Performance
Our benchmarks begin with the 105W AMD Ryzen 3950X CPU running at stock speeds. We use the popular and open source Blender creation suite to render the taxing Victor scene and record the average CPU temperature from the last five minutes of 100 percent load.
Colour us impressed. For a £55 cooler, the AS500 is punching above its weight, and although tested on a cooler day, actual temperature under load isn't a million miles off the revered Noctua NH-D15. A solid start.
There's more good news on the acoustic front as Deepcool isn't achieving good cooling performance at the expense of noise. On the contrary, the AS500 is one of the quietest performers, registering a barely audible reading when idle and just a light hum when the going gets tough.
Upping the ante in a simple manner, we raise the multiplier to 43x on all cores, while increasing voltage to 1.3V. We know the chip can do it, and the bump in juice is enough to push the coolers closer to their limit.
Colour us doubly impressed. Even when cranking up the load with 16 overclocked cores, temperature is kept the right side of 90ºC. Different setups may well produce different results, but in our AMD Ryzen test platform, the AS500 feels right at home.
Even with the overclock in place, noise levels are kept to a reasonable level. To be clear, the system is definitely audible at 39.1dB, yet we come away impressed by the overall performance of what is one of the most affordable coolers on show.