NZXT Kraken Elite 360 RGB review: "Has some solid design points that make installation a lot easier"

The NZXT Kraken Elite 360 RGB has its work cut out for it in this review. Not only have I put it in my own ITX gaming PC to see just how good it is at keeping temperatures down when a lot of components are cramped together, but I’m asking it to keep a famously hot processor cool. In some ways, there’s no better test for a 360mm AIO cooler than trying to control the temperature of the Intel Core i7-13700K, especially in the tempestuous seas of a small form factor build.

Keeping the best CPUs for gaming under boiling point is something this brand has been tasked with for years, and its array of 240mm coolers and 360mm options tend to get a good reputation, so long as you’re open to paying more for a well-known brand. For the higher price you’ll pay here versus the competition from Cooler Mater, MSI, and even Corsair, you do get some innovative design points that admittedly streamline the installation process.

While the $319 / £270 price tag is a lot to add to your basket when components themselves cost enough these days, NZXT does offer a few things that you won’t get elsewhere. Is that enough for you, or is this a Kraken that should stay “unreleased” for now?

Design

As its name suggests, the NZXT Kraken Elite 360 RGB is a full-sized AIO cooler for your best gaming PC. It’s available in two versions, one with RGB arrays in the fans, and one without that is a tad cheaper. It has all the usual requirements of this kind of cooler - the pump header, the radiator, the fans, and the cables to power it all. It’s a development of the Kraken cooler you may have seen on the shelves from a few years ago, but it adds a few design flourishes to make the entire system a bit less complicated.

For starters, the wiring is fixed into a centralized, single breakout cable meaning you don’t need to mess around with umpteen different cables that dangle around the facial components of your motherboard. The breakout cable fits into the radiator, and then splits off into the different headers the cooler needs to function in a centralised tube. There’s the 8-pin female connector, the three-pin Pump connector for one of the PWM connectors on the top of your motherboard, there’s the Pump power SATA connector, and finally a USB connector so that you can customize the pump header’s display and fan speeds through NZXT Cam software. These all cater to a cleanly managed cable system, and they all have enough length that they can stretch to the appropriate connectors in your PC. This is something I really like since my smaller PC makes keeping cable clutter to a minimum a very difficult task.

The coolant pipes are mesh, not see-through, so anyone wanting to play around with colored coolant and custom loops probably won’t be happy with what any standard AIO can offer. In fairness, this is the case for 90% of AIO coolers, but while NZXT is trying to refine design elements, maybe a more modular offering could be something to consider in the future. Then again, this wouldn’t exactly fit with NZXT’s clean and sleek white and black, plug-and-play designs. As it stands, the mesh tubes that connect the fans and radiator to the pump header are quite thick, and they’re not the most flexible. Fortunately, they do pivot on the pump header end, which means you can fit things at more of an angle.

The fans for this cooler aren’t three individuals that you’ll need to link together and bolt down separately. Instead, they come as a three-fan-in-one set, fixed together by an outer frame. While this does remove some options for swapping out fans for ones you’d prefer, it does save a lot of cable clutter so you don’t need to daisy chain a bunch of power and RGB connectors together and then find a way to hide the evidence. For simplicity’s sake, this is a nice touch, but if you want to use different fans, it could make life difficult for you because of that centralized cabling system.

Features

Of course, the main draw for a lot of people is going to be the IPS display built into the pump header. If you have an ATX gaming PC with a transparent panel on the side, this is the sort of cooler that you’ll be able to load pictures, gifs, and all sorts of other media onto to give your PC a bit of personality. For builders trying to fling together a themed rig, there are countless opportunities for you to play around with it in NZXT Cam, and it looks really clear and impressive when it’s all working.

Unfortunately, it’s a little wasted on my Corsair 2000D RGB Airflow case, since it’s a mini-ITX chassis with no transparent paneling. RGB can be seen within the case, but only if it’s shining pretty brightly or it's close to the walls.

Both the RGB and the pump header display are customized through NZXT Cam - a software I genuinely like, as manufacturer-mandatory bloatware goes. It doesn’t overstep itself, and it makes customizing the devices you own nice and easy - as opposed to something like Razer Synapse which wants to become your PC’s main application at all times - for everything. Annoyingly, to get the most out of this cooler and its features, you do need to have that USB header plugged in somewhere on your motherboard. Since I have an ITX motherboard with limited space, I’m using all the USB space I have to power my myriad of peripherals and front fan lighting. It’s hardly a flaw, but it is worth checking if your motherboard has enough USB headers to make the most out of this cooler before committing to it - especially for the money you spend.

What I do really like about this cooler though, is that it features super clear installation instructions, and everything you need for either an Intel or AMD processor is in the box, waiting for you. The assembly instructions outline everything clearly, and some diagrams and steps really do feel like they streamline what can be a confusing assembly process.

Performance

Before I get into the nitty-gritty of this cooler’s performance, let me again reiterate that I’ve given it quite a task here. I’ve put it to work in a small form factor gaming PC that has the heat of a lot of components cramped together for it to dissipate. On top of that, I’m asking it to keep the Intel Core i7-13700K cool. That CPU, for all its power, is one of the hottest across the board that I’ve tested compared with all the desktop processors I’ve reviewed, so it’s worth keeping in mind here that if the temperatures I recorded seem a little high, your mileage may vary - particularly if you have a larger case or an AMD CPU which operate a bit colder anyway.

