For established PC peripheral vendors, the biggest challenge in participating in the highly commoditized market is setting themselves apart from their numerous competitors. As designs for coolers and other peripherals have converged over the years into a handful of basic, highly-optimized designs, developing novel hardware for what is essentially a "solved" physics problem becomes harder and harder. So often then, we 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 a vendor go a little farther off of the beaten path with the physical design of their coolers.
Underscoring this point – and the subject of today's review – is Enermax's latest all-in-one (AIO) CPU cooler, the LiqMaxFlo 360mm. Designed to compete in the top-tier segment of the cooling market, Enermax has opted to play with the physics of their 360mm cooler a bit by making it 38mm thick, about 40% thicker than the industry average of 27mm. And while Enermax is hardly the first vendor to release a thick AIO cooler, they are in much more limited company here due to the design and compatibility trade-offs that come with using a thicker cooler – trade-offs that most other vendors opt to avoid.
The net result is that the LiqMaxFlo 360mm gets to immediately start off as differentiated from so many of the other 360mm coolers on the market, employing a design that can give Enermax an edge in cooling performance, at least so long as the cooler fits in a system. Otherwise, not resting on just building a bigger cooler, Enermax has also equipped the LiqMaxFlo 360mm with customizable RGB lighting, allowing it to also cater to the aesthetic preferences of modern advanced PC builders. All together, there's a little something for everyone with the LiqMaxFlo 360mm – and a lot of radiator to cram into a case. So let's get started.
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