Id-Cooling DX360 Max Closed-Loop CPU Cooler Review

The build-your-own market might appear saturated with various brand of closed-loop cooler, but how many of those have triple 120mm fans and a $90 launch price? We welcome the DX360 Max from Id-Cooling!

A few details from the specification chart require clarification, since you can’t put a 25mm fan on a 38mm radiator to make a 60mm cooler. What’s actually going on is that the radiator tanks are 38mm, but the fans attach to a core that’s only 32mm. Adding 25 to 32 gets us only to 57 though: The 25mm-thick fan frames have pads on the corners that squish down to a combined thickness (fan and pad) of 26mm. And the other 2mm are for the heads of the fan screws.

Yes, that does mean that Id-Cooling’s 38mm marketing label is being applied to a 32mm radiator, as seen in our component photo below. Attached with nylon-sleeved rubber tubing to the cooling head (pump and water block), its accompanying installation kit includes (from left to right) an installation guide, an Intel mainstream socket support plate and cross brackets, AMD cross brackets in both lengthwise (long) and crossways (short) lengths, a bag of four screws and knurled mounting nuts, three bags containing four long and four short screws per bag, three hose organizing clips, three 120x25mm fans, a PWM-type fan extension cable, a tube of thermal compound and a tube-style socket for tightening the standoffs. Each fan has a short power lead with both an input and output, the later allowing all three to be daisy-chained to the end of the extension cable without creating extra cable clutter.

The DX360 Max coldplate features a satin copper finish and is secured to the pump body via eight tri-wing screws. The pump is powered by a 3-pin fan cable and the ARGB cable of its lighted cap features both an input and an output to allow another ARGB device to be added to the chain.

Using #6-32 UNC thread for its Intel backplate (rather than the common M3) allowed Id-Cooling to use the same standoffs to fit both intel and AMD installations. The other end of the standoff is still threaded M3 however, making the standoff an oddball part with metric threads on one end and imperial threads on the other.

Socket AM5 systems (like ours) come from the factory with a support plate mounted behind the CPU socket that’s already threaded to accept the DX360 Max standoffs, but users of Intel platforms will need to add the included LGA support plate to the backs of their boards to serve the same function. Cross brackets then top the standoffs and are secured with knurled nuts, and the water block’s built-in brackets screw onto a stud that sticks out of the center of each cross bracket. That last screw is a spring screw, designed to allow the cooler to fit regardless of the height difference between the heat spreaders of AMD and Intel processors.

Each fan is attached to the radiator with four screws, and the opposite side of the radiator is attached to the lid of our case with twelve screws. Notice again that the end caps of the radiator hang down 6mm past the radiator core, giving Id-Cooling an excuse to label this 32mm core a 38mm radiator.

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

Test Results

The DX360 Max takes a close second place in CPU cooling behind the pricey H150i RGB and even beats it at a couple points in our load test. Our voltage regulator didn’t fair as well under the DX360 Max, though the temperatures was only around five degrees warmer than the LiqMaxFlo 360 that lead that metric.

You might not be surprised to see that the best and second best CPU cooling came from the noisiest and second noisiest coolers, the H150i RGB and DX360 Max. The result is a big win in cooling-to-noise for the LiqMaxFlo 360.

A $20 discount currently offered by Yeyian on its competing VATN360 would have put it at a 5% value advantage over the DX360 Max, but we didn’t include the discount since we don’t know when it will end. At regular prices, the DX360 Max has the best value by far.

Already a great value based on performance and price, a better warranty than any sub-$100 triple fan closed-loop cooler we’ve tested further boosts the DX360 Max’s value position.

Id-Cooling DX360 Max (A7EX4DX360MAX0004H15)
Pros:	Cons:
2nd-place cooling at a top-value price Cheapest unit to carry 5-year warranty	Second noisiest 360-model tested Dubious “38mm radiator” claim
The Verdict:
Good cooling, a low price, a five-year warranty and easy installation make the DX360 Max a top value for those who have the right mounting space.