Valkyrie Surge SL125 CPU Air Cooler Review

Up Close with the Surge SL125

Up close with the Surge SL125

What can I say? This is a single-tower CPU heatsink. Seasoned PC builders will have seen these before. This design is a classic. A simple fin stack with heatpipes and an attached 120mm fan. It is glorious in its simplicity. That said, Valkyrie has elevated the aesthetic of this cooler with their custom to plate. It gives this heatsink a premium feel, taking otherwise budget builds to the next level.

The black version should have painted fins…

Sadly, the black version of this heatsink ships with an unpainted fin stack. This makes the black version of this cooler look worse than its white counterpart and makes us wonder why both versions have the same pricing. If the black model had black-painted fins, the cooler would look a lot more premium. Perhaps cost is a factor here, but the fact that the white version has painted fins counters this argument.

This CPU cooler ships with pre-applied thermal paste, which is designed to perfectly coat your CPU’s IHS when the cooler is mounted. This makes the first installation of this cooler easy. That said, any subsequent installations will need standard thermal paste application.

Note that this Surge SL125 ships with a spare tube of thermal paste for future thermal paste applications.

Fans!

Below, we have Valkyrie’s B12 120mm fan, which features A-RGB illumination and a rugged aesthetic. Aside from its non-standard power connectors, this fan is pretty normal.

Below, we have a non-standard fan power connector that appears to control both fan power and RGB lighting.

Valkyrie’s custom fan connector attaches to a cable that splits the connection into standard PWM fan connectors and 3-pin RGB connectors.

The Heatsink Assembled

Overall, this heatsink offers users a neat aesthetic. Its top plate is elegant, and that part is what most users will be looking at after this is installed inside a PC.

Note that there is an LED that illuminates this cooler’s Valkyrie logo, a neat touch for this low-cost heatsink.