Last month I looked at the be quiet Pure Rock Slim 2 air cooler for $25 USD. A viewer requested that I do a review of the Deep Cool Gammaxx 400 V2 air cooler that was also available for $25 USD. I didn’t like that model because the LED fan would have gone straight to the trash. The closest I ever came to having an LED fan was installing the Phanteks Halo Lux RGB fan frames. I got the Deep Cool Gammaxx 400S air cooler with a silent, non-LED, non-PWM fan for $27 USD. Which budget cooler was better?
WHAT YOU GET FOR $27 USD
The Deep Cool Gammax 400S air cooler is compact, 155mm tall, and doesn’t interfere with tall RAM sticks. Comes with a 120mm non-PWM fan that maxes out at 1,500 RPM. Doesn’t come with extra fan clips to add a second fan for a push-pull configuration.
The mounting system has a baseplate that goes behind the motherboard. Four nuts to lock the baseplate into place on the front of motherboard. The AMD or Intel brackets screw into the base of the air cooler. Each end of the brackets screw into the base plate with a spring-loaded screw.
A regular Philips screwdriver won’t work when screwing down the air cooler. The barrel is too short to slip into V-shaped grove in the metal fins of the air cooler. You will need to have an extra-long Philips screwdriver like the be quiet! screwdriver that comes with the Dark Rock Pro 4 air cooler.
Be careful when starting the spring-loaded screw on each post. If the screwdriver tip slips off the tip, it could damage the motherboard. This part of assembling the air cooler I’m not too crazy about.
TESTING THE AIR COOLER
I’ll be comparing the be quiet! Pure Rock Slim 2 air cooler with the Deep Cool Gammaxx 400S.
The first round will compare the air coolers with their respective fans.
The second round will replace the Deep Cool 120mm non-PWM fan with the be quiet! Pure Wings 2 120mm PWM fan. This will show if the 400S would benefit from a faster PWM fan.
My test PC has an AMD Athlon 3000G processor, 8GB G.Skill 2666MHz RAM, and an Asrock Pro4 B450 AM4 ATX motherboard. The thermal paste is the Arctic Silver 5. The room temperature while testing was 30-degrees Celsius.
For each round of testing, the Cinebench R23 ten-minute test ran three times on each air cooler. I averaged the three processor temperatures reported in HWInfo for each cooler.
BE QUIET! VS DEEP COOL @ 1,300 RPMS
The Slim 2 92mm PWM fan ran at 1,300 RPMs in the BIOS. The 400S 120mm non-PWM fan ran at 1,300 RPMs.
- The Slim 2 had an average temperature of 59-degrees Celsius.
- The 400S had an average temperature of 62-degrees Celsius.
The Slim 2 was three degrees cooler than the 400S. A 5% difference between the two coolers.
BE QUIET! VS DEEP COOL @ 2,200 RPMS
Both fans ran at 2,200 RPMS in the BIOS.
- The Slim 2 had an average temperature of 57-degrees Celsius.
- The 400S had an average temperature of 61-degrees Celsius.
The Slim 2 was four degrees cooler than the 400S. A 7% difference between the two coolers.
WHICH BUDGET AIR COOLER IS BETTER?
Which air cooler was better?
The be quiet! Pure Rock Slim 2 is slightly shorter, comes with extra fan clips, an easier to use mounting system, and runs slightly cooler. Running the Slim 2 at full speed dropped the temperature by two degrees.
The Deep Cool Gammaxx 400S is slightly taller, doesn’t come with extra fan clips, a harder to use mounting system, and runs slightly hotter. Running the 400S with a faster PWM fan dropped the temperature by only one degree.
Being an obvious be quiet! fanboy, I lean towards the Slim 2 as being the better air cooler.