Sama L70 Closed-Loop CPU Cooler Review: Bigger Value?

Two to three millimeters is all that Sama is giving us by way of hardware towards awarding its latest cooler the performace value champion, but the firm has also promised us a $70 retail price on launch day (that’s today) to undercut its closest competitors by at least $10. And by closest, we mean companies who make competing low-cost, high-capacity closed-loop coolers.

Sama L70 Design: Bigger In The Smallest Way

Those two to three millimeters are all fan, the frame measuring about 28mm thick including vibration damping rubber pads, or 30mm from the radiator to the top of the screw heads. That’s right, SAMA has the L70’s fans installed at the factory. Parts that aren’t factory installed include the Intel socket support plate, Intel and narrow-side AMD socket adapters, a set of standoffs, four nuts for attaching the socket adapters to standoffs, a pack of twelve screws that attach the opposite side of the radiator to the top or front panel of your case and a tube of Sama Freezee thermal compound. Two tubing spacers are included, but we had to remove one of those to make the cooler sit freely in this orientation.

The factory installed fans mean that anyone trying to mount the fans on the outside and radiator on the inside of the case’s radiator bracket will need to remove the factory screws, but there’s more going on with these fans: To keep the appearance clean, the last fan has only one proprietary monoblock (input) connecting it to the middle fan, the middle fan has one on each side (input and output) connecting it to the other two fans, and the first fan is the only one to have standard PWM fan and ARGB lighting inputs.

Sama puts a twist on the infinity mirror concept by placing two mirrors atop its water pump and CPU cooling block assembly, so that anything seen on one will be reflected back and forth between the two. We’re not sure how much this top adds to its height, but an assembly that stands 78mm tall will appear substantial regardless of actual substance.

The assembly’s copper thermal interface is machined flat to a fine grain that may have been left to help it keep thermal paste in place. Spring-loaded retention nuts seen on each side are factory attached to the assembly’s mounting tabs.

The cooling assembly’s spring-loaded nuts allow it to compensate for the different thicknesses of AMD and Intel motherboards, with the major installation differences being that the Intel cross brackets are longer and the AMD support plate is factory installed by the motherboard manufacturer. Sama uses the same threading on its Intel support plate that AMD’s factory-installed plate already has, thereby allowing the installation kit to include only one set of standoffs to fit the sockets of both manufacturers.

As shown, the standoffs go on first, followed by the cross brackets, then a set of attachment nuts.

Each cross bracket has a central mounting stud onto which the cooler assembly is secured. With the cross brackets properly attached both above and below the CPU, simply screw down the spring nuts using either either a flat head or #2 Phillips screwdriver.

A lighted pattern built into the pump cover shines through its mirrors surface to reflect on the assembly’s perpendicular mirrored surface, creating an infinity pattern that changes with your view angle.

You may have noticed that we put the L70 on our top panel rather than the front: That’s because we use the radiator fans of our liquid coolers to provide additional airflow over our CPU’s voltage regulator whenever possible.

System Configuration
Case	Thermaltake Ceres 500 TG ARGB
CPU	AMD Ryzen 9 7900X: 12 cores/ 24 threads, 64MB L3 Cache O/C to 5.00 GHz at 1.25 V Core
Motherboard	ASRock B650E PG Riptide WiFi, BIOS 1.18
RAM	Sabrent Rocket SB-DR5U-32GX2 64GB DDR5-4800
System Drive	HP SSD FX900 M.2 1TB NVMe SSD

L70 Test Results: We’re Cool With This

We should probably credit the L70’s slightly thicker fan with the slight cooling boost we see when compared to five other 360mm-format coolers. It even moves more air over our motherboard’s voltage regulator!

You might expect the most powerful fans to have the greatest noise, but we found the noise limit in the priciest of its competitors. Even though it’s not the worst, excess noise at the same full-speed run that gave the cooler so much cooling still drops the L70 back to fourth place in the cooling-to-noise race.

Sama’s L70 may have paired the best cooling (at maximum noise) with the second worst noise (at maximum cooling), but one thing it didn’t split was the price: It’s only $70. And that helps the L70 overtake our previous top contender, the FX360 Inf.

Sama L70
Pros:	Cons:
Best overall cooling Cheapest 360mm-format cooler tested Great hidden-cable appearance.	Fairly short 3-year warranty Fan replacement only as set
The Verdict:
Pairing the strongest cooling of any 360mm-format cooler we’ve tested with the lowest price, Sama L70 would have won our value award if it weren’t already winning our performance award.