Aigo AT360 CPU Cooler Review: Good Value Cooler?

Jun 01, 2023

Learn everything there is to know about the Aigo AT360 CPU Cooler as we walk you through its unboxing, design, installation, and testing.

Review Summary

Aigo AT360 packs a decent thermal performance for high-end SKUs, and it can provide some headroom for overclocking as well. The stunning RGB lighting with an infinity mirror on top lid combined with fans’ RGB lighting augments this cooler’s value proposition, albeit funs making some noise.

Pros

Cons

Salient highlights of the Aigo AT360 are:

The specifications on the Aigostore were ambiguous, so we resorted to what was listed on the packing box.

This cooler comes in a black color shipping box. On the front, we can see a picture of the unit showing the RGB lighting effect. Aigo has listed the compatibility of this cooler with the RGB sync technology of listed motherboard manufacturers. These are:

Specifications of AT360 are listed on the backside of the main packing box. The line “Data are from Aigo DIY Lab, for reference only”. If this data is only for reference, how can we know if the listed specifications are correct and validated? Anyhow, this is what it is. Let’s move on.

There is another container inside the main packing box. The cooler and accessories are nicely tucked inside that container. This helps ensure safe shipping without any damage.

Before moving on to the main section, let’s briefly see what accessories are provided:

Accessories are provided inside a white color box.

Aiog has provided a printed guide showing instructions for installing this cooler on the supported sockets.

Aigo has provided:

Aiog is using spring-loaded screws for the installation. These include:

Aigo has provided:

Aigo has provided a dedicated A-RGB controller. There is also a 3-way PWM splitter cable. We will cover this controller later in this article.

We are starting with the radiator of this cooler.

The radiator assembly is black color coated. It has a fin density of 20 FPI with 12 coolant flow channels. Like other AIO radiators, this unit is made of aluminum material. The dimension of this cooler is 397x120x27mm. 27mm is the height of this radiator. Installing 25mm thick fans would increase the overall thickness to approximately 53 mm. Aigo has mentioned these flow channels as micro water channels and gave focus to this terminology. It is just a marketing way of specifying the same thing. There is a gap of 105mm between two opposing mounting holes, which is standard. The gap between two adjacent mounting holes is 15mm.

Looking at the far block of this radiator, we found no label or branding here. Block has a rectangular layout.

Aigo has done a nice job in fin stacking. The fins are well placed, and there is no bend or broken fin.

Looking at the tube side of this radiator, we can see two metallic clamps concealing the connection of tubes with fittings. There is a serial number label on this end.

We are showing a side of this radiator unit. There is a gap between the side frame and the fin stack. This implies that the thickness of the actual fin stack is actually less than the 27mm thickness of the radiator. 27mm is the thickness of the complete assembly.

The side frame of the radiator assembly has no branding or particular design. It is a simple black color layout. The far end is less thickly compared to the near end. This is obvious since the tubes are connected to the near end.

Aigo has integrated the pump into the tubes of this unit. We are showing pump housing in the above picture. Many brands are taking this approach and justifying it with the implication that this would reduce vibration from the CPU. Though this is somewhat true in my opinion, the main reason for this particular design is bypassing the ASETEK patent in the US region in which only ASETEK-based coolers can integrate the pump in the block.

The pump is powered by a 3-pin connector. The power cable has nice braiding. The listed specification shows that this pump has a power consumption of less than 2.5W at 12VDC. Its maximum speed is 5200 ±10% RPM. The current rating is 0.2A ±20%. Starting voltage is mentioned as a minimum of 5V. The flow rate is mentioned as <1000ml/min with a pump head rating of 1.4M. Noise rating is mentioned as <30 dBA.

This cooler uses rubber tubes. These have nylon braided mesh sleeves for aesthetics. These run to a length of approximately 400 mm. These tubes don’t kink and are somewhat flexible.

Looking at the block, we can spot a nice combination of silver and black colors. The top portion has an aluminum material finish. The dimension of this block is 75×53.5mm. 75mm is the diameter of this circular housing. It is not the low-profile design we would expect since the pump is no longer in this housing. But A-RGB LEDs with a mirror effect and geometrical layout on top are the main reasons. Unfortunately, the top lid is not rotatable. This would mean that during the installation of this cooler, we have to keep in mind the orientation of the block so that Aigo branding remains upright.

We are showing a close-up view of this housing. The lower half of this housing has a black color, and the housing is made of plastic material. There is no branding of any sort on the sides.

One flat cable is coming out from the side of this housing.

This cable has standard RGB connectors following a 3-pin interface using 5VDC.

