

[@mikekent9488]

I love this. Thanks for sharing

[@TheTactialLlama]

I just picked up a thermalright frozen prism 360 AIO for 50 quid. And it’s awesome!

[@Zerbey]

I'm genuinely impressed how well that cheap AIO worked, but I'd be concerned about longevity. I also prefer air cooling, I've had all kinds of issues with AIOs in the past but the Corsair unit that came with the PC I have now (it was a freebie) works great. The secret I've found is you need good air flow and thermal paste or you're just never going to get the full benefits.

[@renmcmanus]

Unless it leaks. 20 bucks for 1 year would be acceptable value. Kinda bad for the environment. But that's just nit picking.

[@trailduster6bt]

Ive been waiting for a test of one of these Iwongou liquid coolers. I ran an Iwonguo dual tower cooler for about a year and was very impressed with its ability to cool my 140w tdp Xeon.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Awesome, hope this helped :)

[@m4tt3400]

Love these aliexpress vids

[@CohenMiller-xf7fv]

Love the vids😊

[@mentalmickey1459]

It'd be good to know the ambient room temp also, great video as always!

[@getyerspn]

I love the Thermalrite gear . I use a Thermalrite 'le grand macho rt' on my overclocked Ryzen 5700x with its power limits abused to 150w and it performs excellent keeping it under 65c

[@jamesdan386]

WHOO ANOTHER VIDEO!

[@detmer87]

Just get the Arctic Freezer 3. The 25th anniversary price reduction is a no-brainer: 75 euro for 360 rad

[@virtualbaker]

I've got the freezer 2 120 for my 3700x. Amazingly good for the price

[@NathanMatthews.]

Nice to see you upgraded from the 3050!

[@RichardArkax]

the cool AliExpress find king returned on his grind

[@ivanvladimir0435]

I have bought several Iwongou coolers for xeons before, a pretty nice product, cooled those chonky 120W monsters pretty nicely, I'm glad I didn't listen to the elitsts telling me to spend 50 bucks on an air cooler

[@JezyYT]

I love making videos with cheap coolers to see how they hold up 👍🏻

[@ConfusedStu]

As usual, great information and much appreciated. But when's the next sandwich review coming? There are lots more out there that we need an expert's opinion on.

[@Djare915]

I was always into this like liquid coolers for cpu w 1 fan but they all sucked in past...This one man for 20 bucks it is awesome and I am seriously considering buying it.

[@ramyextra]

I bought a $25 240ml liquid cooler that is quite good

[@Djare915]

dafak

[@ramyextra]

@@Djare915 AliExpress is wild

[@paul9812-t3i]

O do love some AliExpress finding ❤

[@winonesoon9771]

I'm in love with all the thermalright products

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Yeah they’re awesome :)

[@connivingkhajiit]

Very happy with my frozen notte 360. Dead silent while it handles the 5700X3D at full load.

[@epic_iram]

Would love more cheap AIO reviews!!! In the market for one but not sure if i should cough up the cash for a corsair or nzxt one 😂

[@_RedsTech_]

I have that exact same air cooler! I added an extra fan a few months back though. I bet the extra fan made up the difference.

[@DanielCardei]

Looks cool ngl.👍

[@Levy_Wilson]

Would be interesting to see the longevity tests of the pump on this.

[@danmcgee6992]

Thanks for the intereasing video, although I am curious what materials it's made out of sometime these cheap AOI's are made with mix metals and have corrosion issues down the road

[@dianaalyssa8726]

Interesting, Have a lot of the higher TR coolers, they do well.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Yeah great for the price

[@Zerbey]

I just needed a cheap cooler for an emergency fix and ended up with one, I think I spent $10 for it. Was so impressed with the performance and how quiet it is, I ended up upgrading three of my systems with it. If the AIO in my desktop fails, I'll probably throw one in it too.

[@Redmage913]

120mm AIOs are fun. I put one on an RX 580, and it performs amazingly well :)

[@TheSpotify95]

I never thought that 120mm AIO was worth having, but for more modest CPUs this is perfectly fine from what I can see. I'd happily go with this over the cheapest air cooler, even if you can then advertise your PC as having an AIO and RGB. :)

[@carlosteixeira3966]

Was the temps taken with the system inside a case or just test bench ? Good video , thanks 😊

[@Taorakis]

I once ordered the 2 cheapes AIOs on Amazon some years ago, one still works and one is COMPLETELY filled up with gunk to the point where no water goes through anymore.

[@Theendgamelv3]

I kinda wish you did a cinebench test too to stressout the CPU to get a worse case scenario, but for under normal use it is not bad.

[@andrewmutavi590]

This is massive for PC flipping😍😍

[@TR1PLE_6]

I've been using the Arctic Freezer 36 ARGB air cooler. Really good stuff for the £22 I paid for it. It's very quiet even at 100% speed.

