DeepCool Assassin IV CPU Cooler
5. Conclusion
The Assassin IV is the latest and most powerful air cooler made from DeepCool. The product comes to replace a well-known and user favorite, the Assassin III. DeepCool has changed the design of the Assassin series with a more industrial look and packs two fans with a hardware switch for performance/quiet modes. The retail package is more than complete and includes all you need to get started, from cleaning pads to full tube thermal paste, to long screwdrivers and of course mounting plates for both Intel and AMD sockets, DeepCool has you covered.
The unboxing experience was very good, what about the installation experience? To sum it up, it was very easy, provided you take a look at the included printed manual. What might trouble you is the fact that this product has a reverse airflow design, meaning that the 120mm pre-installed fan should look at the ports of the motherboard and not at the memory modules. In fact, you can install a third 120mm if you wish so, to further improve airflow, if you wish so. Both the pre-installed fans are connected via a single cable and you only need one header fan at the motherboard (CPU_FAN).
All that is good, what about performance? We tested this CPU cooler with an AMD 7950X that can boost up to 222TDP Watt with the OCCT Stress Software and we can say that performance was good and on par with the competition. However, it wasn't the best we have seen, at least at our test labs. In both 65watt and 105watt AMD pre-sets, the DeepCool Assassin IV had the highest average effective CPU clock, which means that the CPU works higher and therefore produces higher performance, nice. Passing to the 170-watt and 222-watt TDPs, the DeepCool Assassin IV stays behind the top coolers to be quiet! and Noctua, despite its massive volume and its many heat pipes. It's not that the performance was bad, but for sure we expected more.
From a price point of view, the DeepCool Assassin IV has a lower retail price compared with other proposals from Noctua and be quiet! so gets a plus as well.
DeepCool Assassin IV | 88,00 € |
be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5 | 100,00 € |
be quiet! Dark Rock Elite | 112,50 € |
Noctua NH-D15 chromax.black | 118,90 € |
Noctua NH-U12A chromax.black | 128,50 € |
Concluding our review, we found the DeepCool Assassin IV to be an honest product, with a great retail package, easy installation, and overall good performance, that will offer you highly effective CPU clocks at a lower retail price. If you are in the market for this product and you don't want to afford much more than 88 Euros, we highly suggest it, if you have a higher budget there are other proposals at the market that will cost you more but will also offer slightly better cooling performance.