DeepCool AN600 review – When size matters…

Key features

This year is slowly but inevitably coming to an end, but I have managed to prepare one more article for you. Today we’re going to veer away from high-end and premium coolers the size of wardrobes to small coolers, which unfortunately I’ve never paid as much attention to as they probably deserve. So today we’re going to take a closer look at DeepCool’s AN600 low profile cooler, which is particularly suited to HTPC or SFF builds due to its size.

Build, design and key features

The DeepCool AN600 is a low-profile cooler and its design, which can be classified as top-down, corresponds to this. Simply put, it is a design where the fan drives air through the heatsink perpendicularly down to the CPU socket, helping to cool the surrounding area where the RAM modules, CPU power delivery and nowadays the M.2 slots are typically located. The AN600’s design is based on a relatively thin bundle of aluminum fins through which six six-millimeter copper heatpipes pass, which together start in a copper block that forms the base of the cooler. The cold plate of the base is coated with a thin layer of nickel to protect against oxidation, and the ends of the heatpipes that pass through the bundle of fins are covered by a decorative aluminium strip with the manufacturer’s logo. The whole cooler is very well made and there is nothing I could complain about.

The fan is mounted on the heatsink by four screws, so it is not possible to change its position or place it under the bundle as in some other coolers with a similar design. Removing it allows us to get a better look at the trio of service holes. The middle one is not very interesting for the average user, but the pair on the edges of the heatsink serve as an access to tighten the mounting system screws. Additionally, you don’t need to remove the fan from the cooler to do this, you just need to carefully slide a screwdriver between the fan blades.

Looking from the side, you can notice that the edge of the fan extends beyond the aluminium fins and beyond the bend of the heatpipes. However, this solution for the smallest possible cooler size may represent a compromise that leads to a slight reduction in overall performance, as the entire quarter of the fan edge where static pressure and airflow are typically highest, is not used efficiently. In the accessories of the AN600 cooler, you will find the universal mounting system that DeepCool uses for most of their current coolers. A thermal paste tube is not missing and you will even find a maximum speed limiter. Also included is a set of four screws that you can use to mount a standard fan with a 25mm height on the cooler. Rounding it all off is a clear user manual that makes assembling the cooler a simple affair. All you’ll need is a Phillips head screwdriver to push through the holes in the heatsink to tighten the pair of screws with integrated springs.

Cooler and fan parameters

The DeepCool AN600 is a low profile cooler for SFF builds, and of course its dimensions match. Its overall height makes it one of the really low-profile coolers and it fits comfortably into very small cases like the Louqe Raw S1 or Fractal Terra. For comparison, I picked a pair of Noctua coolers, which I also tested against this cooler, and as you can see, size-wise the AN600 falls somewhere in between the pair. As for the maximum height of RAM coolers, I can’t recommend anything but low profile modules here. If you rotate the cooler 180° towards the rear I/O panel of the motherboard, you can indeed use taller RAM modules, but then you are limited by the maximum height of the motherboard VRM cooler at 42 mm.

• Contents
• Key features
• Measurement methodology
• Results – 39 dBA
• Results – 42 dBA
• Results – 45 dBA
• Results – 48 dBA
• Results – maximum speed
• Spectral analysis of noise
• Conclusion and evaluation