Kaby Lake 7700K 5GHz AIO Cooler Mega Test

Cryorig A40 Ultimate

Price:  £107.70

Technical specification

 

Up Close

In a similar vein to the R1 tower cooler, the A40 comes in both “standard” and “ultimate” editions.  Box and packaging wise everything is the same, in fact you’d be hard pushed to notice the small change in the blue title box.

  

 

Now, that’s what we call a well laid out set of informatics.  Everything you need to know in one easily digestible diagram.

  

 

So what is it that separates the Standard from the ultimate?  Well in simple terms, it the thicker radiator, which at 38.5mm thick is the deepest of all the 240mm radiators we’ve tested in this group.

  

 

Cryorig have chosen a radiator with a decreased water channel count compared to the standard edition.  They’ve dropped the channels to eight, while essentially keeping the fin count roughly the same at twenty two.  this basically makes the individual fins longer and the whole radiator fractionally less dense to airflow.  Testing will show whether this was a good move or not.

  

 

We’ve seen some lovely compression hose fittings and braided tubing in this test, but the cryorig solution doesn’t fall into either of these categories.  We’re sure it’s all perfectly strong enough, but we can’t help thinking that those joints look as weak as a 90 year old lady’s ankles

  

 

 

The fans on the ultimate are the same 2200rpm monsters as featured on the standard version, and we have to say they’re sexy as hell.  All eight corner surfaces have removable rubber dampeners and the fans feature something Cryorig call “Quad Air Inlet” which they claim improves the air output volume.

 

The branding on the pump assembly is subtle and unlikely to be seen once the pump is in place, especially as the additional Airflow fan which sits atop the pump pretty much covers the lot from view.  It’s also worth noting that the tubing teminates directly into the pump, as opposed to through 90 degree rotating elbow joints as is more usual.  The up side of this is improved waterflow, with the downside of course being that there’s less flexibility when mounting.

  

 

Oh we do like a nice bit of copper here at OC3D and the contact plate on the A40 Ultimate is giving us our fix right now.  Although it does come with Intel mounts already attached, it can be easily removed and the supplied AMD brackets fitted.

  

 

The instructions that come with Cryorig coolers are good, but could do with being a little better laid out.  Be prepared to spend a few minutes finding the box-out relative to your CPU, and then finding the English language section.  There are though QR codes for you to scan if you need a little extra help.

  

  

Provided you have the requisite 63.5mm of space up in the roof, then the Ultimate is as easy to fit as the standard edition.  We have to say we especially like the way the tubes appear to drop vertically from the radiator and then turn 90 degrees to the pump assembly. 

  

 

As with the standard, the Ultimate has the option of mounting a 3000rpm fan on top of the pump assembly.  at a given 37dB(A) it’s a noisy little bugger though but there are benefits to be gained from cooling the RAM and other “near motherboard” components.