Choosing the right AIO cooler for your build: your guide to ROG's all-in-one cooler family
PC enthusiasts want the most performance they can get from their hardware, which is why they often turn to liquid cooling instead of conventional heat sinks and fans for keeping temperatures low. A well-cooled processor can sustain higher clock rates for longer periods of time without slamming into a thermal threshold. Overclocked CPUs aren’t the only ones to benefit, though. Even at their stock settings, today’s highest-end processors buckle under the intensity of full utilization and throttle back to protect themselves. Liquid cooling is great for drawing heat away from the die, dissipating it through a large radiator, and exhausting thermal energy out of your case.
Custom water-cooling loops are highly configurable, but they also require maintenance, and they can get expensive to build, too. Plus, there’s the inconvenience and risk associated with piecing everything together. A closed-loop, all-in-one solution offers the benefits of liquid cooling without all that hassle. Installation is simple, especially on ASUS motherboards with dedicated headers for the pump and fan. AIO coolers are self-contained, and they require no maintenance whatsoever. It’s no wonder that closed-loop liquid cooler options abound, but how to choose the right one? This guide walks you through the various AIOs from ROG to help you pick the one that’s right for your build.
It’s a family affair
We announced our first two AIO coolers, the Ryuo and higher-end Ryujin, at Computex 2018. Now we’re growing the family with the ROG Strix LC series AIO coolers, which give builders the thermal performance and acoustic footprint of liquid cooling at a more accessible price.
Our AIOs are assembled from components well-known in the cooling world. We partnered with Asetek to use its current 6th-generation pump technology. The radiators are tethered to the pump with reinforced sleeved tubing, and each ROG cooler features addressable LEDs to customize its colors and effects. This extra bit of flair really draws attention to the centerpiece of your PC, and if you have other components compatible with our Aura Sync ecosystem, coordinating their lighting makes the whole platform pop.
Depending on the other components in your PC, LiveDash and FanXpert complement our ROG AIO coolers. LiveDash serves as a control center for the OLED panel on our Ryuo and Ryujin coolers. Meanwhile, owners of ASUS motherboards can use the FanXpert software to configure their fan speeds. Dialing in the right curve based on CPU temperature ensures that you optimize cooling at the lowest noise level possible.
Cool, quiet, and affordable
The ROG Strix LC AIO cooler is new for 2019, hitting a price point that’s perfect for PC builders looking to maximize the value of an unlocked Intel Core or AMD Ryzen CPU. Its plastic pump cover echoes the aesthetic of the higher-end Ryuo, and below the shroud, 16 addressable LEDs provide bright, diffused lighting around your CPU socket. On top, an illuminated ROG logo with Aura Sync support can be set to shine any color you like and synchronized with other compatible components in your system.
The ROG Strix AIO is currently available with 120-mm and 240-mm radiators, with a 360-mm radiator coming soon, making them ideal for any size PC case. The radiator fans employ our wing-blade design optimized for airflow (81 CFM at 2,500 RPM) and low noise. These fan designs are also found on many ROG graphics cards as well as the ROG Thor PSU.
RBG lighting for everyone
If you like the look and feel of the ROG Strix AIO cooler, but wish it had more of the RGB goodness that you need, fear not. The new ROG Strix LC RGB cooler features the same high-performance and closed-loop design that will unlock the full potential of your unlocked Intel or AMD CPU. The two specially-designed radiator fans and NCVM-coated pump cover have been equipped with individually addressable RGB lighting and Aura Sync support to match the rest of your PC components.
The ROG Strix LC RGB is available with 120-mm, 240-mm, and 360-mm radiators, offering support for builds both large and small.
ROG Ryuo in the middle
If you want more pizzazz with your liquid cooler, then look to the Ryuo. It boasts all the technical competencies of our ROG Strix AIO, including two available radiator sizes and the patented wing-blade fans. The Ryuo deviates from the Strix with an aluminum pump cover, which helps to dissipate heat in addition to looking great. Nine addressable LEDs, controllable through the LiveDash utility, bathe your processor interface in light.
The pièce de résistance is a 1.77” LiveDash OLED screen centered on the pump. Its 160x128 resolution is large enough to display logos and animations, or to convey more meaningful information like clock rates, voltages, temperatures, and fan speeds, all in 16-bit color. Support for JPG and GIF images opens the door to unlimited customization options.
Harder, better, faster, stronger
The ROG Ryujin is a flagship product designed to pair with today’s highest-end CPUs and their unprecedented core counts. It takes the effectiveness of an AIO cooler and folds in strengths borrowed from conventional air coolers. With a typical heat sink and fan mounted to your CPU, air flows around the socket interface and its surrounding voltage regulation circuitry, all of which get really hot. Liquid coolers relocate that airflow to the back or top of your case, wherever the radiator is mounted. The Ryujin incorporates a 60-mm fan into the pump housing that circulates air across the motherboard’s surface to keep components around the processor interface cool.
Like the ROG Ryuo, our Ryujin is available in two sizes. The 240-mm radiator option is joined by a 360-mm model with a third fan that’s sized to cope with the latest Intel Core i9 and AMD Ryzen processors. Both CPU families can dissipate hundreds of watts of power, particularly when they’re overclocked, requiring serious cooling capacity. In either configuration, our radiators are populated with Noctua’s iPPC-2000 PWM fans measuring 120 mm in diameter and rated for 122 m3h of airflow at 2,000 RPM. Their excellent performance is complemented by quiet operation: a sub-30dB(A) specification is barely audible.
The more polygonal-shaped pump housing is unique in our AIO family. Its non-conductive vacuum metalizing (NCVM) coating offers contrasting shiny- and brushed-looking materials without the risk of conductive surfaces. The shroud incorporates a 1.77” LiveDash OLED, allowing you to cycle through hardware health in real-time or display a custom animation.
An option for everyone
Once upon a time, liquid cooling was a luxury for the most hardcore overclockers looking to squeeze a few extra megahertz out of their CPUs. These days, AIO coolers are available in many shapes and sizes, with a wide range of features, and at price points accessible to everyone.
We’ve integrated high-quality hardware and innovative functionality across our family of cooling products. The Strix AIO introduces high-performance liquid cooling in a worry-free closed loop, and the addition of Aura-compatible LEDs around its pump cover ensures that you overclock in style. If you’re building into a windowed case and want to really turn heads, check out the ROG Ryuo and its customizable OLED screen. The flagship Ryujin dials performance up even higher with a larger radiator option and a pump-embedded fan for cooling sensitive components around the processor interface. Its NCVM-coated cover and addressable RGB LEDs complement the vibrant LiveDash OLED display.
All three models are compatible with Intel LGA 1150, 1151, 1155, 1156, 1366, 2011, 2011-3, and 2066 CPUs, along with AMD Socket AM4 and TR4 processors.
We announced a lot of hot new tech at Computex 2019. You can find all of the latest gear from ASUS and ROG in this article.
