Deepcool AS500 Review: Silent Sophistication

Deepcool's new single 140mm air cooler, the AS500, resembles half of the company's Assassin III large tower cooler. If the nickel-plated cooling heatpipes and black accent trim on the AS500 attributes to its proper, tuxedo-like appearance, consider the lighted accent top plate the dynamic aRGB bow tie.

The Deepcool AS500 will be available in UK (£54.99) and European markets around October 20, 2020, arriving sometime in November in the US, for $59.99. With simple installation and support for most current Intel and AMD CPUs (sorry, no Threadripper), the AS500 shines as an intermediate option between budget and large air cooling options.

Deepcool AS500 Specifications

Deepcool ships the AS500 with an assortment of nickel-plated mounting hardware and a universal backplate which provides mounting compatibility with most current Intel and AMD CPU sockets, although AMD Threadripper does not make the list. Spring clips are provided for those wishing to run an additional fan on their AS500 for push/pull operation, while a syringe of thermal paste and an aRGB control module round out the accessory package.

Deepcool covers the AS500 with a 3-year warranty.

The AS500 features a set of five nickelplated heatpipes which converge at the base of the cooler between the mounting plate and a milled baseplate. Tension screws are fixed within the mounting plate bracket, providing simplified installation.

Deepcool provides a 140mm TF140S PWM fan rated at 70.8 CFM at 1200 RPM. The trailing edges of the fan blades are trimmed with fins for directional airflow through the fan chassis and into the cooling tower. The fan itself is not aRGB capable, but it does come equipped with rubberized fan mounts for minimizing vibration noise.

Deepcool makes use of offset heatpipes within the aluminum cooling tower to increase airflow around each thermal conduit. The top bezel of the AS500 is trimmed with an aRGB opaque diffuser and topped with a black top piece. Cabling for the aRGB lighting module runs down a vertical channel cut into the cooling tower to prevent interference of the cabling with the 140mm fan.

In checking the milling of the baseplate, we can see just a slight bit of convexity, which meets the CPU integrated heat spreader (IHS). This should not be an issue for most installations but could amplify a problem with improper installation or seating of the cooler atop the CPU.

Our installation resulted in an even distribution of thermal compound across the entire IHS face of our Core i9-10850K CPU. This is precisely what we like to see following a cooler install.

Since the Deepcool AS500 is a single tower cooler, it is centered over the CPU and allows for wider compatibility with memory DIMMs which might feature tall heat spreaders, like our Corsair Dominator DDR4-3600 modules, but some installations might still bump into this problem, depending on your configuration and motherboard.

The installation of the AS500 is quite simple, making use of mounting crossbars and the fixed tension springs on the mounting plate which try to automatically align the cooler correctly over the mounting brace.

While not completely immune to memory interference, the AS500 does a better job than most 140mm coolers. This is nearly always an issue with CPU air cooling solutions featuring large fans, so make sure to do a bit of research and shop accordingly.