Installation
We mounted the CPU waterblock on to the Gigabyte Z790 AORUS Elite AX ICE motherboard with no issues at all. The tubing was flexible and long enough to position it away from the memory DIMM slots.
We then mounted 360 radiator on the top of the Corsair 3500X RGB chassis. No issues here. Everything fitted nicely.
What I like about the RS120 ARGB fans is that you can daisy-chain them together, and then connect them directly to a single 4-pin PWM fan header on your motherboard.
With no controller required, the CORSAIR NAUTILUS 360 RS ARGB Liquid CPU Cooler offers a very clean asethetic … just how I like it!
The RGB lighting from the RS120 cooling fans is vivid and bright. There’s also some RGB lighting on the CPU waterblock adding to the asethetic. As far as noise level is concerned, it was surprisingly quiet with a noise level of between 10 – 36 dBA.
Test setup and Testing Methodology
The system used for testing is listed in the table below. Ambient temperatures were kept at 24 degrees Celsius +/- 1 degree. We used the included thermal paste, which I think is more than adequate. The fan speed was set to default. The idle temperatures were recorded after 10 minutes of idle and max temperatures were recorded after a 5 minute torture test using Adia 64 CPU System Stability Test and recording the Cores values and taking the average.
| CPU | Intel Core i9-14900K |
| Cooling | Corsair NAUTILUS 360 RS ARGB AIO Liquid CPU Cooler |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte Z790 AORUS Elite AX ICE |
| Cooling Fans | Corsair RS120 RGB (with daisy-chain) |
| Ram | Corsair Dominator Titanium DDR5-7200 32GB Memory Kit |
| SSD | Crucial T700 1TB PCIE Gen5 |
| PSU | Corsair RM1000x Shift 1000W |
| VGA | Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4070 Ti |
| OS | Windows 11 |
Idle Temps
For our tests, we used our Intel Core i9-14900K processor which has default TDP of 125W and is known to run extremely hot. During idle, the temps on the CPU package was around 34 degrees Celsius, which is expected.
Load Temps
At 100% CPU load, the temperature of the CPU package reached a high of 81 degrees Celsius and maximum of 73 degrees Celsius for the CPU Core. The E-Cores maxed out at 90 degrees Celsius, while the P-Cores hit between 80 to 100 degrees Celsius,
These temperature readings are within our expectations, and I’m more than happy with the results.
For those who are new to DIY PC building, Intel’s 13th/14th Gen processors tend to run very hot due to its high TDP of of 125W (and up to 253W+ with Turbo Boost). We highly recommend you use a 360 AIO cooler for Intel’s 13th and 14th Gen processors.
Now lets move on to the Conclusion and Verdict!
