At first we would like to thank Deepcool for offering us a sample of their Captain 240 EX White Liquid Cooler for testing and reviewing.

 

 

 

About Deepcool:

 

“Deepcool was founded with the mission of providing the best performance and humanized thermal solutions for worldwide customers. Established in 1996, headquartered in Beijing, factory was established in Shen Zhen, Deepcool originally produced desktop, server coolers and cooling accessories. With the rapid development of personal computers, Deepcool expanded the business into AIO liquid cooling products, chassis, power supplies..

 

Deepcool has built up its distribution network in about seventy countries all over the globe, by which end-users can purchase Deepcool products online or in their nearest local stores. With more and more media exposure and publication, such as awards from renowned websites and magazines like Tom’s Hardware, Techpowerup, TweakTown, HEXUS, 3Dnews, Guru3d, CHIP, etc., Deepcool now enjoys a good reputation among computer daily users, gamers, overclockers and modders.

 

We will always spare no effort to maintain customer satisfaction by serving our customer’s ever-changing thermal needs and providing the quickest and most comprehensive service available. As our slogan goes, we wish you all “Enjoy your cool life!” Why Named Deepcool Ever since the stunning victory of Deep Blue, a program running on an IBM supercomputer, over Gary Kasparov, then world chess champion, in 1997, it has been clear that computers would be the most powerful tool of human being. At that time, we started our computer cooling business. We hoped our products could be as great as Deep Blue. With that in mind came the name Deepcool.”

 

Product Features:

 

Upgraded high-density water microchannel with powerful self-governed circulation system, 10% more efficient heat dissipation.

Amazing glass design &patented visual external-circulation system.

Updated tooling free installation solution, solid 100% metal material clip.

Unique silent TF 120 double-blade fan to offer a higher air pressure for radiator, more efficient to take heat away.

Upgraded anti-explosion rubber tube, anti-corrosion, crush resistance & thermostable material.

Three-phase induction motor built-in the powerful closed impeller, the stronger liquid flow & bigger delivery head.

Long lifetime ceramic bearing with MTBF 120,000 hours.

Crazy steam punk appearance &the unique reactor-style pump housing.

Bionic white LED breathing light lightening up while operating.

 

 

Product Specifications:

 

 

In this article we are going to review one of the available AM4-compatible AIO CPU coolers on the market and to be more exact the Captain 240 EX White from Deepcool. The product does have a steampunk appearance, with a unique reactor-style pump housing in order to blend-in with other design elements of your setup.

Captain 240 EX White does ship inside a medium-sized cardboard enclosure, which does house the cooling system along with its bundle. On the top cover of the packaging, we will get to see a photo with the pump element in operation, along with some pictograms that represent some of the technologies used:

 

 

 

AM4 compatibility is confirmed via a separate sticker:

 

 

 

On one of the box sides, the manufacturer has included the list of product main features:

 

 

 

Technical specifications are also provided nearby:

 

 

 

After lifting the top cover, we will get to see the contents fully protected in a custom cardboard mold:

 

 

 

Let’s begin with the accessory plastic bag along with the Captain 240 EX User Manual:

 

 

 

We are getting here the screw bolts, the fan screws, case screws, two sets of four nuts, double-screw bolts, the mounting brackets for both AMD and Intel platforms, the backplate, a fan extension cable but also the Deepcool GamerStorm sticker:

 

 

 

The backplate has been recently revised in order to also include mounts for the brand-new AM4 platform:

 

 

 

 

The case badge looks quite cool and is provided with a small transparent plastic film on top:

 

 

 

Since we will conduct our testing on an AM4 platform, we will use the suitable mounting brackets:

 

 

 

In order to aid with the installation procedure, the manufacturer did also include step-by-step installation drawings, which are available separately for each platform:

 

 

 

The kit does also include two 120mm PWM fans that are individually packed in separate re-sealable plastic bags:

 

 

 

The TF 120 PWM fans do pack the same color scheme as the cooler (white/black) and come with nine blades:

 

 

 

In each corner, the fans are featuring rubber mounts in order to eliminate vibrations during operation, which could add extra noise:

 

 

 

The GamerStorm logo is also present here:

 

 

 

On the back side of the fans, we will learn of the technical specifications from the central sticker (12V @ 0.12A):

 

 

 

This particular model is packing double-blade technology in order to offer a higher air pressure for the radiator:

 

 

 

The bundle does also pack some extra components:

 

 

 

To be more exact, we are getting a fan hub, one adhesive but also a cable tie:

 

 

 

The GamerStorm fan hub does pack connectors for no less than four fans, so besides the ones from the Captain 240 EX White, we can also connect two more fans from the case:

 

 

 

 

The hub comes with a sleeved black cable and a PWM 4-pin connector:

 

 

 

The main point of attraction still remains the Captain 240 EX White pump along with the radiator:

 

 

 

As the manufacturer did describe, the pump really looks like a small reactor with a semi-transparent glass tube that allows liquid flow to be visible and on the sides we do also have the mounting mechanism. As Deepcool has mentioned on the box, we can install the system without the need of a screwdriver:

 

 

 

 

The position of the tubing is adjustable so it may allow different mounting positions; out of the plastic casing, we will get to see coming out the pump power cable:

 

 

 

The 3-pin pump power connector is indicated to be installed to a non-regulated fan header on the motherboard:

 

 

 

On the bottom area of the pump, we will get to see the large copper plate and pre-applied thermal compound in order to aid with the installation procedure. Under the copper plate, we do have upgraded high-density water micro-channels with a powerful self-governed circulation system:

 

 

 

Captain 240 EX is equipped with sleeved anti-explosion rubber tubes, which are also anti-corrosive, resistant to crushes and thermostable:

 

 

 

The all-white radiator des feature a length of 274mm and a width of 120mm; the 240mm aluminum fins array has been optimized for efficiency at even lower fan speeds:

 

 

 

A warranty sticker is also pre-applied on the refill port:

 

 

 

A similar design can be spotted on the opposite side of the radiator:

 

 

 

No extra logos are present on the laterals of the radiator; its height is exactly 27mm:

 

 

 

The first step of the installation does imply using the long, black screws for mounting the fans onto the radiator:

 

 

 

Secondly, we can take the backplate aside and mount the secondary set of long screws into the designated AM4 holes:

 

 

 

The nuts with plastic spacers will be used for keeping the backplate fixed onto the motherboard:

 

 

 

We will then use the AMD mounting adapters and fix them with the secondary set of nuts:

 

 

 

 

With the mounting system attached, we can finally install the motherboard into the case/test bench:

 

 

 

The pump installation along with the radiator are straightforward:

 

 

 

 

When coupled with components that do sport a similar color scheme, the Captain 240 EX White looks really awesome!

 

 

 

After the pump starts to receive power from the motherboard header, the reactor LED light will start pulsating, an effect that gives the system an overall “retro” styling:

 

 

 

 

For testing out the Deepcool Captain 240 EX White CPU cooler, we have installed it on our MSI X370 Xpower Gaming Titanium motherboard, which did have the AMD Ryzen 7 1700 CPU mounted along with a Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB DDR4 3000MHz dual-channel memory kit. For storage we have mounted an OCZ Vector 150 240GB SSD, the video interface was assured by a KFA2 GTX 1060 OC 6GB video card and all was installed inside a Cooler Master ATCS 840 Tower Case.

 

The motherboard header where the fans were installed was set in PWM mode and we did configure an all-core overclock to 3.9GHz via Ryzen Master, at a voltage of 1.3V. Why choose the Ryzen 7 1700 you may ask? Well…the answer is pretty simple: this CPU is the only one from the Ryzen 7 series which does not feature a +20 degrees Celsius offset for the tCTL reading so we are getting more accurate temperatures from the monitoring programs.

 

In order to heat up the cooling system and stabilize at the maximum temperature, we have ran Prime95 (Blend) for about 45 minutes and logged the highest temperature. Afterwards, we did leave the system in IDLE for about 20 minutes and checked the lowest temperature of the CPU:

 

 

 

We were quite impressed by the excellent temperatures this cooler can maintain on the Ryzen 7 1700 CPU even when overclocked, even when pushing it to unrealistic load levels via Prime95.

 

The mounting kits and compatible coolers have just started to appear on the market for the highly praised AM4 AMD platform. The Captain 240 EX White not only looks very cool, but is also able to perform very well while keeping the noise levels to a minimum. In our tests, we were able to keep a 3.9GHz Prime95-stable overclock at load temperatures of 59 degrees Celsius, while the ambient temperature was kept at a fixed value of 22.5 degrees Celsius.

During this time, the noise produced by the fans was only 38.6 dBA (recorded 30 cm away from the radiator with the sound meter) and the fans did spin at 873RPM while set in PWM mode via the MSI X370 Xpower Gaming Titanium motherboard UEFI interface.

 

The Captain 240 EX White mounting mechanism installation is pretty straight-forward and we can easily remove/install the pump when swapping CPUs on the same motherboard for testing purposes. Thanks to the flexible tubes, you can easily install the pump and radiator combo in many case formats, while the supplied fan hub can power two additional PWM fans from inside the case.

 

The Deepcool Captain 240 EX White AIO CPU cooler is available online for about 115 Euros.

 

Deepcool Captain 240 EX White Liquid Cooler is Recommended for:

 

 

We would like to thank Deepcool for making this review possible!