[@p_nut_uk]

One thing worth mentioning is that most makers don't do 120mm anymore

[@TrinoDR]

was very surprised by the Thermalright Assassin King SE we upgraded my nephews cpu a few weeks ago from a 12100f to a 12600 and used the same intel stock cooler temperatures quickly hit 100c and throttled the cpu so we bought the Assassin for £15.90 wasnt expecting much but damn never broke 60c under multiple stress tests, amazing cooler for the price

[@RuruFIN]

I was most surprised that it has good mounting hardware. Way better than let's say old Asetek-based AIOs or Alphacool blocks.

[@tobiasit1743]

we have the 240 and 360 aio from that company who makes them 😅 with our branding on it and with argb tubes. its realy good for this price!

[@mikestanley9176]

Now I want one for my Thinkpad T530 Laptop.

[@matheusnave8220]

Liquid cooler just make sense on the high end

[@chrisbird4913]

The testing for water-cooling is slightly different from air cooling because water draws in heat quickly but once saturated will dissipate heat at about the same rate as an air cooler. The results after saturating the water with heat for a couple of hours of heavy use will likely be much closer to the air cooler results. The 240 or 360 is the ticket for an actual improvement in cooling, though a hotter CPU is needed to make it worth bothering.

[@renmcmanus]

Dang. Price to performance that's great. Even if it died in a year it is still a good value.

[@mainmanmick]

igot this for my build a few months ago, max temp i get is 55C does a great job

[@youraveragejoephoto]

I certainly agree with the sentiment that you’re probably better off going for air cooling, I think air cooling is the way to go for 90% of people building gaming PC’s. For the most part they’re going to be cheaper, more reliable with less moving parts or points of failure, and they’re capable of cooling any entry level - mid range CPU that any sane human being is going to be running. The only reason I don’t use an air cooler myself is my complete obsession with SFF builds, much to my own stress and detriment at times 😂

[@sageosaka]

would definitely like to see how this thing does with a higher end cpu.

[@LukeTheJoker]

Cool!

[@youzernejm]

Sometimes, especially in cheap, badly designed cases, liquid cooling can be great at displacing the heat. A cheap one can be a bug plus for such a machine. Maybe this is something worth testing

[@thomaswood8167]

I had purchased an Iwongou tower cooler for my rig, as a do a lot of rendering, and my CPU temps never went above 57 degrees Celsius. So they do make good budget coolers, in my opinion.

[@bdhale34]

Have a deepCool Gammaxxx 400 v2 with a corsair fan in place of it's stock blue led fan on my 12700f and it never gets over 80c no matter what I do to it with the pl durations set to infinite. A single tower 120mm cooler has been enough cooling for most users since the Cooler Master Hyper 212 made them popular.

[@tokidokibokki1099]

I clicked your videos thinking it was a JaysTwoCents videos because of the thumbnail colors. Happy it was you instead.

[@armando1is1great]

Unless going for high, sustained cpu clocks, I'd go air cooler all day. Just less points of failure. And the test here shows that a cheap air cooler is fine for most. I'll be rollin with my noctua for another decade

[@AdamNRG316]

Got to be honest, I didn't expect it to look so good as it does for that price. It really does look pretty decent. Having said that though, not sure if I'd want to trust a company I've never heard of with water in my pc. Funnily enough I just brought that exact air cooler a few months back as well haha.

[@VL125]

Have the exakcr same thing, brand is called AZZA and its looking like a twin. This cooler is working since 2019 without any problems.

[@glubrix]

They work well and don't break

[@anthonymckenna9296]

Give the dog a pet you monster!! (at the end)

[@1radek831]

would be interesting to also know which is quieter between the liquid and air coolers

[@JGC890]

does the radiator have a fill port? looked like it did, pretty rare for AIOs to have one

[@pidojaspdpaidipashdisao572]

Any plans on reviewing your own rig these days? You have been using that i5 for a while now, must be a good build.

[@GodSaveTheUnitedStates]

You gotta leave the liquid cooler on your rig for 6 months to a year and report back about reliability and performance once it wears in. That would be awesome!

[@mipi2827]

I have a Iwongou two tower air cooler, 92mm fan, 6 heatpipes. It cools my i5 10400f very nicely, at low fan speeds it never goes above 65°C

[@trailduster6bt]

Would love to see this cheap AIO on a cpu that is known to run a bit hotter. Maybe even something like your 7500F? Zen 4 in general seems pretty toasty.

[@JGC890]

20 is cheap, but the company are unknown, 50 is still cheap and you can get a 360mm AIO by thermalright, they have a great reputation

[@StefanTheMongol]

The real test would be using it on an i9-9900k. I have tried the same Thermalright you have, the stock Intel cooler, and a NZXT Kraken 240 mm. The coolest I can get it at stock speed is 66C at full load with the case opened on one side. It is impossible to get anything around 54C. Also I have centralized air conditioning in my home so ambient temperatures don’t matter.

