Cougar Helor 240 AIO CPU Cooler Review

Performance

Right off the bat, the Cougar Helor is kicking ass pretty quickly. It made easy work of the i9-9900K at stock clocks and kept pace with the much more expensive NZXT Kraken Z63 too. Even at full load it only hit 72c, which is great and one of the best I’ve tested on this new bench too.

The i9-9900K is a mean beast when overclocked, but again, the Helor 240 doesn’t seem too phased. It peaked at just 82c, so there’s no risk of throttling any time soon. I mean, this CPU can run north of 100c on air, so being close to 80 is pretty fantastic. Even more so, the idle temperatures and gaming temperatures are up there with much more expensive coolers too.

The acoustic levels are on par with what we expect from an AIO really, but that’s no bad thing. The fans are pretty quiet during idle and gaming loads, which is where they’ll spend most of their time. If you do rag the CPU mercilessly, 55 dBa is tolerable, especially since the CPU is kept nice and cool and it’ll keep performance maxed out.

Interesting, the sound levels were broadly the same even when overclocked.