Benchmarks: Noise
There had to be a catch, and noise output is definitely it. Fusion Curve is clearly audible when idle, loud when gaming, and bothersome when the CPU is working flat out. We removed the back cover to try and identify the culprit, and on our review sample it's the liquid cooler's centrifugal fan that is the most vocal component.
Is it a deal breaker? That depends entirely on how often you wear headphones, but in our experience, noise output, emphasised by the close proximity of the fans, is a tad too high for comfort. Would the fan run much quieter if the processor was swapped from the 91W Core i7-6700K to, say, a 65W Core i5-6500? That's a good question.