Page 2 - Physical Look - Hardware, Installation
The DeepCool AK400 Digital is very clean in appearance, making good use of the black colors present. The top of the cooler contains the display for the cooler temperature, which also covers the top fin. The top cover uses a matte finish that looks clean. Newer all-black finishes are better looking when compared to the natural silver color of aluminum, which the AK400 Digital proudly sports. Like many CPU coolers, it is designed with a stack of fins with multiple heatpipes going through the heatsink tower. The fins are mostly rectangular in shape. Most of the heatsink unit is made out of aluminum, with the exception of the copper heatpipes. A single DeepCool fan is included out of the box and is pre-installed on the cooler.
Manufacturers will typically use a thicker top fin for a sturdier build, although this is not the case for this cooler. All sides of the fins are completely exposed aside from the front and top, which are then covered by the fan and the plastic cover. There is a total of 54 fins on the heatsink tower. The spacing between fins is about 2mm with all fins being evenly spaced out from the other, and each fin being 0.2mm thick. With some quick measurements and calculations, the total surface area of the heatsink comes out to around 0.778m². The DeepCool AK400 Digital weighs in at 695g, which is about the average weight for a single tower CPU cooler. This is a tad bit heavier than the original AK400, which makes sense due to the digital display at the top.
When it comes to dimensions, the DeepCool AK400 Digital has a height of 156mm, width of 126mm, and depth of 97mm, which is about the size of your average air cooler. These dimensions are with the fan and display attached. The height should allow the DeepCool AK400 Digital to fit in small form factor cases. Without the fan, the tower on its own has measurements of approximately 152mm in height, 120mm in width, and 60mm in depth. Four continuous U-shaped heatpipes can be seen from the base leading up for heat dissipation. The purpose of the heatpipes is to efficiently lead the heat away from its source due to the low heat of vaporization, or phase change energy, of the fluid inside. The heatpipes are aligned in a flat manner to spread out the heat in the two arrays. With a total surface area of 0.778m², the AK400 Digital should be able to deliver good heat dissipation theoretically, which I will test on the next page.
This CPU cooler is aligned such that no parts of the cooler will be hanging over the PCI Express slot underneath or your RAM slots next to it, even with the fan attached. This cooler has full compatibility with Intel LGA1700, 1200, 1151, 1150, and 1155 sockets along with AMD AM4 and AM5 without any interference with your memory.
Looking at the tower without the fan attached, we can get a better look at the design of the leading edges of the heatsink fins. The design is fairly standard with the fins taking on a mostly rectangular shape. A gap exists between the front and back of the tower and the adjacent screw such that users will be able to use a screwdriver to access this screw with ease. The top fin is the same width as the rest of the fins. There are divots on the side of the heatsink for the fan clips to latch onto.
The DeepCool fan in question is the FK120, and it is nothing out of the ordinary. According to the manufacturer, the included fan is a fluid dynamic bearing 4-pin PWM fan. The fan runs at a maximum speed of 1850 RPM and is rated to run at 12V and 0.13A. The maximum rated noise is about 28 dBA. The fan has a maximum rated airflow of 68.9 CFM and air pressure of 2.19 mm H2O, which are all slightly higher than the fan used on the original AK400. This fan uses a black color scheme with black fan blades, which makes sense, as this is not an RGB LED fan. Based on the specifications, this fan should be able to work well for this cooler, so I personally feel there is no need to swap it out. The DeepCool fan can be mounted using metal clips directly attached to the fan. While this fan comes mounted on the AK400 Digital, you will have to remove it for installation, since the front side of the fan covers one of the mounting screws.
It should be noted that the digital temperature display uses an internal USB 2.0 header that must be connected to your motherboard. This is to be expected though in order to display something like temperature. The display uses two seven-digit segment displays to show off the numbers. The logo will also light up when active. Additionally, there are RGB LED strips on the top and bottom of the panel, which are fully addressable. As such, this panel also comes with a 3-pin addressable RGB LED header to control your lighting with. Although I am happy that DeepCool is using standard headers here, it does add to the number of cables required to be plugged in with the AK400 Digital.
A requirement to get the digital display to work is to download DeepCool's Digital utility software. This download is common between all of DeepCool's Digital products, including the AK620 Digital. The download is a 78.5MB compressed ZIP file. Once installed, the temperature will be displayed once running your PC. Unlike other DeepCool software we have seen in the past, the Digital utility software has no user interface. Instead, once installed and launched, it will appear as a system icon on your taskbar. When you right click this icon, you will have several display options, including processor's temperature, its load percentage, or jumping back and forth between the two. The temperature can be shown in units of degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit. Jumping ahead a bit, the temperature display is very clean and looks nice. The readings were obtained correctly as well, which I verified by crosschecking the temperature displayed on the cooler with what was shown in AIDA64.
The photo above shows the bottom of the DeepCool AK400 Digital. Here, we can see the configuration of the heatpipes with respect to the base due to its direct contact heatpipe design. Orange copper strips of the heatpipe are on this base. You can see the pipes are not evenly distributed, but rather two of the middle ones are biased towards the center of the base. Otherwise, the bottom is reasonably flat for what it is worth, but there are ridges for the simple fact this heatsink has direct contact heatpipes. Overall, the contact base surface is clean. Thermal paste is pre-applied on the contact base, as shown in the photo above. A separate thermal paste tube would have been preferable, but this is a budget cooler.
The heatsink is made out of copper and aluminum, with the copper found in the heatpipes. Copper is always a solid choice for heat transfer with thermal conductivity of 401 W/mK. Meanwhile, the heatsink fins utilize aluminum for their build, which is lighter and cheaper than copper. This is nice as the aluminum fins will reduce the cost and the weight and for the latter, reduce stress on the motherboard. Aluminum does have its trade-offs with thermal conductivity of 237 W/mK, which is significantly less than copper.
All joints are soldered at the base, while the heatpipes are fed through the fins. Overall, the DeepCool AK400 Digital is solidly built. Being light for a tower cooler is important for keeping stress off the motherboard, which the AK400 Digital achieves quite well. The fins are uniformly spread out, and there is a decent amount of heatpipes. I have high hopes for its performance. With that said, we will see how this cooler holds up in the upcoming tests, but first, let me install it in my PC.
Like with many of DeepCool's products, the installation process was very simple. DeepCool recommends using your stock motherboard backplate if using an AMD processor, which saves some time and effort, even if just a little. The standoffs were easy to install with four screws and some large plastic washers to help hold them in place. Please note that an included backplate will be required for Intel users, although I imagine this is not any more trouble.
A large square bracket is included for installing the cooler onto the motherboard. Plastic spacers can be installed once the backplate is mounted for the mounting bracket to rest on. This mounting bracket is used for both Intel and AMD processors and must be mounted in the correct orientation per the installation manual. The screws are tightened into the backplate with plastic spacers in between. Once this is finished, you can jump into installing the heatsink onto your CPU. While the user manual clearly indicates the tools to use for certain sockets, I do wish the bags had clearly labeled Intel and AMD for easier identification.
As mentioned earlier, the AK400 Digital already has thermal paste pre-applied on the contact base. The fan does need to be removed when installing the cooler. From here, the screws can be tightened in an alternating fashion. Any screwdriver that meets the length requirement will work. Users should connect the ARGB and USB 2.0 header to their respective slots while just the cooler is attached to the motherboard. After reattaching the fan, which is easy to do thanks to the easy clip-on, the only thing left to do afterward is to attach the 4-pin PWM header to the CPU fan header on your motherboard.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Hardware, Installation
3. Test Results
4. Conclusion
