DeepCool’s £60 Assassin II is a monster, wielding a 120mm fan at the front and another 140mm fan sandwiched between two nickel-plated heatsinks, meaning it measures 143 x 158 x 167mm (W x D x H). There’s a mass of eight heatpipes, all with a 6mm diameter, which pass through a contact plate rather than making direct contact with the CPU heatspreader. The fans sport fluid dynamic bearings, which spin particularly smoothly and quietly, and the fan section is detachable too, so you can clean it or even spray the blades with paint fairly easily.
A four-channel fan hub is also included, which can power up to four PWM fans using a motherboard header to reduce cable clutter. It’s a neat touch, but we can’t help thinking it added several pounds to the cost when a simple Y-splitter would suffice.
Of course, the Assassin II’s sheer size means that it’s incompatible with a number of smaller cases but it does have the advantage of allowing DIMMs up to 40mm in height to be used, with standard-height DIMMs sitting at around 31mm for comparison. There’s room for 5mm extra room if you nudge the front fan up a little too. Our G.Skill Ripjaw test memory fitted fine, so Corsair’s current Vengeance memory will squeeze under it too.
Installing the Assassin II is straightforward, but you’ll almost certainly need to remove your motherboard from its case, especially if you’ll be using non-LGA2011 motherboard. Mounting plates secure to the motherboard and then a further plate straddles the heatsink’s contact plate and screws it into place. You’ll need a fairly long screwdriver to reach between the heatsinks to get at the screws too.
Cooling ability was on the money, if not spectacular, with the Assassin II nearly matching the similarly priced Corsair H75 in both our test systems. The air cooler to beat is the Noctua NH-D15, but while we only have results for our older LGA1150 rig here, the NH-D15 cooled noticeably better. The Assassin II’s trump card is undoubtedly low noise though. At full speed, it was barely audible above our test system hardware and with PWM enabled, it was silent at low loads, although the NH-D15 is also very quiet.
The Assassin II isn’t too tricky to install, it looks good and keeps up with all-in-one liquid coolers, in terms of cooling ability and noise. The Noctua NH-D15 is a better cooler, but it also costs £18 more.
The main issue with the Assassin II is its size, but if you have room in your case for it, and you want a quiet and powerful cooler, the Assassin II is a formidable force. ANTONY LEATHER
SPECIFICATIONS
Compatibility Intel: LGA2011, LGA2011-v3, LGA115x, LGA1366, LGA775; AMD: Socket AM3+, AM3, AM2+, AM2, FM2+, FM2, FM1
Heatsink size (mm, with fans) 143 x 158 x 167 (W x D x H)
Fans 1 x 120mm, 1 x 140mm
Stated noise 17.8-27.3dB(A)