Enermax Liqmax III ARGB 360

Cooling in color at a bargain price

- CHRISTIAN GUYTON

WHEN WE LOOKED UP the Liqmax III ARGB 360, we found that it was the cheapest three-fan AIO cooler on Newegg.com. And its competitors lack flashy lighting. One hundred bucks for a cooler setup packing a 360mm radiator, with ARGB fans, and a light-up pump block? Incredible.

A low price like that can be enticing, but it also made us nervous. Could we expect good performance from such a cheap AIO cooler? A few hours of testing and we had our answer: Yes, we really could.

Compared to a stock AMD cooler, the Liqmax III performed incredibly. Nothing pushed the Ryzen 7 2700 in our test bench over 60 C during testing, even while overclocked to its max boost clock of 4.1GHz. The stock Wraith Spire that comes with the CPU broke 60 C at 3.2GHz, reaching 81 C when overclocked.

No matter how hard we thrashed the processor, we couldn’t get it anywhere close to overheating. It didn’t perform quite as well as more expensive 360mm AIO coolers—with temps averaging 4 C higher than a triple-fan Corsair Hydro, priced at nearly double the Liqmax III— but it’s fantastic value for money if you’re only interested in performance.