For established PC peripheral vendors, the biggest challenge in participating in a highly commoditized market is to differentiate themselves from many competitors.Over the years, the design of coolers and other peripherals has converged into a handful of basic, highly optimized designs, and developing new hardware is essentially "solved" Physics problems are getting harder and harder. We often see vendors focus on adding non-core features to their hardware, such as RGB lighting and other aesthetics. But every now and then, we see vendors deviate a little from the norm with the physical design of their coolers.
Enermax’s latest all-in-one (AIO) CPU cooler, the LiqMaxFlo 360mm, emphasizes this point and is the subject of today’s review. In order to compete at the top of the cooling market, Enermax chose to leverage the physics of its 360mm cooler and make it 38mm thick, which is approximately 40% thicker than the industry average thickness of 27mm. While Enermax isn’t the first vendor to introduce thick AIO coolers, their position here is much more limited due to the design and compatibility tradeoffs that come with using thicker coolers – most other vendors Choose to avoid this trade-off.
The end result is that the LiqMaxFlo 360mm starts right up, and unlike many other 360mm coolers on the market, it uses a design that gives Enermax an edge in cooling performance, at least as long as the cooler fits in the system. Beyond that, Enermax doesn’t just stop at making bigger coolers, but has equipped the LiqMaxFlo 360mm with customizable RGB lighting, allowing it to meet the aesthetic preferences of modern premium PC builders. All in all, the LiqMaxFlo 360mm has something for everyone and packs a lot of radiator into a single case. So let’s get started.