Corsair iCUE LINK TITAN 420 RX RGB review – Lots of light, lots of power? Or just hot air in colorful plastic?

1 - Introduction and technical data 2 - Look and feel, iCUE software 3 - Optinal accessory 4 - Temepratures and noise 5 - Summary and conclusion

Methodology

An AMD Ryzen 9 7900X now needs to be cooled at various power consumption levels. This is joined by 16GB Kingston Fury Beast (2x8GB) DDR5 -6000 CL36-38-38 memory on a ROG CROSSHAIR X670E HERO. The Sapphire Radeon RX 7600 Pulse 8GB runs for the CPU stress tests only for the image output in zero-fan mode and a be quiet! Dark Power Pro 13 1600W serves as the power source. The whole thing is in the Open Benchtable.

The test system runs on Windows 11 Pro (Build 26100.4061). All data sets are recorded with HWInfo64 v8.04-5470 – 5000ms logging. The specified temperature results from the CPU Die (Average) sensor. Since I don’t have air conditioning, the values in the graphs are the delta between room temperature and CPU temperature. This means that all cooling systems can be compared fairly, even if the ambient temperature is different. For better comparability, the same thermal compound is applied to each cooler using the X-Apply applicator.

I determine the sound level with a Voltcraft SL-10 measuring device at a distance of 40 cm, which works in 125 ms cycles in Lo mode. The room was measured at 30.4 dB(A). An external example table helps with the breakdown.

Benchmarks

In the first test run, a loudness of 40 dB(A) was set at 40cm from the center of the pump and fan on the radiator, in my setup this is 75% PWM for the radiator fans and 100% PWM for the pump.

And then this cooler is allowed to show what it can achieve in terms of cooling performance at maximum speed, regardless of the volume. A maximum of …. dB(A) was achieved at 100% PWM and a distance of 40 cm.

The curves show a predictably solid picture: at 40 dB(A), the 420 keeps the 100 and 150 W loads confidently in the low Delta-T range, while 200 W constantly achieves around 60 K Delta. At maximum fan speed, the result improves only minimally, especially at 200 W, which shows that the radiator is already working close to its practical performance limit here. Overall, the TITAN 420 RX delivers a stable, easily reproducible performance that remains clearly within the comfort range up to around 150 W and becomes controlled but significantly warmer beyond that.

Pages:

• 1 - Introduction and technical data
• 2 - Look and feel, iCUE software
• 3 - Optinal accessory
• 4 - Temepratures and noise
• 5 - Summary and conclusion