The variety of liquid coolers is growing rapidly, but few build on such a strong brand as the two new Sapphire products. We’re talking about the “Nitro+”, an attribute that has gained a very good reputation in the graphics card market. Sapphire is going down a similar path as it once did with the Vapor-X. But this cooler succeeded only on the GPU, the CPU design didn’t stand too strong compared to the competition. The AIOs will hopefully turn out a lot better.
Sapphire is venturing into liquid coolers for the CPU. I guess one could say that the company is entering a new market with this, but that wouldn’t be entirely accurate.
While this is the first liquid CPU cooler, CPU coolers as such have been and are being tackled by Sapphire, if we take into account the small Nitro LTC tower. However, this cooler is only intended for the Asian market and is not sold here.
More well-known and more widely used is the Sapphire Vapor-X cooler. Its results can be found in our old tests and it didn’t particularly stand out – there were already many quieter yet more powerful coolers in its weight category back then. But it could be different with the new Nitro+ liquid coolers. Sapphire, similarly to what it did back then with the Vapor-X, has used a name (Nitro+) that is also associated with Sapphire graphics cards with some of the best GPU coolers. Sapphire has some experience with liquid coolers, for example with the Toxic graphics cards. The Radeon RX 6900 XT with a liquid AIO cooler from Sapphire will also be included in our tests.
Sapphire’s new coolers come in two sizes, with a 240mm (Nitro+ S240-A) and a 360mm radiator (Nitro+ S360-A). As this is a closed loop from Asetek, it is nothing special. The radiator fins are aluminium, the block is traditionally copper (i.e. galvanic corrosion is only delayed by the quality of the “retardant”). Compared to competing coolers that have the same base, these AIOs can be brought into the plus numbers by the fans.
We do not have detailed performance parameters for the fans, but the rotors consist of seemingly “strong” parts. These are characterized by up to twelve long blades embedded in a generic frame with notches. This circular addition is mainly there to increase the static pressure, of which the fans can certainly exert a decent amount.
Fan speed at maximum is up to 2400 rpm. More important in practice, however, will be the low-speed characteristics and naturally these fans could also excel in this area compared to the competition. The lower speed limit is supposed to be 450 rpm. Another spec that we know of are the bearings, which are of the ball type. You can see the illumination in the pictures, the entire rotor is light-conductive and the ARGB LED also highlights the block.
Supported Intel platforms include LGA 115x, 1200, 1700, 2011(-3) and 2066. Only one of the AMD sockets is supported – AM4. You cannot install Sapphire Nitro+ coolers on older sockets in a standard way. Sapphire has not yet revealed information about availability and price .
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