My main draw to an AIO cooler was to keep noise pollution down. I was using a Noctua air cooler in my rig for the longest time, which was more than enough paired with an Intel Core i5-13600K, but did add a lot of noise to my machine when I launched any game. It also meant my rig was relying too heavily on the chassis fans to pull cool air in, which, as you can imagine, caused a lot of noise.

With the NZXT Kraken Elite 360 RGB now installed alongside that bump-up in CPU power, I can let the chassis fans relax a bit and have the AIO do more of the heavy lifting. That does result in less noise overall, but it does mean that the AIO fans are working harder more of the time. I can’t exactly fault the Kraken Elite for its noise levels - it’s not like sitting on the edge of a runway, but I would have liked a little less noise than the continual whir of these fans give me. I’ve tested this cooler while connected to both my AIO Pump and CPU Fan PWM connectors on my motherboard - and those of you in the know will understand that means I’ve tested it running at 100% all the time, and at carefully selected levels on a fan curve. It still is quite noisy, so for any fellow ITX builders out there, maybe consider something smaller if you want to cut out as much noise as possible.

Of course, ambient noise is a trade-off in my gaming PC for adequate cooling performance. The 13700K can sit at an ambient temperature of 35 degrees thanks to the Kraken Elite, which is a few degrees lower than its ambient temperature in our testing PC during review testing (38 degrees). That’s compared to an older Corsair 360mm AIO cooler, albeit in a much larger case that has a more pronounced airflow pattern and more space for its components.

In software benchmarking like Cinebench, however, the Kraken still wasn’t able to prevent the 13700K from thermal throttling and reaching boiling point, which, in fairness, we found in our review tests too, and have seen is a bit of an expectation for this processor from other reviewers. During a Cinebench Multicore test, I saw peak temperatures of 100 degrees according to HWiNFO, although a lower average temperature during the test than in our review benchmarking, where it sat at around 96 degrees for most of the test. The Kraken managed to keep it sat at 87 degrees for the majority of the test, with occasional climbs up to the low 90s. If that peak temperature of boiling point worries you though, I’d argue this is likely more to do with the chip itself than a slight against the cooler. The fact it managed to keep temperatures lower than another cooler in a larger rig does attest to that.

I found the same results when gaming too, as in my regular haunt, Hunt: Showdown 1896, the processor was peaking in the 70s, which is impressive given that game’s added technical demands following a 2.0 update last year. In Planet Zoo, a CPU-intensive game I use for a lot of processor testing, I found a similar story. A peak of 75 degrees is about what you’d expect for a processor like this in a game that’s making it work overtime, and compared to the air-cooled i5 I had in my rig previously, it’s keeping temperatures lower overall.

Annoyingly, I haven’t been able to test out the funky LCD display on the Kraken’s pump header since I have no room to spare when it comes to USB motherboard headers. Still, the display does work when the pump header is powered correctly, and defaults to displaying your CPU’s temperature. My only slight against the pump header is that it is pretty bulky. Seated on my ITX motherboard, it really does make things more noticeably cramped, and its height means reaching components next to it like M.2 bays or swapping out the best RAM for gaming could be tricky without removing it. The same goes for the depth of the radiator. The Corsair Airflow 2000D RGB was one of the first-ever ITX cases to be able to fit a 360mm AIO cooler inside it, as you might know from our Origin Chronos V3 review, but I feel like the radiator and fans are really testing that in this case, and even those with an ATX build may notice some real estate at the top of their PC get easily swallowed up.

Should you buy the NZXT Kraken Elite 360 RGB?

I can’t really speak to its fanciest decorative features, but what I can say is that the NZXT’s Kraken Elite 360 RGB has some solid design points that make installation a lot easier than other AIO coolers. Centralising the cable system does make a big difference to both looks and practicality and particularly for those PC builders using an AIO for the first time, this will go down a treat.

I also think as a cut-and-dry cooler, there’s a lot to like here. Asking it to prove its worth by keeping the Intel Core i7-13700K calm is a tough test, and asking it to do it in a small form factor PC where limited airflow puts a lot of responsibility on the AIO makes things even more difficult. The Kraken Elite kept gaming and ambient temperatures down to acceptable levels, and comparable ones with the Corsair AIO we used for our review benchmarking. Although it couldn’t keep content creation tasks from spilling into boiling point territory, I’d argue this is a fault of the 13th Generation of Intel processors rather than a failing of the cooler.

It’ll ultimately be up to you to decide whether or not the streamlined design points and swanky LCD display are worth paying more for versus some more basic coolers under $200, or flashy loops with multicolored coolant. If I had transparent paneling in my case, the Kraken’s LCD display is exactly the type of nonsense I’d love to see whenever I peered into my PC.

How I tested the NZXT Kraken Elite 360 RGB

I put the NZXT Kraken Elite 360 RGB to work inside my ITX gaming PC, pairing it with an Intel Core i7-13700K processor, and easing its workload with Prolima Tech PK-3 thermal paste. I tested the cooler both with the CPU Fan and AIO Pump PWM connectors on my motherboard to see the differences in cooling performance when working with a custom fan curve, and with it operating at 100% at all times.

I used HWiNFO to track temperatures and thermal throttling and used Cinebench’s multicore test as a way to probe the upper limits of CPU strain. I also played various games, keeping tabs on temperatures, noise levels, and performance.

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