[@glubrix]

Bought the 240 ARGB for 27€ the components are standard and do their job well. More expensive liquid coolers charge for aesthetics and branding. If you use better 18W/k thermal paste, temperatures drop by at least 4°

[@dominicharvey6048]

The concern I would have with the cheap liquid cooler is how quickly something is gonna fail, like the pump. At least on a cheap air cooler, you can replace the fan for next to nothing.

[@aleksazunjic9672]

Well, specifically for CPU cooling testing people use things like Cinebench, just to get 100% CPU load consistently. Also, somewhat hotter CPU (at least 8c/16t) is advisable.

[@white_mage]

3:11 make it an april fool's joke where your hand is covered in bling :v

[@tdm3bros]

can you do a comparison between a 50£ AIO and a regular CPU cooler?

[@gercho1991]

5600x with this cooler. I would like to see how it compair with Hyper 212 (or similar) cooler :)

[@Andrew2me]

I'd love to see these same coolers on an i9 or an old FX-8350 if it supports am3 if only to see how much heat they can actually handle.

[@shieldtablet942]

That looks really high quality. Even mounting looks leagues better than what Thermalright is doing. Though I have serious doubts what liquid is inside. It is more likely than not that it will gunk up in 6 months. I have bought some cheap Chinese fans and the quality is really poor, to the point that a new fan gets stuck without spinning, for some reason.

[@yesterdaysjam2405]

I'd be more interested in a long term test for the AIO. It might be OK when you first install it but it might poop all over your system at a time later down the line lol.

[@Bonky2004]

I got a gelid solutions 240 watercooler for 59 euro and it's good for the money and nice argb

[@MadridistaFrieren]

Imagine how much better this liquid cooler wil be if the fans got replace by the T30

[@frostmafia1380]

Hey thats my air cooler lol! Give it back!!!!

[@DanteTheAbyssalBeing]

I'd be curious to see how both coolers handle Prime95 stress tests. Makes you wonder how Corsair and the like can charge £70-£80 for a 120mm AIO which is, in all likelihood, built in the same industrial estate as this Chinese one for £20.

[@Boba_Fett1980]

Both are impressive for the price. Do you know if that air cooler you mentioned would be good enough for an i9 10900k or 11900kf ? I'm planning on a cpu upgrade

[@25MHzisbest]

Ali is king! The UK etailers need to take note!

[@Collin_J]

Almost identical to my Cooler master Masterflow 140 from 2013ish. Just looks like an old Asatek design with updated mounting hardware

[@MadridistaFrieren]

It's been so long since a 140mm aio drop into the market

[@LatvianVideo]

for a pure heat stress test, id recommend prime95

[@sevenatenine_7]

um dont want to come out as cocky but the aio pipes need to be set higher than the pump itself!! thats where the noise was from because the air always rises to the top of the aio system, in this case which was the pump.

[@lolmao500]

The thing with AIO... when they leak and break your stuff, a lot of the times, the warranty on the parts that it destroyed is null and void. I had an AIO fail on me and it destroyed my GPU... and the warranty guys didnt want to replace it. So it cost me 400$+ to buy a new one. AIO are nice and all but not worth it.

[@Kumimono]

I'd imagine, in a standard PC case build, the air cooler's performance would depend, somewhat, on the overall airflow. But the AIO, should be about the same? I still have this idea that liquid cooling is expensive and fraught with peril. Not that expensive, but, peril, perhaps. :)

[@itsTyrion]

I'd pick an air cooler given the choice, just for reliability

[@SteveStrassburg]

Tubes should always be on the top to keep the air out of the pump. Increasing the pump life.

[@Levy_Wilson]

As long as the radiator is above the block, there won't be air in the pump.

[@RANDOMNATION907]

What?!! . . . no scritches?!! smh, . . . I thought you were one of the good guys, Brian.

[@Senrab46]

I have thermalright fs140, which is twin tower twin fans (140+120mm) and good price. After installing no issues but i do worry about the weight stressing the motherboard (6 layer msi gaming carbon). So would a low cost 240mm from Alixpress be a wise investment for durability? Interesting review thank you👍🐈

[@Dango-God]

The weight of a CPU cooler only really means something if you want to transport your PC

[@tegrqbruh4158]

i get roughly similar temps with my Jonsbo CR-1400 EVO air cooler, that said im using it on a ryzen 5 5600x instead; at idle i sit at 28-30c and under load at about 62-64c

[@AlexHusTech]

Used to get 1400/1000 for £10 from AliExpress few months back, made a few vids on builds, they are crazy good value for looks and performance!

[@Vv_JASPER_vV]

You may be a fan of air cooling, but I am a radiator of water cooling

[@Atilolzz]

Definitely a good cooler for $20!

[@daedalus6433]

I immediately thought "I wrong you" xd