Looking at the backside of this housing, we can see that Aigo has used 90° right-angled fittings. The connection of tubes and these fittings is well concealed. Taking a closer look, we can see that there is more gap between both fittings.

The pump divided from the pump head makes me giggle. They need to focus on giving better descriptions than this. Aigo is saying that removing the pump from the block’s assembly improves efficiency as it improves thermal conductivity compared to the integrated pump in the housing. I think they need to ponder over this again.

The base of plastic material has a sliding mechanism in which the brackets are inserted in the tight spacing inside this protruded area. This unit has a copper base measuring 54x54mm. We took a picture after testing the unit; hence it seems a bit rough.

There are three A-RGB fans provided with an AT360 cooler. The blade design is different from other fans except maybe ARCTIC. Each fan has 5 blades. These are translucent for even lighting. There is an Aigo sticker on the hub. The frame on the mounting corners has a slope-down design with a ribbed rubber cover. The center portion of the black frame has a steep downward slope design.

There is a rubberized, almost green color anti-vibration pad on each mounting corner that seems removable. The frame itself looks sturdy. We could not find arrow markings. These show the direction of airflow and the direction in which the blades spin for novice users.

Looking at the backside of the fans, there is a 4-arms assembly. We can see brass material in the center, which tells us that Aigo is using a brass shell for the motor hub and shell bearing. This will help in the stability and durability of these fans. These fans are using Fluid Dynamic Bearings.

There are two flat cables per fan. One cable has a 4-pin PWM connector to power the fan’s motor. The other cable has standard RGB connectors following a 3-pin interface at 5VDC.

The specification of a fan is:

This cooler is mentioned as compatible with the AMD AM4 socket. However, compatibility with the AM5 socket is not known. We decided to give it a try on the GIGABYTE X670E AORUS MASTER motherboard using AMD Ryzen 7700X CPU. Steps are:

Now coming to a tricky part, the mounting arms of the AMD brackets protruded, making their overall length longer. This can interfere with the NVMe SSD cover. We reversed the mounting brackets, and it was almost a lucky escape. We were able to install the block on the AM5 socket. Though a bit of caution, if you feel that threads of spring-loaded screws run out quickly, like in one or two torques, then this is not a good installation, and you should do it again. This cooler can be installed on AM5 but it would come down to the motherboard and surrounding heatsink covers in deciding if this cooler is a go or not.

This cooler has a dimension of 397x120x53mm. Keep that in mind when deciding on a PC Case. The tubes don’t obstruct DIMM slots and PCIe slots.

Aigo uses standard RGB connectors, which make life easier since, this way, the lighting is compatible with the RGB sync technology of various motherboard manufacturers. Aigo has listed the following compatibility:

On top of that, they have also bundled a dedicated A-RGB controller with this cooler. Let’s take a look at this controller.

This controller has small size housing. It has only one button to change the lighting modes. We can labels starting from 1 and going to a number 4, indicating that a total of 4 A-RGB devices can be connected to it.

Take a peek at two A-RGB ports. These are using standard interfaces having 3-pin, 5VDC connectivity.

The opposite end also has two similar ports.

There is a 2-pin port, as can be seen in the above picture. Optionally, the user can connect the PC Case Reset cable connector to this port and use the Reset button of the case to control the lighting effects. This is more convenient than opening the side cover every time to access this controller for a change in lighting mode. But going this route, you will lose the reset function of the PC Case.

The bundled controller is powered by a SATA connector that is connected to the PSU. The other cable has a female RGB connector using a 3-pin, 5VDC interface that will be required to connect to the motherboard’s RGB header.

We have tested the RGB lighting using the RGB FUSION 2.0 app on the GIGABYTE X670E AORUS MASTER motherboard. It was working fine. Here are a few pictures:

We have used the following configuration for testing:

The test table is as under:

We have seen AMD AM5 and Intel Alder Lake S CPUs taking more power, and this time, both sides have aimed at reaching the maximum clocks regardless of the thermal limit. In fact, the AM5 SKUs will run into thermal limits right away depending on the cooling solution and the clocks being used. This has made testing of CPU coolers challenging because viewers/readers are not used to a new nomenclature which is what clocks are sustained under a given load using a particular cooler.

That is, if the cooler is capable of providing enough cooling heads to sustain the high frequencies at high package power. Among other reasons is the high thermal density of these new CPUs. Traditionally we are used to going the other way around, that is, which cooler is better in terms of thermal capacity. Despite this, we are using temperatures as a base for measuring this unit.

The ambient temperature was in the range of 33°C. We are reporting absolute temperatures in the graph. The testing is done on an open-air bench system. Once inside the chassis, the temperatures are expected to rise and would largely depend upon the optimal airflow inside the chassis.

