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.
With half-a-dozen fans in play, the EK-AIO Elite 360 D-RGB has no problem climbing to the top of the charts on a stock-clocked CPU. The performance increase isn't quite as dramatic as you might have expected, mind, and no cooler has yet managed to dip below 60ºC using out-the-box settings.
Cooling performance is ample, yet noise levels do provide cause for concern, and particularly from the pump, which EK's manual recommends "to always run the pump at 100 per cent." That's how we configure all of the liquid coolers on show, yet at full whack the EK pump produces a whine that is clearly audible at all times and distracting in a quiet room.
Pump speed needs to be reduced in BIOS to under 70 per cent to align with what we would call acceptable noise output at the expense of maximum performance, albeit against the manufacturer's recommendation.
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.
Do people in the market for a six-fan, 360mm liquid cooler really care about noise, or is maximum performance all that matters? For those falling into the latter category, EK's flagship AIO delivers the lowest temperatures we've seen when overclocking our 16-core Ryzen 9 test platform.
The inevitable caveat is that when the going gets tough a boisterous pump combined with six ramped-up fans causes noise levels to spiral further out of control. You'll definitely want to spend some time in BIOS to find a more optimal balance.