Disclaimer: Every silicon is different; hence no two same SKUs are likely to take the same voltage to yield the same performance at the same thermals per se, but the margin would be close. Not every stress test run may yield the same result, which could be due to various reasons like thermal paste application, ambient temperature variation, the mounting pressure of the cooler, etc. This is very why we have listed our variables and their settings. Let’s take a look at the results.

This testing was done with Eco mode enabled. Otherwise, there is no way to measure the performance of any cooler on this platform unless the ambient is 20ish or the CPU is delid. Another mechanism is to measure the performance by recording the CINEBENCH score after a stress run at which the CPU will operate at 95°C. This cooler has a decent performance in Eco mode though I was expecting a better result.

The fans were making 52 dB(A) noise output at an ambient of 32 dB(A).

In this article, we have tested yet another cooler, this time from Aigo. It is an AT360 liquid cooler and as the name suggests, it is a 360mm AIO. This cooler is compatible with Intel LGA 115X / 1200 / 20XX, and AMD TR4 / AM4 / AM3+ / AM3 sockets. This cooler is not compatible with the Intel LGA1700 socket since it was released somewhere in 2020 or so. There is no AM5 compatibility data either, but we have taken our chances on the AM5 platform anyway.

The radiator on this cooler is not a different design than the majority of the AIOs in the market. It is made of aluminum material, and it has an FPI count of 20 with 12 channels in which the coolant flows. Speaking of the dimension, it has a size of 397x120x27mm. Its overall thickness would be 53mm after installing 120x25mm fans. This unit has rubber tubes wrapped under mesh sleeves. The length of these tubes is 400mm.

We have seen pump integration in the tubes on some coolers like Thermalright Frozen Magic 360 Scenic V2, and be quiet! Pure Loop 2 FX 360. This Aigo AT360 cooler follows the same principle. In my opinion, this is purely done to bypass the ASETEK patent in the US region more than any other stated reason by the manufacturers. This pump is powered by a 3-pin connector cable. It consumes less than 2.5W at 12VDC using 0.20A ± 20% current. Its flow rate is mentioned as less than 1000 ml/minute with a pressure head of 1.4 meters.

This cooler has a circular or ring-design block housing. This housing is without a pump. It has a diameter of 75mm with a height of 53.5mm. The distinctive design is on the top lid, where we have a geometrical layout. There is an Aigo text in the center, which is A-RGB backlit and has an infinity mirror design. The copper base has a dimension of 54x54mm.

The AT360 comes with three good-looking 120mm fans. These fans are A-RGB enabled. Each has 5 translucent blades. These fans are using Fluid Dynamic Bearings. The motor hub and shell bearing are metal-reinforced using brass material. This provides stability and durability. Each fan is powered by a 4-pin PWM connector cable. Aigo has used standard RGB connectors for A-RGB lighting which is a wise move. These fans have a dimension of 120x120x25mm. They have a maximum rated speed of 2000 ± 10% RPM with a maximum of 61.5 CFM airflow rating at 2.80mmH2O static pressure rating. The noise level is rated at <31 dBA. There is a 3-way PWM splitter cable provided in the accessories. This cable allows the user to daisy-chain all three fans and control their speed from a single source.

Speaking of digital RGB lighting, Aigo has provided a smart-looking A-RGB controller. This controller is SATA powered, and it has 4 ports using a standard A-RGB (5VDC) interface. There is a 3-pin, 5VDC female RGB connector that is connected to the motherboard. Also, optionally, the user connects the system panel’s 2-pin reset cable to this controller and controls the lighting using a reset button of your PC Case. Since there are standard RGB connectors on this unit, it is compatible with RGB sync technologies from multiple motherboard manufacturers.

This cooler is not compatible with Intel LGA1700 out of the box. But you can use retrofitting mounting hardware from CORSAIR coolers or darkFlash coolers to install this cooler on this socket. We have tried installing this cooler on the AM5 socket. With a bit of hit and trial, we were able to mount it successfully on this socket. However, the proper installation of this unit on AM5 is still sketchy. You would only need 6 items to install this cooler on the AM5 socket.

The listed price on Aigostore is USD 160. I think this might not be an accurate price, but we were unable to find this particular model’s pricing hence sticking with the listed price. Warranty information is not mentioned online. We have tested this unit in AMD 7700X using the eco mode, where the thermal target was restricted to 85°C and the power target was limited to 85W. This cooler has performed well in our stress testing. The fans are a bit loud and using a custom fan curve will help with that.

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